Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Let us pray, o God, tell us what we need to hear and show us what we ought to do to obey Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today's scripture is from Matthew, chapter 13, verses one through nine and 18 through 23.
That same day Jesus went out of the house and 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 he sowed. 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. They sprang up quickly. But 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 60, some 30.
Let anyone with ears listen.
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.
And yet such a person has no root but endures 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 60 and in another 30.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Hi friends. It is such a pleasure to be back with you this morning. It's been a little while and since when I left Knox I had, I think a five, six month old at that time. And now I have a three year old boy giving me a run for my money.
Now if you should know anything about my son it is that he really loves cars.
And if there's anything you should know about being a parent of a kid who really loves cars is that playing with cars and racing them can get rather tedious after the 5000th time you've raced cars well, this is where grandparents come in and save the day. So to all the grandparents in the room, thank you. You do the Lord's work.
My dad was hanging out with Levi one day while I was out running errands and decided that instead of racing cars for the bajillionth time, he wanted to do something different with Levi's cars. He wanted to teach Levi about genres.
They categorized cars by colors, by make and model, by big and small. And now Levi will ask me, mom, teach me about genres.
While I thought it was pretty funny that my dad was teaching my three year old son about genres, I realized he was actually tapping into a central part of human existence. Even at three the capacity to generalize and categorize.
We all are adept at taking large amount of data, simplifying it, and structuring it into categories to help us make better sense of the world and understand objects or even people. At a glance for my three year old, that means if a car has a spoiler, it's a race car and it's going to go really fast. If a car has big wheels, it's automatically a monster truck and will crush things.
For us, that means categorizing, people, say, by their personalities with letters or numbers through personality tests like Myers Briggs or the Enneagram.
We use these letters or numbers to get at a glance an idea of who we are and who other people are and how we might relate to each other.
These categorizations allow us to quickly make assumptions about what we might expect of people.
For example, knowing that I am an extrovert helps, you know, what to expect of me. In a social gathering, you might and correctly assume me to be full of energy and sociable when I'm around people.
We also categorize socially based on race or ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, political affiliation, religion, and education.
We then use these categories to make assumptions and judgments about people's beliefs, character, and behavior.
These categories help us decide who we want to affiliate with, who we can relate to, and even if we are honest, who we want to avoid.
Now, our categorization skills work pretty well with this morning's parable.
In German, the title of this passage is often translated to parable of four different types of ground.
This makes sense given Jesus explanation of the parable in verse 18 onwards, where he describes the four different types of soil as representative of four different types, four different ways people hear and respond to Jesus word.
Our natural inclination then, is to wonder who fits into these four categories.
Well, we don't have to look far in scripture to find people that seem to exemplify each type of soil in the Gospel of Matthew, we can easily find the seeds sown on the path. The Pharisees and the religious leaders were regularly a part of Jesus audience throughout his ministry, and yet they were antagonistic to Jesus from the beginning.
They did not believe that Jesus could be the messiah they heard and did not understand.
We can find the seed sown on rocky ground, scorched by the sun. In the crowds that followed Jesus, they were eager to hear what he had to say and to witness the profound miracles that they had heard rumors of.
And yet, when Jesus was put on trial, the crowds were the ones who shouted, crucify him.
Their eagerness for Jesus quickly dissipated when they watched Jesus face persecution and death. They listened and saw, but they did not understand.
Or a seed sown among thorns might remind you of the rich young man who left Jesus presence defeated because he could not part with his possessions.
After all, we are told that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
The rich man heard the word of the kingdom, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choked out the word.
As Toby read the passage this morning, you may have even found yourself picturing people in your life that you think represent each type of ground in this parable.
This parable seems to be helpful that way.
Categorizing people into these four types of soil can give us a sense of what kind of people are worth investing in, what kind of people God wants us to be.
I mean, we want our churches filled with good soil, right?
We want friends who are good soil.
We want to be people who are good soil.
That's where the abundant harvest comes from.
When we focus our attention on the types of soil in the parable, it's easy to hear the message, be the good soil. Be the people who hear the word and understand it.
It is easy to hear, find the good soil in your communities. That is where the harvest will be, because they are the ones who hear and understand.
