Sown

Propers: The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 15), A.D. 2020 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Trinity Lutheran in Moorhead, MN sports a massive pulpit with the words of Isaiah carved deeply into the wood:

For as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

It is a powerful, visceral reminder that the work of faith—of forgiveness and salvation—is not truly our work at all. We are but vessels and vehicles for the Spirit and the Word of God. And no matter what hardships we face—death, disease, divorce, poverty, instability, brutality, corruption, apathy, racism, and the violation of God’s Name by prosperity preachers and huckster of hate—God’s Word still works. It still accomplishes that for which God has purposed it, and the very thing for which He has sent it.

For in truth, the Word of God is God Himself, God come down, in flesh and in blood, in water and in Spirit, to pour out His life for this world from the Cross. And nothing, nothing, can ultimately defeat the Word of God in His mission to resurrect and redeem everything and everyone whom God has ever made.

We can try to resist. We can flee, we can sin, we can lose faith; we can rage and spit and curse against God; we can scourge Him with a lash and crown Him with thorns and crucify Him high for all the world to see, with a lance run through His naked side right into His heart; we can even plunge Him down into the deepest, darkest pits of death and hell—but He will never stop.

He will never relent, never give up, never stay dead. Even when we were in the very act of murdering Him, He called out with what little breath He had left, “Father, forgive them! They know not what they do!” Because the Word of God is God. And God is Love. And Love doesn’t stop. Love can’t stop. It cannot force, either—Love is no tyrant. But Love will outlast us, outlive us, outlove us. Until we too, surrender. Until we too are saved as through fire.

You can’t stop God. Even His defeats He transmogrifies into His greatest victories. And every time He conquers a foe, He raises him up again as His own beloved child.

What a comfort this is to a Christian in the superstitious and secular West. To know that God’s Kingdom comes, that God’s will is done, with or without us, either through us or steamrolling right overtop of us. Everything for which we ask in the Lord’s Prayer, God intends to grant regardless. What we pray, in that prayer, is that the Kingdom come through us; God’s will be done through us; that we might be part of the solution, the Body of Christ, rather than the last desperate doomed resistance in the final fetid pockets of hell.

Our Gospel reading this morning presents arguably Christ’s most famous parable—challenged really only, I think, by the Prodigal Son—and this of course is the Parable of the Sower. Wisdom! Let us attend:

A sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!

An explanation then follows: the seed is God’s Word. The birds represent devils, spirits of rebellion, ever snatching the Word from people’s hearts. The seeds scorched on rocky ground are those who initially embrace God’s Word with enthusiastic joy, yet fall away during hardship or persecution. And that sown among thorns signifies those who hear the Word but allow it to be choked off by the lure of wealth and the cares of this world.

We don’t know anyone like that, do we?

Nevertheless, some seed falls on good soil, and it yields 30- and 60- and 100-fold. Hallelujah!

Now the first thing that must be said about this parable is that it is very easy to misconstrue. We turn it into a morality tale, don’t we? The sorts of soil are different sorts of people, and we—God help us—we must be good soil. We must make sure that we do not wither before the sun or allow ourselves to be choked off by thorns or even carried off by devils. We must try our very bestest to yield 100-fold back to Jesus for the gift of God’s good Word.

But this isn’t the Parable of the Soil. This is, in Christ’s own words, the Parable of the Sower. And our first hint of this should be found in the name of Jesus’ chief disciple. For who is the Prince of the Apostles, after all, but Peter? Peter—whose birth name was Simon bar Jonah, yet whom Jesus christened as Cephas, “the Rock,” which in Latin is Petrus, or Peter. Jesus names him “Rocky.” And that description of the rocky soil—enthusiastic, impulsive, looking before he leaps, yet quailing when things get rough—that’s Peter to a tee.

Peter is the rocky soil, and look what all Christ accomplishes through him! And those thorns? I can’t help but think that those thorns are an allusion to Judas’ betrayal. Yet the Word gets through. The Word works. And it yields 30- and 60- and 100-fold, not because of the worthiness of the soil, but because of the superabundant beneficence of the Sower and the fecundity of His miraculous seed. God wins, Jesus wins, through us, in spite of us, with or without us. And thank Christ for that! This is Good News indeed.

Part of Jesus’ teaching that was embraced whole-heartedly by the early Church is this notion that he who is faithful in a little is faithful in a lot. That is to say, we discipline ourselves to do the will of God, to live out His Word, in small, humble, everyday ways, because the Word of God is like a tiny seed. It seems insignificant. What we do, seems insignificant. Yet we have no idea how a simple kindness, an act of forgiveness, a tiny work of love might ripple out around us, like waves in a pond, reaching to the far corners of the world, to the very edges of the cosmos. For it is in fact God who is working through us.

And when that seed finds good soil—when God plants His Word in the opportune moment, the opportune place and time—it blossoms and flourishes and overflows with bounty in ways that we can barely begin to comprehend. Christ scatters His Word through us. And it may seem at times like it’s all for naught, as though it were all wasted: eaten by birds, choked by thorns, baked by the sun. And yet the Sower scatters, far and wide, indiscriminate, knowing that the harvest will come, knowing that the seed shall sprout and the Word will work.

You cannot stop the harvest. In Christ, the firstfruits, it has already begun. And it will not cease, it will not come to final fruition, until the Word accomplishes that for which God has purposed, succeeding in the thing for which He sent it out. The Word of God seems weak and frail and small and failed. But then it explodes! It races upwards and outwards, toppling empires, lifting up the lowly, gathering in the lost, forgiving the unforgivable, and raising up the dead—

Until at the last the Word has reached to every nook and cranny of Creation. Then shall the Son hand over the Kingdom to the Father, and every tear shall be dried, and every wound healed, and every mother’s son raised up from the loamy earth of the grave. And God at the last shall be All in All.

Hell, we planted Christ Himself in a solid stone tomb, and rolled a great rock atop His grave. And three days later He split that sucker wide open. And He’s been pulling up the dead and damned to life eternal every single day since then.

It isn’t the Parable of the Soil. It’s the Parable of the Sower. And when His sowing takes root in our hearts, He will drag this entire world up and screaming from the dead.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.