Matthew 13:1-23
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”
Then the disciples came and asked him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" He answered, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. The reason I speak to them in parables is that 'seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.' With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says:
'You will indeed listen, but never understand,
and you will indeed look, but never perceive.
For this people's heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes;
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart and turn —
and I would heal them.'
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.
“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
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We’ve hit the gardening part of summer.
Last week, during our Zoom fellowship hour, folks were comparing notes about their green beans and their ripening tomatoes; friends on social media are taking pictures of their snapdragons and onion plants; CSA boxes are overflowing with kale and cabbage and carrots; the thistles in my flower bed are huge and spiky and flowering purple....
Oh wait. That probably doesn’t actually count as gardening....
Our gospel readings today and the next two weeks all have to do with planting and gardening and growing. Next week we get to talk about weeds. In two weeks we get to talk about propagation and growth of wild mustard plants.
But today, we get to back up a few months in the farming cycle, to planting time.
Jesus tells a parable: A man goes out to his field to get his seeds in the ground. As he goes, some of the seed falls on the path. As he grabs handfuls of seed and casts it out over his prepared land, some of the seed hits, the parts of the field where his repeated footsteps through the land had tamped down the ground flat and it had dried hard and cracked and crumbly. Some of the seed finds the thorny weeds at the edges of the field, where the cultivated and uncultivated edges of the land meet. And some of the seed - most of it, hopefully! - falls right where he expects it to, dropping onto the prepared bed of soil in an even spread.
It doesn’t matter of you tend a large acreage of farmland or if you simply grow tomatoes in pots on your back deck: planting time is a time of faith.
You invest in seeds, or even seedlings, few or many, and you bury them in the ground, hopefully in rich soil, and you make all of your grand plans to water them and weed them and make sure that they are in the right amount of sun...
But it is all an act of faith.
Will you have enough sunny days? Will the rain be sufficient? Too little? Too much? And what will happen over at the edge of the field that’s always a little rocky? What will happen in the corner of the garden that always gets extra-weedy? Are the seeds good seeds, or is this new hybrid going to be successful?
We plant and we wait. We plant and we hope. We plant, and we won’t know how it all turns out until we harvest.
Planting is always an act of faith.
Friends, today we have this very, very familiar parable of the sower in front of us. Maybe it’s too familiar, in fact. Maybe we’ve hear it so many times that we just want to Cliff’s Notes it: God’s the sower. Be the right kind of soil, or else.
That’s probably actually a version of how we were first taught this parable. Be the right kind of soil, and this might certainly be how the parable continues to read our lives sometimes. It’s not a bad question to ask ourselves: How receptive is my heart these days to the voice of God and the callings of Jesus?
But I’m here today to remind you that this is not not the only question the parable asks of us. This parable is not only about what kind of soil we are.
Parables are, by design, open-ended. They are evocative. They are full of images, rarely tidy, often confusing. They don’t come with only one interpretation, and if we’re reading them right, they ask more questions than they answer.
So you might look at this parable and say, this parable is obviously about what kind of soil to be. And sure. This parable might be about that.
But it is also, quite obviously, a parable about an indiscriminate and unnamed sower who really doesn’t seem to fuss about whether all of his seed-tossing hits the mark.
And when we think about it, the parable is also, obviously, a parable about seeds sown in a favorable year, where abundant harvest is possible, and not a story about seeds sown in a drought or flood or plague.
And what is not quite so obvious is who, exactly, the sower is. Is it God? Is it Jesus? Is it the person who first taught us the faith? Is it a person in our lives who casts seeds of the kingdom into our lives and this world by the way they live? It is us? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
What is also not quite so obvious is how, exactly, someone becomes one type of soil or another. Can you choose? Is it like Harry Potter, where God, the divine sorting hat, assesses you and assigns you to house thorny or house well-fertilized? And is there grace and growth or at least character development yet to be found for those who are the path or the rocks or the thorny ground?
What is also not quite so obvious is whether or not this is a parable of judgement or a parable of grace; a parable describing a present moment in time or a parable describing a future reality.