The problem is, I don't think that's the focal point of this parable, or even the gospel as a whole.
Unlike the german translation, many of our english translations title this parable the parable of the sower.
In fact, when he explains the parable, Jesus himself refers to it as parable of the sower, which I believe highlights for us the focal point of the parable, the sower, not the soil.
So how would our understanding of this parable change if we focused our attention on the sower instead of the soil.
The first thing Jesus tells us is that the sower or the farmer went out to sow.
Now look, I'm going to make an assumption here about the farmer in this parable.
When someone is called a farmer, I assume that they know what they're doing.
I assume that this isn't their first time sowing seed. It's not their first rodeo.
It certainly sounds like what they do for a living.
So if they are a farmer and this is what they do for a living, I assume that they use their critical skill of categorizing to know the difference between good soil and a path.
Isn't it surprising then, that Jesus tells us that some seeds fell on the path, some seeds fell among thorns, some seeds fell on rocky ground, and some fell on good soil?
I would think that the farmer would be a little more careful where he scattered seeds if he knows the difference between good soil and not.
And yet here we find the farmer scattering seeds widely with almost a sense of reckless abandon, as if he is not concerned with the amount of seed he has or where it lands.
It's almost like he's got a que sera sera, or we'll see attitude.
Now that just doesn't seem prudent or economic.
I am not a farmer. But surely the wise move is to carefully and methodically sow seeds only on the good soil.
And yet, here's where the crazier thing happens. Despite only actually getting some of the seeds in the good soil, the farmer yields a bumper crop 100 fold, 60 fold, 30 fold.
So it would seem that there is something important about the farmer's strategy of sowing generously and indiscriminately.
This was Jesus strategy, too.
He, like the farmer, knew which ground was good soil and not.
And yet all received the good news of the kingdom. Just not everyone heard or understood.
He shared the good news with the Pharisees and religious leaders, with the crowds, with the rich young man, with his disciples, and with the prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors and gentiles.
There was an abundance of good news to be heard by all. Even though Jesus knew that not all of it would yield a harvest. Some of his words would be wasted breath.
But that's not our strategy.
As a culture, we hate waste.
Wasting time, wasting food, wasting energy.
How many of us struggle to actually rest because of the feeling that we need to be productive at all times?
We rail against doom, scrolling on social media and binge watching television because it is a waste of time.
We write to do lists meticulously plan out our calendars each day and each week. Use apps, meal plans, and the next best product to all. Help us maximize our time and our efforts so that nothing is wasted and we are productivity machines.
How often do we use our navigation apps, even when we know how to get there because we just want to find the fastest possible route and not waste time.
Our categories save us on wasting time and energy.
When we can quickly categorize people and make assumptions based on those categories, we can decide if they are worth investing in or not. So we don't have to waste time or energy on a relationship that we don't think is going anywhere.
So rather than so generously and indiscriminately, we sow with precision and skillful discrimination.
It's also our strategy in the church.
While we may not say quite as strongly that we hate waste in the church, we are all too aware of our limited resources.
We are limited on volunteers, on finances, on staff members, and on congregants to do all the things that we want to do. We can't afford to do everything.
We become so afraid of squandering the church's limited finances and resources that we try to limit our to the good soil, to the places that we believe it will be well received.
In ministry, we call it often looking for the silver bullet, the program, the event, the sermon series, the model of ministry that is guaranteed to work.
And I'll tell you, I spent so much time in ministry trying to find that silver bullet.
I remember the sense of defeat when I organized an event and no one showed.
And all it did was make me double down on that need to find the type of event that was guaranteed to be a success.
And honestly, why wouldn't we farm this way?
Doesn't God want us to be good stewards?
Wouldn't the best and most productive use of our resources be to categorize soil as good and not, and only so, in the good soil?
The problem is, this strategy is based on two false premises.
The first false premise is that it is possible for us to categorize people into these categories and actually know who is good soil and who is not.
Consider for a moment death valley, and you'll see a picture of it up on the screen. This national park is a barren, desolate wasteland.
It is one of the hottest places on earth and the driest place in North America, getting around only two inches of rain each year.
