Sunday, July 12, 2020 Sermon

July 12, 2020                       Matthew 13: 1-9;18-23      Sermon: “The Seasons of Sowing the Seeds of Faith”

Rev. Peter Hofstra

                So in a parable, Jesus succinctly lays out four ways in which the gospel message can be received.  So here is the question, which one applies to you?  To me, right now?  This rearranges how I approach this parable.  I have always looked at it as one where Jesus is talking about evangelism, sowing the sees, touching people with the Gospel message for the first time.  It is about how people make their choice to follow Jesus rather than a consideration of our faith “somewhere down the road”.  

                But we are all ‘somewhere down the road’ in our faith journey.  What if Jesus is speaking to the Christian community in a more comprehensive way?  That the seeds of our faith, the possibilities of our faith, they keep coming to us.  We always have a choice for what is next in our faith journey.  

                So here are the four options as laid out and interpreted by Jesus: 

                Jesus says some seeds fall on the path and the birds come by and eat them up.  This is not simply that the message went in one ear and out the other.  Jesus interprets it far more deeply.  The good news of the gospel was sown into the heart, and, according to Jesus, the evil one snatches it away.

                How about a fishing metaphor?  Its like the one that got away.  The big one was on the line, everyone on the boat saw it, the prize catch.  But then it gets away and there is only the shadow of what might have been. 

                 Jesus talks about the seeds that landed in the rocky soil.  They sprang up quickly, but there was no depth of soil beneath them.  The sun rose, they had no root, and they were scorched away.

                This is the joy of the New Thing!  Jesus is love!  Jesus is wonderful!  Jesus is life changing!  And living for Jesus is real work.  And not everybody has had the same divine magic cast upon them.  People make fun of me.  The going gets tough and, in this instance, its not the tough who get going.  It’s the weak who leave.

                Some seeds fell among thorns and the thorns choked them out.  This week, I had to dig the weeds out from around my tomatoes.  It adds a layer of reality to Jesus and his agricultural metaphors to see it in action.  What is Jesus saying?  The message of the gospel competes with the message of life, the ‘cares of the world and the lure of wealth’.  A clear example is how Sunday has been targeted.  

                Sunday has become a day for sports, for work, for events, or simply a day just to catch up on sleep and…oh yeah, this is the day that the Lord has made...we would love to rejoice and be glad in it, but the kid needs the sports as an extracurricular for their college application, the job requires us 24/7, the Lord rested on this day, I have to as well or I am not going to make it…

                But where the seed falls on good soil, the harvest is many, many times what was sown.  To return to my own garden, it is the grape tomato plant that always seems to provide soooo much more.  Such folks have a deep and loving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ that has changed them and changed the world around them for the better.

                If we read this passage as applying to the new believer, it does not have to apply to us.  But what if Jesus has cast his net more widely?  Maybe this passage is something that we need to return to throughout our faith journey, a way of checking in with what Jesus has clearly laid out as things that will pull us away from our faith.

                In the first part of the parable, the seeds on the path, Jesus interprets that to the Word of the Kingdom that ‘the evil one’ has come to ‘snatch away’ as ‘what is sown in their hearts’.  What is the Word of the Kingdom?  That the kingdom of God is at hand, this is the message Jesus has been leading with through his ministry.  What is the Kingdom of God?  Well, for our church, it is something we want to have a neighborhood in.  But more broadly, the Kingdom of God is over and against the kingdom of sin, the kingdom of the devil.  The gospels talk about the devil being in charge “down here”.  We get that sense in the temptations of Jesus.  It is where sin reigns.  And it is into that kingdom that Jesus bursts in with the Kingdom of God.

                By the death and resurrection of Jesus, our sins, the product of this earthly kingdom, are forgiven, the punishment taken upon Jesus for our sakes.  Some may call it the clean slate protocol, we are given a new way.  Where sin exists, we have the power to push back against it.  Where the world has broken someone, we have the healing power of God to provide aid and comfort.  In a world where sin leads everyone to do wrong, we have the kingdom of God at our backs to do right.

                So this is the Word of the Kingdom, but what are we supposed to do with it?  This has been the basis of every text we’ve shared since Pentecost, it is getting out there and sharing what we have received.  The goal of our faith is not one of personal piety, it is not one of ‘my’ salvation.  It is, rather, sharing this faith to make a difference in the lives of others.

