Sunday, July 12, Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
“The Good Earth”
Scripture Readings: Ps. 65:1-13; Isaiah 55:10-13; Romans 8:12-17; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Service Order: Divine Service III, without Communion, Lutheran Service Book
Hymns: “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” #809; “For the Fruits of His Creation” #894; “Praise and Thanksgiving” #789; “On What Has Now Been Sown” #921
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
If you’ll excuse me for a little joyful, happy pride this morning, I’d like to share a little bit about how my garden is doing so far this year. We’ve been eating summer squash, peppers, and cucumbers. The tomatoes are tall and looking promising; we’ll be eating string beans by next week, and the onions are coming along. This stuff is going to be dinner tonight!
I set up the garden bed, prepared the soil, planted the seed, and poured on the Miracle Gro and the water… but as every gardener knows, I was powerless after that. I can’t make a seed do what it does, I can’t provide that spark. All I can do is plant and hope and pray for a little rain and good weather. Then, hallelujah, comes that moment in the spring when those little sprouts appear above the ground; then a little maintenance, a few weeds to pull, a little more water… and here we are! God is good!
Our Lord Jesus, in today’s Gospel, brings us a parable about “sowing and growing,” and about turning a tiny seed, spiritually speaking, into something nourishing and good. We know that God provides the seed, and the spark that gives life to the seed – but before even that, God provides the good earth itself, the soil for the seed to grow in. (Have you ever thanked God for the dirt?) The seed Jesus is talking about is faith – and the good earth, children of God, is to be found in the hearts of you and me. May the Lord make good soil of us all.
In our reading from Matthew’s Gospel, we read: “That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around Him that He got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore.” Jesus is the sower in this beautiful seaside picture, and His words are the seed. Some in the crowd, He knew, would be receptive to what He had to say, while others would be skeptical, and still others would be dead set against Him – which is the way it always is when you gather a crowd together.
“Then he told them many things in parables,” says our Gospel, “saying: ‘A farmer went out to sow his seed.’“ Jesus is talking about Himself! He’s the sower, the farmer in His own story. A parable or proverb – a “mashal”, as the Hebrews called it - was used by many teachers in those days to get their point across. (It’s still an effective teaching tool). That crowd, for the most part, would have been of an agricultural bent, a farming people, as they had to be. There were no Wal-Marts or superstores back then, no semitrucks to bring them food from far away. If you wanted food, you mostly had to catch it or grow it yourself. (How many people in our country no longer have any idea how to grow their own food?)
“As he was scattering the seed,” says Jesus, “some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.” The sower in Jesus’ story is profligate, even reckless, with the seed. He’s not sowing carefully, row by row (like you and I would), but scattering widely, throwing seed everywhere, knowing all along that some will make it, and some won’t. The birds always get their share, don’t they?
“Some fell on rocky places,” says Jesus, “where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.” Jesus knew there would be “shallow people” in that crowd, those who’d be with Him for a little while, but who’d leave Him again when things got hot. But He didn’t worry that His words would be wasted on them; the seed was flung out on them, too, just the same. Those who hear the Word can respond and be blessed - or reject it and be damned; people have free will to say yes or no. But once the Word is heard, we become accountable to it. One the Word hits your ears, you can’t say “but nobody told me” anymore – because somebody just did!
“Other seed fell among thorns,” says Jesus, “which grew up and choked the plants.”
Jesus knew about the thorns, the weeds, the tares, that everyone in that crowd was going to have to face at one time or another. Some would reject God because they were poor, and some would abandon Him because they were rich. In the end, it’s not being rich or poor that makes a difference. It’s covetousness, and having a covetous heart, that chokes out faith; and a poor man can be just as covetous as a rich one. “Those who want to get rich fall into a temptation and a trap,” St. Paul said.
“Still other seed fell on good soil,” Jesus says, “where it produced a crop--a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” Jesus said in another place, “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed; but if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (He was talking about Himself there, too, and about how He’d soon be “crucified, dead, and buried” for the sins of all the world).
So who is it who makes the good earth? Who is it who makes the soil good? “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it,” the Psalm says. The earth is His, the soil is His, the seed is His, and the spark of life is His. The fact is, this world we’re living in is a garden of God’s grace. “Without Him we can do nothing… but with God, all things are possible.” “I can do all things through He who gives me strength,” St. Paul says.
“He who has ears, let him hear,” Jesus says. Open ears are ears that are open to listen to God’s Word. What we all need are ears that are open to hear, and hearts that are open to receive. And then, not to be “hearers of the Word only, but to do what it says.”