To add to that, Death Valley's land is the definition of unproductive ground. Rocky Earth, salt flats and sand dunes but in 2005, record breaking El Nino storms, as you'll see, produced a super bloom that occurs once a decade.
You may remember we also had the joy of a super bloom in 2016.
What is so remarkable to me about these super blooms in one of the most lifeless places on earth is that the seeds can lay dormant for years or even decades.
Park ranger Alan van Valkenberg has lived in Death Valley for over 25 years and describes these super blooms as a near mythical thing.
He says, I saw several impressive displays of wildflowers over the years and wondered how anything could beat them until I saw my first super bloom in 1998. Then I understood.
I never imagined that so much life could exist here in such staggering abundance and intense beauty.
When the conditions are right, this valley of death turns into the valley of life.
No one would have ever categorized death valley as good soil.
And yet, every once in a while, it produces this magnificent harvest of flowers.
That's a near mythical thing.
That's a biblical thing.
The gospels show us this truth in Jesus ministry.
Death Valley is the ground we least expect for a good soil. And in the gospel, it is the people we least expect expect to be the good soil.
The gospel tells us about lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, gentiles, and children who hear the word of the kingdom and understand it.
You would think that the first people to hear the good news and understand would be the religious leaders, the ones who knew the Old Testament, who knew the prophecies of the Messiah.
Surely when the Messiah is standing in front of them, talking to them, they would be the ones who would hear and understand.
And yet, instead of the religious leaders, it was the samaritan woman. By the well, it was the bleeding woman.
It was Zacchaeus, the tax collector, the prostitute who was caught in sin.
At first glance, and by society, standards and norms, they were the least likely recipients of the glorious good news of the kingdom. They were death valley.
It was them who heard the word of the kingdom and understood.
In them, jesus saw good soil and produced a harvest for the kingdom.
In them, jesus saw intense beauty and an abundant harvest.
While it is tempting to use our strategies of finding the good soil and planting there, because it does seem the most productive and prudent life and scripture tell us that we do not actually know where the good soil is, and it is often in the places or the people we least expect.
Instead of avoiding waste, we are encouraged and challenged to embrace it, to be like the farmer, sowing generously and indiscriminately across barren wastelands, paths and grounds choked by thorns as well as good soil, ultimately trusting God to grow a harvest.
And the best part, we might discover a harvest or a super bloom in those people or the places that we wrote off.
I won't lie to you though, this is a hard strategy for farming.
To sow generously and indiscriminately means that we sow out of our abundance when our resources are limited.
That means that we get creative with new ideas, new programs, new ways of doing ministry, without fear for whether or not they will be productive or successful. Because, and this is the part that I like to avoid, they might not be.
They could fail.
We have no guarantee that they won't.
We are going to be excited about new endeavors that fall flat.
We are going to host events where no one shows. We are going to invest in people that leave.
It is hard and it's disheartening, especially when our efforts feel wasted.
But unlike our culture's strategies, this is not about avoiding waste.
This is not about finding the best possible way to get a bumper harvest. This is about people.
This is about sowing generously and indiscriminately in places and people, even when it doesn't make the most sense.
And seeing that by the glory of God, a few seeds take root in good soil and burst forth in an abundant harvest.
As commentator Thomas Long sees it, when we seemingly waste seed by sowing generously and indiscriminately across old ground in ways that we do not always know and in places we cannot always see, the gospel is falling on good soil.
And even now the great harvest of God is growing rich and full in the fields, just at the point when the pattern of defeat seems confirmed, when one disaster after another would lead most sowers to give up farming altogether, and most evangelists who despair over kingdom work, a few seeds take root in good soil and burst forth with an unexpectedly abundant harvest, we sow seeds in productive and unproductive ground alike. God produces the harvest.
The second false premise of this strategy is that when we only sow seed in good soil, we assume that people who are good soil are always good soil, or people who are among the unproductive ground will always be unproductive ground.
As often happens when we categorize people, we fossilize them.
We treat people as if they are static. When they do something bad, they are bad, and people are either good or bad.
Someone who lies is a liar. Someone who cheats is a cheater. After all, we say, once a cheater, always a cheater.
