Pentecost 4

Pentecost 4 (Matthew 13:1-9;18-23)

“A sower went out to sow.”

A sower has one job and one job only: sow the seed. In the ancient world and in many parts of the world today the sower began his day with a sack of seed. His job was to walk a path and a pattern over a field. He sowed seed by reaching into his sack, taking a step forward, pulling out his hand and throwing the seed over the land from left to right or right to left.

The pattern of sowing is reach, step, scatter, step.

Sowing is unskilled labor. Any one can do it as long as you follow the rule and the pattern.

Older children and younger teens are ideal sowers. In technologically developed countries machines do the sowing but follow a similar pattern.

There is a certain pragmatic extravagance in sowing seed in large fields. You just can’t take the time to pick and choose where to sow. You just can’t risk the decision as to where to sow on the sower. You get the seed out there with the understanding some will never grow and bear fruit but most will.

This story of the sower is a parable. A parable is a story that is drawn from ordinary life to communicate a fundamental spiritual truth. The effectiveness of parables is based in the more profound revelation that our Heavenly Father designed the world according to a very specific pattern, plan, and purpose. That pattern, plan and purpose is, as the beloved apostle John tells us, the Logos. The Logos is the co-eternal Word of God. Parables work well as teaching devices because the world from which the parable draws itself reflects the pattern, plan and purpose of God.

John also tells us that the Logos, the co-eternal Word of God, became a particular human being at a particular place and in a particular time. The pattern, plan and purpose of God embedded in the creation is also revealed to us in a single person: Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ use of parables reveals two fundamental aspects of the Creation. The pattern, plan and purpose of God is embedded in the ordinary events, activities and substance of life. And, human beings more often than not miss the meaning.

The thousand year record of human behavior recorded for us in the Bible shows us that people consistently reject God. The parable of the sower is a summary of that thousand year record of human behavior in a very short, succinct and powerful image.

The sower is in fact God himself. The Father sends the Holy Spirit into the world according to the plan, pattern and purpose of the Son. The Sower sows the seed of the Kingdom, which is the seed of grace. This is not something strange or unusual. It is not secret information available to only a few who claim enlightenment or righteousness.
The Sower scatters the seed of grace with extravagance and with abundance. This is the pattern of the co-eternal Beloved Son. It is the pattern of unconditional love pouring himself out to all people everywhere.

This is why even Jesus’ own disciples reacted to the parable of the Sower with confusion. It didn’t fit their preconceived ideas about who God was and how God acted.

Jesus not only takes the time to explain the parable but helps his disciples to perceive why they had trouble understanding it. The barriers to understanding this parable are the same barriers that create resistance in the human soul to perceiving the reality of God in nature.

The barriers are threefold. To use the Biblical language they are the world, the flesh and the devil.

Jesus says it better in the parable.

The seed that falls by the wayside, off the path, outside the field, is the arena of those for whom God is just one option among many. Those are the ones who are easy prey for the birds who come and devour the seed. The birds represent the devil, Satan.

Satan can snatch the seed of grace from those who choose to live in the wayside because they do not value God for who He is or for what He offers. They are indifferent to God. In their indifference they ignore the seed of grace.

The principle of the wayside is that if we place God second in our lives we place God last. If we place God last we will not value who God is and what God offers us. If we place God last then Satan steps in and takes from us the very gifts God offers.

Satan is a thief, a liar, and a murderer. But, he cannot violate the law of love. The law of love is the law of self responsibility. We make a choice. That choice enters into the pattern, plan and purpose of the creation in the realm of cause and effect. That choice produces a consequence.

Those who live by the wayside choose to place God second and so they choose to place God last. They are not evil, at least by the standards of the world. They are simply indifferent. That indifference enters into the world of cause and effect and produces a consequence. The consequence is that Satan steals the gift and the people don’t even care.

How can we discern whether we are living by the wayside? Moses gives us a simple test. Where are you on the day of worship? If we place God first we are where God calls us to meet him on the seventh day, the day of worship.

The next place the seed falls is the stony place. This is the place of the flesh. The prophet Ezekiel laments that people have a heart of stone when it comes to their love for God. The flesh is the disordered and distorted desires of the heart. The distortions proceed from the place of original separation. They are distortions of love. The main distortion is self indulgence. Self indulgence generates the belief that if God is love then God must give me what I want when I want it.

We want many things over the course of our lives. Some things are age appropriate. Some things are never appropriate. Some things require patience and persistence. Self indulgence issues a demand to God backed by a threat. The demand is: give me what I want now. The threat is: if you don’t give me what I want I will stop believing in you.

Many people are sunshine believers. As long as we are living well and not experiencing pain we believe in God, we come to church, we rejoice in the apparent blessings of life. Yet, we always encounter the storms of life. Sadly, sunshine believers interpret these storms as evidence of God’s wrath or God’s absence. Sunshine believers abandon God in the false belief that if God doesn’t give then what they want when they want it, then God is either cruel or non existent.

Job shows us the way to deal with the distortion of self indulgent love in his statement: the Lord gives; the Lord takes away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

The third challenge to faith is the challenge of the world. The world is the surrounding culture. It is all the expectations, assumptions, and patterns of behavior we learn from school, entertainment and the various institutions of our society. These things choke out faith as we choose to give them our time, attention and life energy.

The test to discern the influence of the world is the test of priorities. The Biblical text we can use is St. Paul’s 13th chapter in his first letter to the church at Corinth. This is some times called the love chapter. The test is to substitute your name for the word love in the chapter. Are you living up to that statement? If not, why not? What is the obstacle to living life from the principle of unconditional love?

One of the most direct challenges the world offers is the temptation to love money and to use people. If our first priority is money we make no room for grace. The money is not the problem. The problem is where we direct our love. The test is how we set our priorities.

The seed that falls on good soil always produces a harvest. The harvest is the blessing of God that begins with grace and grows in faith. The key is in hearing God’s word, believing God’s word, reading, studying and memorizing God’s word, then acting on God’s word.

The world attempts to drown out God’s word. The flesh seeks to diminish and distort God’s word. The devil seeks to steal God’s word from us. The solution to these problems is Jesus.

Jesus is the word of God in human flesh. The solution to the problem we face as a species and as individuals is in a personal relationship with the personal God, Jesus Christ.

Religion seeks to impose lists of laws between us and God. Secular society encourages self indulgent indifference to God. Jesus offers us a new life and a new way of living in a new experience of unconditional love.

The Way of Jesus is open ended, spontaneous, active, dynamic and creative. Jesus invites us to experience the infinite and eternal in the ordinary events and objects of the here and now. The Way begins in the quiet moments of our lives when the Holy Spirit offers us divine grace, the gift of God in our daily experience of the creation, other people, ourselves and God.

Our Heavenly Fathers sends the Holy Spirit to speak to us the invitation to receive the love of the co-eternal Beloved Son as the sower sows the seeds: with extravagant abundance according the plan, the pattern, the purpose and the person of Jesus Christ. Amen.