July 16, 2017
Text: Matt. 13:1-9, 18-23
Jesus
is the Sower. The Seed is the Word. You are the soil. Jesus sows His Word into your ears, and so
into your mind and heart and soul. This
is the meaning of the parable. A
parable, you have been told, is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Okay.
But if that is the case, Jesus paints Himself and His Father as reckless
fools by any earthly standard. The
economy of the Kingdom is not like the economy of this world. That’s just the point. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and His
ways are not our ways. The sower in our
Holy Gospel is reckless. He’s
wasteful. He throws the seed every which
way, knowing that some will be picked
off by birds, scorched by the sun, and choked by the thorns. I’m no farmer. Nor am I a betting man. But if I was, I’d bet you dollars to
doughnuts John Leendertsen at least tries
to hit the field when he sows his seed.
He’s not in the business of feeding the birds or padding the pavement
with wheat and garbanzos. He’s
strategic. He’s careful. He plans ahead. He sows where he knows there is good soil,
where his crops have the most likely chance to bear fruit. There’s a great design in all of this. It’s what I love about the Palouse. You drive past the wheat fields and somehow
all the stalks are orderly. They’ve
grown up in their place like soldiers on a parade ground, and when they dance
in the wind it is a beautiful thing to behold.
If
Jesus worked for John, He wouldn’t last through the first planting. Helter-skelter, He casts His Seed. He intentionally throws it where it would
take a miracle for it to grow and bear fruit.
He sends His preachers. He plants
His Church. And when all is said and
done, His harvest doesn’t look all that great.
You know this. The Church does
not appear to be prospering these days.
Not in the West, anyway. The
cathedrals of Europe sit empty, and the congregations in America are
shrinking. And here we are starting a
mission Church. In enemy territory, no
less, a university town. And who knows
what will happen? We’re here by faith,
not because we have some insight into the best place to plant a Church or a
surefire method for making the Church grow.
Here Jesus scatters His Seed. He
sends a preacher. He plants His
Church. Right here and now in
Moscow. On C street. And against all the advice of those who know
and the best of human wisdom, we’re trusting what God says through the Prophet
Isaiah, that the Word He so haphazardly casts will not return to Him empty, but
will accomplish His purpose and succeed in the thing for which He sends it (Is.
55:11). And it does. You’re here.
You hear the voice of your Shepherd and you gather around His
preaching. He washes away your filth and
feeds you from His Table.
Well
then, you must be the good soil from the parable… Good, Missouri Synod Lutheran
soil. But not so fast. Do you really think that in all His reckless
casting, Jesus got lucky and found His target when He hit you? You understand, right, that if that’s how you
interpret this parable, you’re saying there’s a quality about you that’s better
than all those other schmucks who are the bad soils where the Word cannot grow
up and bear fruit. In other words,
you’re saying there is some merit or
worthiness in you that moves God to save you.
You do play some part in your
salvation. This is the Roman Catholic
idea of preparing yourself for grace, or the Protestant idea that you make your
decision for Jesus or give your heart to Him.
But it’s not very Missouri Synod Lutheran of you. Here’s the point. When Jesus describes the path and the rocky
and the thorny soil, He’s describing you.
What are the things that can keep the Word from taking deep root in us
and bearing fruit? First of all, Jesus
teaches us that there is an evil one, the devil, who delights to come and
snatch away the Word from us. He and his
demons are constantly assaulting us with temptations and accusations, fear and
doubt. “God can’t really love you. Not after the things you’ve done.” Then there are the rocks, the trials and
tribulations of this earthly life that scorch faith when it gets hot. It’s easy to be a Christian when things are
going well. When life gets tough, the
temptation is to stop going to Church.
Or, think bigger than just our first world problems. It’s easy to be a Christian when you aren’t
under threat of beheading or crucifixion just because you’re baptized. It’s a great temptation when you can escape
persecution just by renouncing Jesus.
Just a simple, “Jesus is accursed,” and you’re free to go. And of course, there are the thorns, which
are a particularly affluent American temptation. These are the cares of that choke out the
Word. “I have so much to do, I can’t
possibly come to Church.” “Sunday is my
only day to relax.” “God helps those who
help themselves (incidentally, a phrase which is not in the Bible and is
absolutely opposed to the Gospel), so I have to make as much money as I can,
save up that rainy day fund, make sure my family and I are provided for. I’ll think about spiritual matters
later. I have other things to do
now.” And so it goes.