If you commit a felony, you will forever be a felon.
But the problem is, as we often know, people are not black and white.
When I read over these different types of soil, I can easily recall times in my life in which I was a scene, seeds sown on the path or on the rocky ground or choked out by thorns. And times in my life in which I was probably good soil.
And if I'm honest too, there's probably going to be many more times in my life when I am seed sown on unproductive ground, and other times again when I will be seed sown on good soil.
Because I change.
We change.
Raise your hand if you were the same person you were when you were a teenager.
No one. What about in your twenties?
Oh, still no one, thank goodness, right?
We all have made mistakes, especially in our teenage years and our twenties, that we do not want to be labeled for. For the rest of our lives.
Every single one of us has fallen short of the glory of God.
None of us can truly claim that we are and always have been good soil.
At different seasons in our life of faith, we may have been or are, seeds sown on the path, the rocky ground, or among thorns.
There are times when trouble or persecution arises and our faith in God falls away.
We too are sometimes weighed down by the cares of the world or the lure of wealth or owning the next best product, that it chokes the word inside of us.
But the good news is that Jesus is the farmer that sows generously and indiscriminately on all ground.
Whether we are good soil or not, Jesus offers us the good news. Jesus loves us and invests in us all the same.
Consider the disciples.
While we would probably consider them good soil for continuing the ministry of Jesus after his ascension, much like us, they were not always good soil.
You may remember the disciples resembling the seed sown on the path when countless times throughout the gospel they heard Jesus and did not understand, or when trouble arose, the disciples were like the seeds that fell on rocky ground, scorched by the sun. Peter denied Jesus while he hung on the cross. Thomas doubted, and we fossilized him in that, calling him doubting Thomas.
And yet Jesus sowed generously and indiscriminately.
Jesus identified Peter, the same one who denied him, as the rock upon which he would build his church.
Even knowing that the disciples would desert him, doubt him and deny him, he promised them before he died.
After I am raised up, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.
And Jesus did as he promised. And it was at Galilee, at this place he promised them, knowing what they would do that. He gave the disciples the great commission to go and make disciples.
Jesus the farmer sowed widely and indiscriminately because he knew even the ground that isn't good soil sometimes becomes good soil.
When I was in elementary school, I was a little bit of an evangelist, and I invited two of my best friends to sleep over on Saturday night so they could come to church with me the next day. I loved going to church on that Sunday, with great joy, they decided to commit their lives to Jesus Christ, and I was excited.
They were given a new bible with their names in it and the date of their decision. My best friends were now christians.
But at school on Monday, those same friends started making fun of me for being a Christian.
I was so confused.
I was so hurt.
I didn't understand what just happened.
Once I went to middle school, I lost contact with those friends.
And one day, ten years later, one of those friends reached out to me on social media.
She was moving and found that same Bible from that day all those years ago, with her name and the date of her decision to follow Christ inscribed on it.
What she told me was that she was now working in christian ministry and was an avid follower of Christ.
She didn't remember ever having made that decision.
She didn't remember that Bible even existed.
In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul said, I planted, apollos watered, but God made it grow, like in death valley, like in the disciples, or like in my friends.
Seeds may lay dormant for days or years or decades.
They may have been sown on unproductive ground when we sowed them.
And sometimes, when the conditions are right, that soil becomes good soil, someone else waters it, and God makes it grow into an abundant harvest.
Friends, we are the sowers, not the ones who grow.
We want so badly for our ministries to grow and for people to grow in Christ.
We want people to hear and understand. But let me tell you, it's not our job to make them understand.
It's not our job to make them grow.
We plant the seeds. God makes them grow.
This is the goal of discipleship.
We take risks for the sake of the gospel to sow our limited resources as if they are unlimited, indiscriminately, across all ground.
And though we will sometimes get discouraged by seemingly wasted seed, the sweet and glorious news of the kingdom is that God produces an extravagant harvest, a hundredfold, 60 fold, 30 fold, and often in the most unexpected places.
I hope that we could look at that harvest then and say, like the park ranger, I never could have imagined a thing of such staggering abundance and intense beauty.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, amen.
