The Word Scattered and Sown

Isaiah 55:10-13; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

7th Sunday After Pentecost, July 16, 2023

Pastor Ritva H Williams

My mom was an avid gardener. She created gardens wherever she lived. Red climbing roses covered the front of my early childhood home, while roses of different varieties lined the fences. When my parents built a home along the Rideau River, my mom’s created flower beds and vegetable plots that produced with an amazing abundance. Their retirement home was fronted by a bed of roses and 6 foot high purple delphiniums. The balcony of their senior living condo was filled with potted plants and flowers. My mom instinctively knew how to work the soil so that it produced brilliantly. I love flowers and gardens, even though my thumb is more brown than green. Among my favorite gospel readings are Jesus’ parables about flowers of the field, sowers, seeds, soil, and weeds. 

First a word about parables. Parables tell stories rooted in every day life and social structures even as they invite reflection on ideas and processes that are much harder to describe or understand. Parables are like riddles and produce more than one interpretation. Jesus rarely provided interpretations of his parables. The interpretations we read in the gospels are thework of his disciples. Today’s two part gospel reading consists of Jesus’ original parable and an interpretation current in Matthew’s community. 

Jesus’ original parable is about a tenant farmer who sows seed indiscriminately without paying attention to where it falls. In the world of first century farmers, this sower is either totally irresponsible for wasting precious seed, or so desperate to meet the landowner’s quotas that they will sow the seed anywhere. The end result is the exact opposite of what anyone in the world of Jesus would expect. Instead of the normal 4 or 5 per cent yield, the crop yields are 100, 60 and 30 per cent. Jesus describes this scenario then comes to a full stop, proclaiming “Let those who have ears listen!”

When Jesus says, “let those who have ears listen!” he means you really better pay attention now. So what’s the point this parable? Is it the sower, the seed, or the soil? Yes, but please note that in verse 18, Jesus calls this story “the parable of the sower.” So maybe we should start by thinking about the sower.

Our reading from Isaiah might help. Listen again to verses 10-11.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, 

and do not return return there until they have watered the earth, 

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. 

God sends rain and snow to water the earth and make grain to sprout. The grain provides both bread for the hungry and seed to the next year’s harvest. In the same way God sends God’s word — to accomplish God’s purpose in the world. Connecting Isaiah’s poetry with Jesus’ parable points to God as sower and God’s word as seed. So … as one commentator put its:

This is a parable about God and not about us. It’s the parable of the sower, not the parable of the four kinds of soil. It’s about what God does … God is the sower, and God sows the Word — logon, Christ — absolutely everywhere. Jesus is not the sower, but the seed sown. As the fourth gospel puts it, “The Word became flesh.” … Jesus has already been sown everywhere in the world, in good soil and bad, among rocks and among thorns. This sowing of the word into the entire world, and into all conditions of life, has already been done without any participation on our part whatsoever. 

(John Petty, July 4, 2011 at progressiveblogging.com). 

Friends, this is good news indeed. God’s Word — Jesus the Christ — is present within each one of us and among all of us together, here and now, in all conditions of life.  We are reminded that God’s grace, mercy and love are extravagant and unlimited. God does not run out of seed. God does not give up on us or on the world even when the going gets tough.

But what about the four kinds of soil highlighted in verses 19-24? Traditionally the four soils are thought to point to different kinds of people. This inclination to judge and label each other is such a totally human inclination that we think it must be God’s way of acting too. But how do we know who is what kind of soil? And does it really matter — if God has already sown the word into all these different soils?

It is probably better to regard the four types of soil as a statement of reality about the human condition we all share. Human beings, like soil, are shaped by their environment. Both soil and humans can be beaten down — walked on over and over again until they become hard and unyielding. Just as root systems do not develop depth in rocky soil, when the going gets tough human commitments suffer. Like seedlings choked out by thorns, how many of us find the cares and demands of the world overwhelming and exhausting. All of us from time to time experience hard, rocky and thorny conditions in our lives. That’s reality. But it’s also true that we all are good soil — we all have the capacity to grow and learn. We have all been given strengths and talents to make a positive difference in our worlds. God’s word — Christ — dwells within working out God’s purposes in our lives.

To take this point a step further, I turn to one of my favorite books, The Shack by William Paul Young. In chapter nine, Sarayu brings Mac into a beautiful but disorderly garden. Mac calls it a mess. As he and Sarayu work to clear out a patch of flowers, he asks her why God created “bad” things like mosquitoes and poisonous plants, and allows “bad” things like cancer, murder or loss of income to happen. Sarayu shows Mac that his judgments about good and bad are subjective and self-serving. Like all humans he is blind to the truth that everything in creation works together to complete God’s purposes. Even Mac’s own emotions, good and bad, are necessary pieces of who he is. Sarayu reveals that the garden they are working in is actually Mac’s soul: beautiful, wild, and as yet unfinished. 

To reconnect with Jesus’ parable: all of our hearts and souls contain hard, rocky, and thorny patches, just as we all experience hard, rocky and thorny times in our lives. But through it all the good soil of God’s Word the Christ abides and persists as the foundation for our flourishing. 

Please pray with me this prayer titled, “The Wayward Seed” by Pastor John van de Laar.

You are so extravagant, God! Throwing your truth and grace out into the world like a carefree farmer sowing life’s seeds with no concern for where they may fall. We are so grateful, because we may never have heard your word, we may never have received your love if it could only be found in the ‘proper’ places; in neat rows of carefully tilled hearts, in the securely-fenced fields of respectability. So, we praise you that you sow your wayward seed, and that it found a place in our hearts where life could grow and transform our barrenness into fruitfulness, our wilderness into garden. Amen.