Anywhere, Everywhere and For All
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley
July 16, 2023
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZHY4R3XmwE
Listen: A sower goes out to sow.
The crowd on the beach is very large. So large that Jesus launches a boat to be where they can see and hear him. He’s setting up cues that he has got something important to say, but then he just talks about farming.
This is the first major parable Jesus tells in the gospels. Later parables often begin with the phrase “the kingdom of God is like . . .” As in “the kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field … the kingdom of God is like a very valuable pearl . . . “ But in this case, Jesus just says “Listen: a sower goes out to sow.” I bet more than a few people went home that day and said “I don’t have any idea what that preacher was talking about.”
In the preceding chapter, Matthew describes the conflict that was escalating between Jesus and religious leaders who were accusing him of working for Satan. By the end of the chapter, he is at odds with his own family. And then he tells this story which is in part about the ways that seed is received. The seed is eaten by birds, scorched by the sun, and choked by weeds. It fails at the rate of 3:1. Seventy-five percent of the seed does not bear fruit which might tell us something about the discouragement Jesus is feeling.
Listen: A sower goes out to sow.
The stories that we choose to tell and hear are intricately tied to our current situation. The ways that we receive and process information and inspiration are always bound up with our history and present circumstances.
Scientists and activists have been warning about climate change for years. Some people have attended closely. Others have shrugged it off. But those warnings are increasingly hard to ignore in the midst of global record-breaking heat.
I’ve been on a lot of planes. I’ve listened half-heartedly to the familiar pre-flight drill about seat belts, life vests and oxygen masks. But on a couple of recent flights, I sat in the emergency exit row. When you sit in that row, the flight attendant talks to you very seriously and makes sure that you are willing to take responsibility for getting the window open if it becomes necessary. In every case, I did my due diligence. I pulled out the card in the back of the seat in front of me and read all the instructions. I looked at the handle which would open the window and satisfied myself that I understood how to operate it. In the event of a real emergency, I would process that information on yet another level.
Often this parable is taught with an emphasis on the kinds of soil that receive the seed. Sometimes, that leads to a kind of smugness. Those who regularly read Jesus’ words come to believe that we are the good soil and that others represent the path or the rocks or the thorns.
I think it is more truthful to recognize that each of us contain all the types of soil. We each respond to the Word from where we are – whether that is due to certain circumstances or life stages. We may be very receptive at one time and downright hostile at another.
Sometimes, when life is hard, when our fervent prayers go unanswered, we might wonder “what is God trying to teach me?” We might even come to believe that God is punishing us. The parable argues against that. The parable suggests that the Word of God was sown long before our current circumstances, that the message is consistent, but we may receive it with new urgency in particular times. I would say it is not so much that God is especially seeking to teach us something in that moment, but that we are primed to receive with new urgency.
Listen: A sower goes out to sow.
Jesus names this The Parable of the Sower; he does not call it the Parable of the Four Soils. The Sower is God. The seed, Jesus says, is the “word of the kingdom.” So the seed in this setting might be Jesus, elsewhere identified as the Word, the Logos of God. Or it might be the proclamation of the kingdom, which is already present and coming into being. Or the word might be some combination of Jesus and his good news. But the Sower is God. The parable is first and foremost about God.
One scholar writes, “[God] is not so cautious and strategic as to throw the seed in only those places where the chances for growth are best. No, this sower is a high-risk sower, relentless in indiscriminately throwing seed on all soil – as if it were all potentially good soil. On the rocks, amid the thorns, on the well worn-path.”[1]
God sows Jesus all over the world. Jesus comes into human experience, to understand how we grow and learn, our hardships, our deep joys, what grieves us and makes us laugh, all the conditions of our complicated lives.
God sows Jesus recklessly, indiscriminately to everyone, rich and poor, gay and straight, those who worship him and those who crucify him, people whose skin is black, brown, tan, or white. Jesus is present for senior citizens and juvenile delinquents, for taxpayers and refugee children, for those on all sides of every war. God sows Jesus in foolish, wasteful love which does not stop to consider who deserves it.
I went to the battlefields of Gallipoli on my recent trip. And there I heard an unlikely story about a seed. The Battle of Lone Pine was fought between Australian and Turkish forces over a period of 4 days during World War I. In April 1915, the Australians landed on the shore of the peninsula and immediately had to climb uphill while dodging fire from the Turks who were above them. The Australians who reached the high ground were ordered to dig trenches as if their lives depended on it, because they did. The Battle of Lone Pine was fought in August by which time there was an extensive network of trenches.
The trenches of the Australians and those of the Turks were separated by a No Man’s Land of just 20-60 yards in some places. When the battle began, there was one single pine tree standing at the place of the fighting. By the end, that tree was gone, obliterated by the shelling. And so the battle was named Lone Pine.
The fighting was fierce, the loss of life devastating. But this was also a place where enemies came to respect each other. During a truce which allowed them to bury their dead, they began to perceive each other as human beings. After the fighting resumed, in the wee hours of the morning, under the cover of darkness, they traded canned meat and jam and cigarettes across No Man’s Land.
Today, on the site of the former battleground is a cemetery and a memorial to the Australian forces. The final resting place of former enemy combatants is maintained with care by the descendants of those they once sought to kill. It was a place of terror. It is now a place of peace.
A young Australian soldier took with him a pine cone from the battlefield. Why he would want a souvenir from that place, I cannot imagine, but that is what he did. A few years after the war, he planted it in his home in Australia. It yielded several seedlings. In 1990, one of the descendants of those seedlings was planted in the Lone Pine cemetery. People felt that the tree had returned home.
How does that relate to the parable? Maybe it is a stretch, but for me it becomes a symbol of the seed which is scattered recklessly in all the conditions of human existence. The seed which is carried away by birds, or in this case by humans, bears fruit in unlikely ways, ways which may not be known for generations. Seeds of peace may be sown even in the midst of war. Acts of kindness and compassion may be exchanged even by mortal enemies. The Word is at work everywhere, always and for all. As God says in the book of Isaiah, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there 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 to me empty, but it shall accomplish that for which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
Listen: A sower goes out to sow.
The parable is first about the sower. But in the early church, in Matthew’s community, it became a word about the soil, about receptivity and hostility. It became a word of encouragement to trust the Sower and the Seed even when the failure rate is 75%. The risky business of farming became a metaphor for discipleship.
We each contain all the soils, all the possible responses to the seed. We receive the message of the kingdom differently at various times depending on our circumstances. So, perhaps what some of us most need to remember today is that Jesus is already present in every situation we might imagine, sent by God to accompany us, to liberate us, to bring us into an abundant fullness of life. We need to believe again that Jesus is at work everywhere, always and for all.
Perhaps some of us are discouraged like Matthew’s community was. What we need to hear is the same encouragement that they did. The best part of the parable is the part about the good soil which hears the word and understands it. The parable circles in on itself. The truth to be understood is that God the sower is generous and that grace abounds everywhere, always and for all. The way to respond to hostility and apathy, the way to be encouraged is to understand that the seed only bears fruit when it is scattered with a total lack of regard for who is worthy to receive it and how they will relate to us. God’s love and justice and blessing are limitless in supply. God is a risk-taking, wasteful, persistent sower and we are called to be the same.
A sower goes out to sow, flinging precious seed around with holy abandon. Rev. Tom Long says “Therefore, the church is called to 'waste itself,' to throw grace around like there is no tomorrow, precisely because there is a tomorrow, and it belongs to God" [2]
Listen: A sower goes out to sow.
[1] Theodore Wardlaw in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 3, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), p. 241.
[2] Thomas G. Long, Matthew: The Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), p. 151.