Pentecost 7A
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
The Rev. Dr. Bruce Roth
Beloved People of God…
How many of you are avid gardeners? Or love to tinker in landscaping? Throughout college a friend of mine and I had our own little landscaping company called Outsides Only. We primarily stuck to the grunt work. The digging, the trimming, the pruning, the mulching, and the spreading. We did everything necessary to prepare to create the environment so that the garden could grow. On occasion we would plant shrubs, and flowering trees, but we usually left the seeding for someone else. In part because there was too much pressure to plant something and not knowing how it was going to look in a couple of months from when we did the work. Have you ever noticed the pictures in those plant and seed catalogs?
• Enormous red globes by the dozens hang from six-foot high tomato plants that have the girth of a redwood
• Marigolds that are about the size of mums
• Roses, red and rich as rubies
Then there’s the lure of more exotic fruits and veggies that promise bumper crops, perfect nutrition, healthy plants and beautiful colors.
There’s one thing that landscapers, gardeners, and those seed catalogues all have in common—they all include an exercise in faith—what Barbara Kafka calls “green hope.” And it takes a lot of faith, a lot of green hope, to believe that those lush plants that you’ve seen pictured will grow from that tiny little packet of seeds that you hold in your hand once the catalog fills your seed order. But the truth is: all it takes is good soil, warm sun, refreshing water, time…and a shot or two of Miracle Grow and even the driest, puniest seeds will burst forth with life.
I know some of you are great gardeners. It’s always interesting talking to someone who is a gardener, gardeners put up with weeds, insects, evil-sounding rusts and smuts, and weather that’s too cold, too hot, too dry and too wet. Why? Because gardeners are addicted to setting life free.
Gardening is the world’s oldest profession for a reason—just take a look at Genesis. But Gardener’s cannot make the seeds. They can’t control the weather. In fact, Gardeners can’t even tell which seeds are viable and which are duds. But gardeners can assist in creation’s birthing process, they can midwife beauty, and gardeners can guide and nurture the life that lurks within seeds into springing forth in bloom. Gardeners participate in setting life free. This knowledge is what makes gardeners tick—they know that there is untapped life all around just waiting to shine.
Of course, God is the Original Gardener—releasing life onto this blue green earth. Is it any wonder that God created Adam and Eve to be gardeners so they could continue the life—releasing cycle? But Adam and Eve failed to tend the garden, as instructed by God, and ended up with a hard row to hoe.
In today’s gospel text, Jesus reveals that as the Second Adam, he’s also a gardener—a sewer casting seeds of hope across the face of the land. Even as God turned a barren planet into a Garden of Eden, Jesus starting his cultivation efforts on the hardest clay, the driest desert, the starkest wilderness, and created a new Garden of Eden, a landscape of salvation and redemption for all creation.
In today’s parable of the sower, Jesus describes the realities that face all who carry on cultivation efforts of their own. We can sow. But whether the seed germinates, grows to maturity, produces fruit, and results in a harvest—all that depends upon the quality of the ground it falls upon, on the receptivity of the soil.
In Jesus’ first example, the seed falls upon the hardened path. The rich word, filled with the promise of new life, never gets into the soil. It lies neglected on the path and is quickly eaten up by hungry birds. The beaten path is not a very fertile place. It’s worn hard by countless feet. For the Word of Life to germinate, it needs the fertile soil that lies deep and rich off the well-trodden trail, away from the trials and temptations of the common path.
Shallow, rocky soil and thorn-infested ground allow the seeds to germinate. But they don’t offer enough depth; water retention or root rooms for the fledgling plants to do much more than sprout and then wither away. Gardeners don’t garden just for the seeds to sprout. The whole point of gardening is to end up with a harvest. The fruits, the veggies, the bursting blooms of colorful flowers are the reasons gardeners sow in the first place.
Jesus, the sewer in today’s parable, likewise sows to reap. But there is a word here that is sometimes hard for us Lutherans to hear—because it has to do with a process called sanctification and it involves part of the law portion of the law/gospel dialect. What it means is this: those that offer just enough room in their heart and souls to let the Word lodge and start to sprout, but show no interest or concern to nurture it along, will not experience the great joy that comes with new life. It’s not that they won’t spring forth—it’s just that they will tend to be a little weedy, to whither away form neglect. Only those seeds that find their way into deep fertile soil, only those seeds whose roots spread out and stalks grow tall towards the sun, will enjoy a harvest, a yield beyond the original amount of seed first sown.
Doug Murren, in Churches that Heal, retells an old Native American tale of an opossum watching a seed grow. One day an opossum visited his good friend, a raccoon, at his home near the river. The opossum marveled at his friend’s lush garden and asked if he could grow one like it. The raccoon assured the opossum he could do so, although he cautioned him, “It’s hard work.” The opossum eagerly vowed to do the hard work necessary, then asked for and received some seeds. He rushed home with his treasure, buried them amid much laughter and sun, went inside to clean up, ate, and went to bed, the next morning he leapt from bed to see his new garden.
Nothing. The ground looked no different than it had the day before!
Furious with anger and frustration, the opossum shouted at his buried seeds, “Grow, seeds, grow!” He pounded the ground and stomped his feet. But nothing happened. Soon a large crowd of forest animals gathered to see who was making all the commotion and why. The raccoon came to investigate with all the others. “What are you doing, Opossum?” he asked. “Your racket has awakened the whole forest.”
The opossum railed about having no garden, then turned to each seed, and commanded it to grow. When the animals began to mock the opossum for his silly actions, he only screamed louder. At last the raccoon spoke up once more. “Wait a minute, Possum,” he said. “You can’t make the seeds grow. You can only make sure they get sun and water, then watch them do their work. The life is in the seed, not in you.” As the truth sank in, the possum ceased his yelling and began to care for the seeds as the raccoon instructed, watering them regularly and getting rid of any weeds that invaded his garden. (On some days, though, when no one was watching, he still shouted a bit.)
Then one glorious morning the possum wandered outside to see that multitudes of beautiful green sprouts dotted his garden. Just a few days later, gorgeous flowers began to bloom. With uncontrollable excitement and pride, the possum ran to his friend, the raccoon, and asked him to witness the garden. The raccoon took one long look at the thriving garden and said, “You see Possum all you had to do was let the seeds do the work while you watched.”
The Possum smiled and remembering the wise words of his friends he said, “Yes, but it’s a hard job watching a seed work.” Doug Murren concludes: “There’s a lesson there for all of us. Sometimes as Christians and Church leaders, we work to hard and take ourselves too seriously instead of simply planting people in the proper environment and letting them grow.”
Part of the wonderment of sowing seeds, of setting life free, is its mystery. We can never know if or when life will spring up, and whether or how it will grow. The point is, each life touched by the Word of Christ’s gift of salvation will respond in its own unique way. Our response is like those seeds in the apples. Some lives will respond with only a little fruit. Some lives will bear great amounts of fruit. Some produce no fruit at all. Other lives will produce just enough fruit to see them through day-by-day.
Jesus himself is the sewer in today’s parable. But each one of us who takes up and takes in the Word Christ plants within us—each one of us who takes seriously the life-task of nurturing that Word into a fruitful life—each one of us will ourselves take on the identity of sewer. Sowing seeds, spreading the Word, being gardeners of the identity given us in Christ. Sowing is lifetime work for Christians. But notice that in the conclusion of today’s parable, even among the fertile, productive soils the yields gathered from place to place differ vastly—in some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. The final amount harvested is ultimately out of the hands of the Sower. Our task is to sow. God’s task is to reap.
May we all set life free, let us sow the seeds for God to reap – and bear much fruit. Amen.