Our reading in Matthew’s Gospel, for the sake of time and space, I guess, skips from verse 9 to verse 18, from the parable Jesus tells to His explanation of it. But those in between passages, from verse 10 to verse 17, are worth talking about for a minute. Jesus tells His disciples there about people who have ears but refuse to hear - those who hear well enough what God is saying but still refuse to do what God says. There will always be those people in the crowd.
But to His disciples He says, “Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.” The difference between people comes down to the choices they make when it comes to the Word of God. God is generous with His Gospel seed. “His Word has gone out into all the world,” the Scripture says. So you’ll either hear it and take great joy in it; or you’ll hear and turn away, and look for some measure of joy and happiness on your own, however people might choose to define what happiness is – but then will you be left with in the end? “Seek first God’s kingdom,” and you’ll get a blesses and joyful life in this world, and then a home in heaven when you die. But set your heart on seeking the things of the world, put your all your heart into having “things,” and you’ll end up losing the world and then missing out on heaven too.
Jesus, looking out at that crowd, wanted nothing more than to plant the seed of faith in their hearts, so that they could grow in their saving faith and live forever, and so they’d have a defense against everything the devil and the world would try to do to take their precious faith away. Good and faithful Sower that He is, Jesus (who is with us always!) also guards us, tends us, and waters us, and even takes a hoe to the weeds in us when that’s what we need. And all because He just loves us to death.
So we’ve been given the Good Word to pick up and read; and the seed of life-giving faith has been planted in us in our Baptism; and we’re fed by the body and blood Jesus gave us on the cross. (Our sacramental Miracle-Gro!) By His cross, our sins have been forgiven; and because He’s been raised from the dead, we have the promise of our own resurrection when Jesus comes again, and the promise of a blessed, heavenly harvest when our work here on earth is over. We’re all so blessed to know this; but do we have time in our lives and room in our hearts for those who don’t know it yet?
Jesus, explaining these things to those disciples of His, says: "Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path.” That, clearly, makes helping people understand the focus of our work and our mission in this world. That’s the teaching function of God’s Church, and why we have Bible studies and Sunday school. “Go ye therefore and teach all nations,” the Great Commission says.
“The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places,” says Jesus, “is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away.” So our mission, Church, is further defined as helping people put down those deep, spiritual roots. We need first to have that blessed, holy Word of God planted deeply in us, inscribed in our hearts, committed to our memories, and written on our souls; all so that, as St. Paul says, “as God comforts us in our troubles, we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”
People just get rolled over sometimes by all the trouble this world throws at them. We’ve all seen it happen; people get disappointed in God or even angry at God for not answering their prayers. Our on-going mission as God’s Christian Church on earth is to help people find and then grow in that deep and abiding faith in Christ that’s really the only thing that will get any of us through it all. How anyone can get through their troubles without faith in Christ, I do not know.
“The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns,” says Jesus, “is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.” Gardeners and farmers that many of us are, we know all too well about the weeds and the thorns, and that the weeds will soon outgrow the good stuff, if we don’t keep hacking away at them. This world is just chock-full of things that will take up all your time, and keep you away from Church on a Sunday morning, and keep you from the Sabbath rest your soul and body needs, if you allow such a thing to happen. If you have a friend or a loved one in danger of backsliding that way, you have my permission to nag them! (Gently, please!) It only takes a little while for a wandering sheep to get lost. And if they do, you and I, like Jesus, have to go find them. And like Jesus, the joy will be ours when they come home again.
“But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it,” Jesus says. “He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." I pray that Jesus will find good soil in all of our hearts in this day – that we’ll have a place in our hearts for God and His Word, and mercy in our hearts for the crowds all around us. Jesus looked out on that crowd and saw all the hurts, trials, and troubles those people were going through. He saw their hearts – as He knows every heart - and He knew who would hear Him, and who would turn away. (It breaks His heart when that happens, and it should break ours, too). But in hope and mercy and patience and love, He scattered the Gospel seed on them all. May we all be as generous as He is with the Word we’ve heard and come to believe, and may the faith in us be multiplied – “a hundred, and sixty, and thirty times what was sown.”
Father in Heaven, we rest our hearts today on Your good promise: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Father, may we all know the joy of bearing fruit for You. In Jesus’ name; Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div.
Trinity Lutheran Church, LCMS, Packwaukee, WI
St. John’s Lutheran Church, LCMS, Oxford, WI
pastorshepp@gmail.com