Sermon - 6th Sunday After Pentecost (7/12/2020)
Is. 55:10-13; Ps. 65:1-2, 9-13; Rom. 8:1-11; Mt. 13:1-9, 18-23
In today’s gospel reading, we have the first of many passages in the gospel where Jesus teaches using a parable – a story with characters and plotlines from everyday life, or at least everyday life in his time, that tells us something about the kingdom of God. It is the very familiar story of the sower and the seed.
I’m not a farmer, and I’m not much of a gardener either. I remember growing up our family tried to have a garden for a couple of years, and I remember getting the little package of corn seeds from the store with directions on how to plant them – make holes 1.5 inches deep and 6 inches apart and drop exactly 3 tiny little seeds in each hole. Well, that’s not how this sower rolls. He just throws seed everywhere. Some of it lands on the path and is eaten by the birds, some of it lands in inhospitable places and grows poorly, but enough lands on good soil and multiplies so much that it makes the whole project worthwhile.
So what does this farmer have to do with the kingdom of God? Jesus says that the seed is like the Word. And so we tend to assume that Jesus is the farmer. He throws his message, his teachings out into the world. Just as some soil is more receptive to the seeds than other soil, some people are more receptive to the message of Jesus than others. Those people multiply the message 100- or 60- or 30-fold, and so the message is sent out again. And so the moral of the story is: Be the good soil that receives the message of Jesus and passes it along to others. I’ve often heard this story explained that way, and I’ve preached sermons that way too.
More recently, however, the late Episcopal priest Robert Capon has given me another way to see this parable. If the seed is the Word, he says, and if Jesus is the Word made flesh, if Jesus is the Word through whom all creation comes into being, what if the sower is God the Father, bringing the kingdom of God by sending Jesus into the world to be planted in all kinds of different places? Didn’t Jesus say, unless the seed falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a single seed, but if it dies it brings forth much fruit – and this is how Jesus understood his own death? (John 12:23) If we think of Jesus not as the sower but as the seed, what does this parable mean?
The people who designed our lectionary of readings must have been thinking this way in choosing today’s first reading from Isaiah. “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” If Jesus is the Word, the seed sent by God into the world, God promises that the Word does not return to God emptyhanded, but the Word will do what God sent the Word into the world to do.
And we know why God sent Jesus into the world: “God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son, not to condemn the world but to save it.” (John 3:16-17) And God’s Word does not return emptyhanded, the Word does what God sent it to do. Can you imagine Jesus returning to the Father and saying, “I’m sorry. I tried my best. But you have no idea how messed up those people are down there.” No!
We may feel overwhelmed by how messed up the world is, how shortsighted and self-centered human beings are, how incapable people seem to be of taking simple public health precautions in a pandemic or treating one another without prejudice or discrimination. You may have seen this week about the amusement park in Japan that reopened its roller coaster, but told people not to scream, because screaming sends germs everywhere and we don’t want to be doing that – so they just asked riders on the roller coaster to “scream silently in their hearts.” And if that’s not an image for how we are all feeling these days – riding a roller coaster and screaming silently in our hearts – I don’t know what is.
But if the world is a messed up place, God is not deterred by that – God still sends the Word everywhere, onto rocky soil and into thornbushes and onto the pavement – and the Word does not return to God emptyhanded but does what it was sent to do. In the parable, no matter where it lands, in every case the seed dies and does its work. On the soil where it bears 100-fold, yes, but even in the poor soil and among the thorns, the seed takes root and grows – other things may fight with it, but the seed is effective and does it job no matter what. Even the seed that falls on the pavement and is eaten by birds – birds mostly don’t digest seeds, but they fly miles away and poop them out, planting them in completely new places, with a little fertilizer too. The powers of evil and death may eat up the Word but they can’t digest it, and so they do their part in spreading the Word even beyond the sower’s reach and facilitating its growth.
Which brings us to Romans chapter 8. In this chapter Paul is making the same point that Jesus aimed at in the parable of the Sower and the Seed: that in Jesus crucified and risen, God is at work bringing new life and fruitful growth everywhere, and we can be confident in our faith that – despite all appearances – the living Word of God is at work right now in you and in me and in our neighbor and everywhere in the world, and that Word is going to be successful. Yes, the forces that are opposed to God – Paul calls them the “law of the flesh” – are still active, yes the hungry birds and the stony soil and the thornbushes are at work trying to stop the seeds from growing – but that doesn’t stop the seed from doing what it does. Evil does not stop God from doing what God does, and we know God will ultimately be successful in what God sets out to do.
And so Paul says, in verse 3, God has done what the Law, weakened by flesh, weakened by the thornbushes and the stony ground, could never do on its own. God has sent the Son into the world “to deal with sin” by condemning it. The Law is like the directions on the packet of seeds I used as a kid: if you dig the holes just this deep and just this far apart, you can make the perfect garden. But God is a far better creator of gardens – God made human beings to live in one, after all. And even now the Word has been planted and is growing in our midst, because the Sower is indiscriminate and sends the seed everywhere. And despite everything that works against the seed, the seed never stops working and growing, and ultimately the Word of God does not return emptyhanded, but accomplishes the task for which God sent it. And God sent the Son, not to condemn the world, but to save it.
And so for us, Paul says, for us who see with the eyes of faith, we know that the Spirit of God is living and working in our midst, we know that for us there is no condemnation but rather God’s life and salvation. Yes, the law of the flesh is still at work, but it leads nowhere, it has been condemned and will be defeated. Yes, there are thorns and stones and pavement, but don’t focus on them, Paul tells us, they’re not the point. Focus rather on the seed that keeps growing and finds a way no matter what. If you’re on a roller coaster screaming silently in your heart, if the fear seems overwhelming, if the power of disorder and evil and death seems strong – look for the seed that’s growing despite it all, and know that that is where God is to be found.