Do
you hear yourself in any of that? The
birds? The rocks? The thorns?
You should. You should hear
yourself in all of the above in some way.
Beloved, you are not good soil.
Not in and of yourself. Repent. Repent of thinking you’re better prepared for
God’s grace than others. Repent of all
the things that prevent the Word from taking deep root in you so that faith
grows up and produces fruit. Repent, and
know that you are here by God’s free gift, by Jesus’ reckless sowing of His
Word even on you, so that by an
extraordinary miracle of His mercy, even
you have received His Word through your ears, and it’s taken deep root in
you so that you believe in Jesus Christ, your Savior. And in leading you by that Word to repentance
and faith, He’s plowed the soil, driven away the birds, cleared out the rocks
and thorns and made you good soil, by
grace.
“(F)aith comes from hearing, and hearing
through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17; ESV). Faith is what grows up from Jesus’ planting
His Word in you. So notice that faith
itself is God’s free gift to you, bestowed on you in the Word. It’s not a decision you’ve made or an emotion
you’ve stirred up within yourself. Faith
is not something you get by your own effort.
It is planted in you, by God,
in His Word. Jesus gives you ears to
hear. Jesus gives you faith to
believe. It is all His work. Faith, then, as it grows and matures, bears
fruit. That fruit is works of love. Now, you are saved by grace alone, through
faith alone, in Christ alone, apart from works.
There is no question about that.
But faith is never alone. It is
always busy loving its neighbor. Now,
not everybody bears the same fruit, or even the same amount of fruit. Some yields a hundredfold, another sixty, and
another thirty. But they all bear fruit,
and they are all saved, not because of their fruit, but by grace through faith
in Christ. What it all comes down to,
though… the common denominator of it all, is the Word Jesus plants even in you.
He
plants His Word first by the water of Holy Baptism. Even in newborn babies. Talk about reckless. And even in newborn babies that Seed grows
into faith, and as it matures it will bear fruit. He plants it in preaching and in
Scripture. He plants it here at the
Supper. What do we so often pray in the
post-Communion collect? That we would
grow in faith toward God and fervent love toward one another. And what does that Word do in all the forms
in which it is planted in us? What is
God’s purpose for which He sends it? It
gives you Jesus and all His benefits. It
gives you Jesus, the Word made flesh.
Just as Jesus was preached by the angel into the ear of the Virgin Mary
and took root in her womb, so Jesus is preached into your ear and takes root in
your heart, mind, and soul. The Word
delivers Jesus. It takes you into Jesus
and puts Jesus into you. It gives you
His death. Your sins are forgiven. It gives you His resurrection. You are saved and you have eternal life. The Word is the vehicle of the Holy
Spirit. It is that by which He comes to
you and dwells in you and creates faith in Christ and produces the fruits of
faith, which is love. The Word restores
you to the Father. God’s own child, I
gladly say it. Our Father who art in
heaven, we pray. It is a creative
Word. “Let there be…” and there is. It is a performative Word. “I forgive you all your sins…” and they
are.
Recklessly
sown, this good news is. And it really
does what He promises. It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle that this sorry bunch of
sinners that we are has been gathered in this place to be forgiven and declared
righteous and fed and nourished and called saints of God. The Word does that. This is Jesus throwing His Seed to the four
winds. Pentecost is “the green season of
the Church Year.” We grow in the
Word. We grow in faith. We grow in love. Jesus does it, recklessly casting His Seed.
But
as it turns out, His recklessness is not as chaotic as it first appears. He meant it to hit the path and the rocks and
the thorns. He meant it to fall upon you
and sink in and make the bad soil good.
From all eternity this was His plan, that you… yes, you… receive His Word,
have it planted within you so that it takes deep root and grows up into a
living and fruit-bearing faith. He wants
you for His own. He will have you, even
at the cost of His precious life. He
loves you. He has engraved you on the
palms of His nailed-pierced hands. You
are His. And not even the demons can
snatch you away from Him. In the Name of
the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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