Sermon Title- “Are You Listening?”
Sermon Subject- The Fate of the Word as People Perceive It
Scripture- Matthew 13:1-23

Date- 14 July, 2002 (Eighth Sunday after Pentecost)

Jesus begins and ends the parable of the sower of seed with a command to listen. He starts the explanation of the parable to his disciples with a command to hear. This parable appears in Mark and Luke as well and sets the stage for the other parables. Obviously Jesus and the Gospel writers think it is an important part of Jesus’ teaching so we had better wrestle with it. A parable is a simple story that uses simple things from every day life to illustrate a spiritual truth. Parables can also be allegorical in that the simple things in the story have hidden meanings and are symbols for deeper truths.

My goal this morning is to widen our horizons as we think about this parable. First we first have to ask ourselves what this story is about. Is it about the sower, the seed, the types of soil or the yield of the seed? If it is about the sower, we have to next ask ourselves the identity of the sower. Is the sower God and the seed His living Word Jesus or is the sower Jesus and the seed His words teaching about the Kingdom of God. If the sower is God and the seed Jesus, then perhaps we are to understand that God offers his seed in every conceivable place and to all people everywhere regardless of the prospects for growth. Then God rejoices when some seed yields growth in Christ in some people who then in turn multiply the yield. And if Christ is the sower and the seed is the good news of the coming of the Kingdom of God, the perhaps we are to understand that the Good News is for everyone regardless of the potential for growth, but that only some people will receive the Good News and pass it on to multiply the yield. Or is the sower you and I, and then the seed is good news of Jesus Christ? Then it is a story about how we are to sow the seed. Hold this last thought and we will come back to it.

If the story is about the seed, the seed is clearly God’s revelation of himself to His creation, men and women. This revelation is through the written word, The Bible, the living word, Jesus Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit. Then perhaps we are to understand that God reveals Himself to all people everywhere and that God’s Will is victorious in that men and women are brought to Him despite unaccepting people, believing but uncommitted people and people distracted by worldly things. The seed is powerful and fertile and good for all the ages. Just as plant seeds found in Egyptian pyramids thousands of years old were still vibrant and capable of producing strong plants and abundant yields, God’s seed is as vibrant today as when it was first sown among men and women. The yield will still be overwhelming and God’s plan to bring people to him will succeed in spite of obstacles put up by you and me.

If the story is about the types of soil, then perhaps we are to see that Jesus is telling us what we must do to receive the seed. Perhaps He is telling us how our faith must grow to prepare the soil of our life to accept and nurture the seed as we receive it. When I last visited George Weaver, we reminisced about the difficulty of preparing the soil for seeds without the help of machinery. The people Jesus was talking to understood this very well. It is hard to soften and aerate the packed soil as we must soften our hearts and open then to God’s Word. It is difficult to get rid of the weeds that will choke the seedlings as we must rid ourselves of the weeds of our sin that chokes God’s Word in our lives.. And it is backbreaking work to rid the soil of the rocks that are infertile as we must rid our lives of the rocks that are our idols and provide no fertile soil for God’s Word. But it is work that can be done with the help of the Holy Spirit and when the soil of our lives is properly prepared, the yield is abundant.

And finally, if the story is about the yield, then perhaps Jesus is telling us that we should never lose heart. In spite of the fact that the seed is widely sown into largely unfavorable soil and disappears from site as if it were dead, that seed will spring up again vibrant and full of new life. It is God’s plan that His seed may appear to be abandoned and unaccepted and fall into the earth and thought to be dead. But through God’s Love and God’s power that seed will be resurrected to new life and produce a yield envisioned only by God. And the really good news is that you and I are invited by God to be a part of bringing in that yield.

It is not surprising that the original 12 Disciples were unclear about the meaning of this parable and so they asked Jesus what it meant. Jesus begins his answer by commanding them, and us, to hear the meaning. And it turns out that the story is allegorical and is about people. The story is about you and me. The story is about how you and I respond to God’s Grace. We are in the story because it is about all people and we all fall in one of the groups described by Jesus.