                Maybe what has been snatched away from us is an understanding of how we are supposed to share our faith, how we are supposed to ‘get out there’, how we are to share Jesus’ love.  It is the church that is struggling to articulate its vision.  It is the congregation that is trying to figure out ‘what’s next’.  It’s the moment when our faith just does not seem to make sense any more.    

                Consider Jesus’ parable in light of the call to share our faith, not merely to gain our faith. 

                Someone hears the word of the kingdom, the word is upon their heart, and the evil one comes and snatches it away.  What if this is more than simply not understanding the dynamics or the purpose or the benefits of our faith?  What if its knowing the faith but not knowing how to spread it around?  That is a question for every church seeking its vision.  What DO we do with this faith of ours?

                How about the seeds on rocky soil?  It could be a lifetime of love and devotion to Jesus Christ and then we hit that wall.  We are struck by that event that overwhelms even a lifetime of faith.  How about watching the Twin Towers fall on national television?  How about hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?  How about hearing that the unsinkable ship sank?  How about the life that was cut off too soon?  How about the lifelong romance that ended in tragedy?  Its not just something that takes out the first time believer.  This is the stuff of a sinful world and the more we put ourselves out there in love and in a desire to follow Jesus, the more we open ourselves up to the power of sin slapping back at us.

                Then the seeds among the thorns.  The stuff of life rises up and strangles our faith.  The lure of wealth, that is an idol to replace our God.  The cares of the world?  Caring what we have, caring what our neighbors think, caring about what we look like, caring about what we don’t have but ‘need’?  How about when politics taps into what Christians care about and twist that feeling for their own ends?  Use one issue to define a person’s faith, tape it together with a whole bunch of other issues that the affect a person’s faith in different ways, good, bad, and indifferently, and the person of faith suddenly finds themselves in a crowd of some very sketchy types.

                Jesus is giving us a lens to examine our lives with.  He is giving us a memory tool to recognize those things that can be faith-killers.  He is telling us not to be surprised, because this is what the world of sin is really like, and, until it is our time, that is where we are living.  That is where we are working.  That is where we are carrying forward the good news of the gospel.

                What would be very helpful would be the cure, after this diagnosis.  Jesus has pointed out how this or this or this can happen.  How do we get through those moments?  How do we get to the preferred fertile soil for the seeds of faith to prosper?  If God is the sower of the seeds in this parable, would it be too much to ask that God have better aim at where these seeds land?

                I think the answer has to take us away from the understanding that these are simply the results of what happens when the seeds of faith enter our lives.  I believe it would be better to consider these as seasons of life on our journey of faith.  God is not throwing the seeds down once and leaving us to it.  In every season, the seeds are sown again.  And there are times in every faith journey where, if we are seriously working our lives in the power of the Holy Spirit, when we will run into these moments.  There will be the rough patches, but there will also be the incredibly blessed patches. 

                Recognizing how faith works and, at time, struggles in a world of sin, that is the second takeaway from this passage.  It gives us eyes to see and ears to hear when things are not going as they ought to.  But the first, most basic, takeaway, is that God sows the seed.  God speaks through God’s own, through Jesus, through his disciples, through all of us, but the seed of faith comes from the divine. 

                Its like when we are talking about communion, the gifts of God for the people of God.  When we do not understand what is happening, it is from God that we will receive Enlightenment.  Remember the disciples, they had no idea what Jesus’ death was really all about until He was there among them after his resurrection.  Or if we hit the wall, its just gotten too hard, and we can’t come back from it?  Remember Peter.  He risked his life to be there with Jesus at the time of his trial in front of the high priest.  Then he was challenged as being one of ‘them’, a follower of Jesus.  Three times he denied it.  But that was not his first denial.  His first denial was to Jesus that he would ever even do such a thing.  And it was Jesus’ forgiveness that brought him back.  How about the cares of the world pulling us away?  That’s what drove Judas.  He was a disciple, he was one of the Twelve, and the cares of the world got to him.  He became the Betrayer.  And he stayed in the distraction of the world of sin when he took his own life. 

                Consider what you know about Jesus.  If Judas had fallen on his knees after he realized what he had done, what could the power of Christ done for even him?

                It is all through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ.  There is no moment where sin can be powerful enough to pull us away from our Savior.  And there is the way and the truth and the light to lead us to multiply our faith thirty, sixty, a hundred times and more.

                May the power of Christ, Son of God, Sower of the Seeds of Faith, fill us today and every day.  Amen.