Year A
Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65:9-14
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

Today’s reading from Isaiah… is a powerful promise from God… it speaks of water… and seed… and bread… and the rabbis understood water… as a metaphor for Torah… for God’s Word… as the rain comes down from heaven… and waters the earth… so shall the Word that goes out from my mouth be… it shall not return to me empty… but shall achieve what I sent it to do…

But there may be some uncertainty about exactly how… and when… and at whose hands… God’s promises will come true… spoiler alert… those promises depend on how we… individually and collectively… choose to use our free will… and act… in response to God’s invitation…

And while we know… that no parable can bear the entire weight of the Gospel… we must remember that the parable’s point… is to get us to think… and it’s ironic that the first of Jesus’ parables in Matthew… is about this sower… scattering… seed… because the Gk. word itself… parable… means… to throw alongside… and the sower… throws seed… along side four different kinds of soil… God… throws God’s Word… alongside different kinds of people…

There are some scholars who believe that Jesus’ words ended with v. 9… or perhaps v. 17… but that the explanation… which begins in v. 18… was added later on… but even so… with this explanation… we tend to focus our vision on only the four kinds of soils… this explanation encourages us think about these four kinds of people… in whom the Word is either eaten up… or withers… or is choked… or falls on good soil and yields a great harvest… and the explanation tends to make many of us wonder… What kind of soil am I… but as John Shea wrote… and I think I’ve said before… although four possible persons are envisioned… it’s more realistic to understand each kind of soil as belonging… at one time or another… to every person… and as The Rev. Rosanne Anderson writes… the harvest depends on whether God’s Word falls on our hard hearts… or our shallow hearts… or our weed-choked hearts…

And while no one person… can possibly be responsible for bringing God’s Kingdom to fruition… or be responsible for what anyone else chooses to do… I understand that every time I choose to NOT do something that brings God’s kingdom one millimeter closer… I am missing God’s mark… and when more people than not… are choosing to NOT do something that brings God’s kingdom a few more millimeters closer to fruition… we are collectively missing God’s mark… but none of us can do it on our own… we need God’s help… and we need to do it together…

We can’t know how people who respond to the Spirit’s invitation will grow… and knowing this can help keep us from making value judgements about what kind of soil we believe them… or ourselves… to be… because in addition to being varying types of soil… we can also imagine ourselves to be the sower… but we tend to be the kinds of sowers… who don’t want to waste seeds… we don’t want to be seen as people who waste God’s Word… we tend to approach our decisions and actions with a perspective of scarcity… we are frugal with our resources… we want to give to those… or to something… that will give back to us in some way… provide a good return on investment… in other words… we don’t want to throw around any seeds… we want every seed to be placed carefully in fertile soil… and germinate… and provide an abundant yield… and so let’s remember… in John 12:24… Jesus says… Very truly… I tell you… unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies… it remains just a single grain… but if it dies… it bears much fruit… for Jesus… death meant crucifixion and resurrection… but for us… there are many mistaken notions and false truths to which we must die… before we eat the bread of eternal life…

But our egregiously generous God doesn’t worry about wasting the Word… but instead… lavishly throws it around into all kinds of soil… into hearts that change and expand and shrink… that are sometimes open and sometimes closed… God speaks God’s Word into ears that sometimes hear and sometimes don’t…

I recently came across a National Geographic story about seeds… it was reported in 2012… that a Russian team discovered a seed cache of Silene stenophylla… a flowering plant native to Siberia… that had been buried by an Ice Age squirrel… near the banks of the Kolyma River… radiocarbon dating confirmed that the seeds were 32,000 years old… the mature and immature seeds… which had been entirely encased in ice… were unearthed from 124 feet below the permafrost… surrounded by layers that included mammoth… bison… and rhinoceros bones… the mature seeds had been damaged… perhaps by the squirrel itself… to prevent them from germinating in the burrow… but some of the immature seeds retained viable plant material… the team extracted that tissue from the frozen seeds… placed it in vials… and according to that study… successfully germinated the plants… which grew… flowered… and after a year… created seeds of their own… tenacious seeds… but no more tenacious than God’s Word…

And while we can’t fathom how much love and grace and forgiveness there is in God’s Word… maybe we just have to accept that the way God scatters… will always seem incomprehensibly wasteful to us…

You’ll remember that earlier in this Gospel… when Jesus sent the disciples out… and instructed them where to go and what to do and what to take… you’ll remember he said… if anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words… shake the dust off your feet as you leave that house or town… 

I wonder if Jesus said this with a tone of condemnation… or compassion for those who were missing out… or simply a neutral one… after all… he knew that God’s Word is incapable of returning empty…

So let’s not worry about the kind of soil we are… or what kind our neighbors are… but let’s ask how can we be more like the sower in the parable… let’s ask how can we scatter broadly and widely… without regard to whether we think people are worthy… or whether the Word will take root… or whether we think it’s wasted… instead… let’s ask how we have been watered and nourished by God’s Word… and by the Incarnate Word… and let’s wonder together… about how we have helped God’s Word accomplish that which God intended… and succeed in the thing for which God sent it… and then perhaps we can all be… tenacious seeds…