Friends, the reason that I want to complicate this parable for us - and complicate most parables, if I’m being honest - is because otherwise parables can become sources of great anxiety, great pressure to “figure them out” and “get the right answer” and to “make sense” of stories that are often nonsensical and impossible to tie up with a nice, neat bow at the end.
When we read the parable of the sower, we know a few things: there is a sower, there is seed, there are different types of soil. And not all types of soil will be able to sustain a rich and abundant harvest.
And so this is where I want to go back to the beginning of our time together today, to the reminder that planting is always an act of faith.
Jesus understands the seeds in the parable to be the seeds of the kingdom. Seeds of justice, mercy, love, the good news of the belovedness of all people and all things, the seeds of transformation, of righteousness. All the values he’s been teaching and inviting people into; all the values we’ve been talking about these last few weeks.
In explaining the parable to his disciples, Jesus tells them the difficult reality these seeds, this holy work, will be met with resistance. There are some who will never ever receive him or his word. There are some who will reject the values of the kingdom, or even actively work against it.
Jesus tells the disciples that there are those who will hear the word of the kingdom and never understand it; there are some who see the workings of the kingdom, get really excited, but burn out on the idea when things get hard; there are some who will get beaten down by the cares of the world.
If you’ve ever had your tomato plants die while you were on vacation, or much more seriously, watched a field you planted drown under too much rain, you might know exactly what Jesus is talking about here. Sometimes, no matter what you do, the harvest doesn’t come.
And if we look honestly at our world right now, and all its difficulties, we understand what Jesus is talking about, too.
Luther Seminary professor Matt Skinner says,
[these verses] verses raise the prospect that some soils will never open up. [These] verses make us wonder whether God is fair. Whether the good news is nonsense. Whether we have a basis to hope for the kind of growth and progress that someone told us are characteristic of truly vibrant or successful ministry.
He continues,
[Jesus] uses the parable to name the forces that are actively working against “the word of the kingdom” that you preach: evil, persecution, backlash, worry, and wealth. Do not underestimate any of these killers. They do not yield ground without a fight. They make the work hard.
Jesus names the difficulties. He isn’t afraid to say that not everyone will be receptive to the work of justice or the calling of unconditional love or the demands of mercy.
He names the difficulties.
But he never says that the sower regrets scattering the seed.
And he never says that the sower swears off farming forever.
And this is, again, where we circle back to the idea that planting is always an act of faith.
Jesus, in this parable, gives us an out. We are not in control of the soils into which we scatter the seeds of the kingdom. We are freed from micromanaging the outcomes of our discipleship.
Jesus calls us to sow the seeds of the kingdom, in what we do and what we say and in the things we pursue and in the things we value. And the rest is an act of faith.
We persist in casting love out there into the world, indiscriminately, because we can’t tell just from looking who is the fertile soil and whose hearts are hardened. We persist in casting mercy out there into he world, freely, because you never know when the fruit of the kingdom will overcome the weeds instead of being choked by them. We persist in tossing forward the seeds of justice and liberation, because maybe those seeds, when the meet a rock, will bounce off of it and land in a perfect patch of rich soil.
We cast the seeds.
And we keep the faith.
Just as God has cast out the seed of love into his creation.
We’re broken, stubborn, resistant, selfish, in constant need of mercy and forgiveness.
And God didn’t write us off as unworthy soil.
God cast the seed. And had faith.
God promises Isaiah that the seed he casts into the world will not return to him empty.
There might be good years and bad years, years of too many green beans and years of not enough.
But God promises to keep tossing the good news out there.
And we are called to do the same:
To plant in this world the seeds of love, hoping for a lush and beautiful garden overflowing with foliage and fruit.
To plant in this world the seeds of justice, trusting them to grow tall and strong, waving in the sun and providing food for all.
We plant.
And the rest is an act of faith.
And God promises us that our faith will not be in vain.
So plant freely, dear ones. Don’t worry about who might resist, don’t worry about what might not grow.
Plant. And watch.
Plant. And pray.
Plant. And keep the faith.
For the kingdom is persistent. It will take root. It will grow. And we will, in the end, see it ripe for the harvest.
Thanks be to God. Amen.