The first group is about those of us who hear the word and fail to understand. “Understand” here means far more than intellectual acceptance. We fail to understand that we have to take the Word from intellectualizing it in our heads and internalize it into our hearts so that it becomes a part of our being and our living. The hard path is our hard heart that refuses to allow God’s Word and His Grace into our everyday living changing how we live and how we act. The Word may well remain in our minds from time to time and we may continue to attend church, but Satan is skilled at playing with our minds and soon confuses us and robs us of the power of God’s Grace to change our lives. So we stumble along with confused notions of who God is and we never see Jesus and we never become a part of God’s plan to increase the yield.

The second group is about those of us who readily accept God’s Grace, even with true joy at the time. But then we never provide that Grace any roots to grow in our lives. We make little or no effort to develop a personal relationship with God through study of His Word, both written and living, through prayer and through meditation and discussion with mature Christians. We like the idea of a loving God and we are comforted by the knowledge that He has the power to heal us and to influence events in our lives for our good. But because we have no real relationship with God and do not really know who God is we are not prepared for tragedy and suffering in our lives. We have no real idea what God’s plan is for us and for our lives. Then a loved one dies unexpectedly or we pray for healing for ourselves or a loved one and it does not happen. Or we lose a job we really wanted and needed or our finances become a mess and God doesn’t provide a windfall and our faith is shattered. Or our marriage begins to fail or our children go in ways we can not understand and God does not fix it. Because we have not struggled to grow our faith and give God’s Grace depth and breadth in our lives and to know Jesus personally and to know God, we feel God does not really care about us. We may become bitter and angry at God and our faith begins to wither away. We may continue to go to church as we seek the formula that will get God to do what we think needs to be done in our lives, but we are never a part of God’s plan to bear fruit and increase the yield.

The third group is about those people who understand God’s Word, but who allow the priorities of the world to continue to dictate how they live their lives. God’s priorities never become our priorities. Jesus speaks specifically of the cares of the world or anxieties of the world. We can all make a list of what in the world makes people anxious, what we worry about, what we try to protect ourselves from. All too often the effort to make Jesus’ priorities our priorities is not on that list. Jesus also mentions the lure of wealth or the deceit of riches. We allow the lure and deceit of the world’s riches to replace the pursuit of God’s riches for our lives. And we again fail to become a part of God’s plan to bear fruit and increase the yield.

We all understand the last group of people. These are the people who hear and understand God’s Word and Grace in the larger sense of understanding. And because of that they are a part of God’s plan to bear fruit increase the yield. As Jesus said to the 12 Disciples, I say to you today- “Listen”. God’s great news for us is that it is never too late to be included in the group of fruit bearers. I believe that what ever group we find ourselves in today is not the group we are condemed to stay in tomorrow. In fact, I believe that if we do not find ourselves in the group of fruit bearers with good and fertile soil today, we can look back in our lives to one or more times when we were fruit bearers.. And even if we have never been fruit bearers, God’s Grace and Love are sufficient to allow us to join that group right now.

I asked you previously to hold the thought about us sowing seed. That can be as simple as inviting someone to come to church with you. In multiple surveys of faithful church members the answer to why they first attended church was over 90%, “Because someone invited me”. And less than 10% was an invitation from a pastor. The invitation was from a lay person; relative, friend, neighbor, co-worker or an acquaintance. Not all who are invited will come, but more than 90% who come have been invited. We can all invite people to church and that can be powerful seed sowing. Praying is also powerful seed sowing. We can all praqy for those we don’t know as well as for those we do know. William Barclay, who authored the interpretive series on each book of the Bible loved to tell about interviewing a woman about to join the church about how she planned to act out her faith. She said she worked long hours at her job and wouldn’t be able to attend very regularly, but she would continue to take the newspaper to bed. Puzzled, Barclay asked her what she meant by that. She said she took the paper to bed each night and opened her prayer time by starting with the list of new births and prayed for each baby. Then she opened to the list of recent marriages and prayed for each couple. And finally she opened to the obituaries and prayed for each grieving family. This is sowing seeds. And it will bear fruit.

THE INVITATION

AMEN