Read Matthew 13 here.
Listen to the sermon here.
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Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. –Matthew 13:9
One
day, Jesus said to his disciples:
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like y
= 3 x2 + 8 x - 9."
A
man who had just joined the disciples looked very confused and asked Peter:
"What, on Earth, does he mean by
that?"
Peter smiled. "Don't worry. It's just
another one of his parabolas."[1]
"The
Kingdom of Heaven is like y = 3 x2 + 8 x - 9."
You might recognize that as a parabolic equation. It’s called parabolic because if you put it
on a graph, the line it creates is a parabola. An arch, like the famous one in St. Louis.
Don’t worry, that’s as far as I’m going with
math today. I brought up parabolic
equations because today we begin looking at the section of the book of Matthew
that’s called the parabolic discourse.
(A discourse is like a sermon.) It’s not called that because Jesus teaches
about math, but because Jesus teaches using a series of parables. Today we’re
talking about the parable of the soils.
Next week we’ll look at the parable of the weeds, and then the following
week we’ll look at the group of short parables that finish this section of
teaching.
All of these parables are teaching about the
kingdom of God. Jesus was continually telling
people that “the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.” The parable of the soils is
the only one in this series of parables that doesn’t begin, “The kingdom of God
is like…”
The kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven is
what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer Jesus taught the disciples
when they asked him to teach them how to pray.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
What that means…and I’m borrowing this
explanation from the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the confessions found in our
Book of Confessions…
“Your
kingdom come” means:
Rule
us by your Word and Spirit in such a way that more and more we submit to you.
Preserve
your church and make it grow.
Destroy
the devil’s work; …
Do
this until your kingdom fully comes, when you will be all in all.[2]
In other words, God’s kingdom, the kingdom of
heaven, is where God is sovereign.
But
looking around at the world, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that God is not
sovereign and that the kingdom of God is far off.
That was the thinking in Jesus’ time, too. They were hoping that he would start acting
more like a king and work on taking over the government. But if they were really listening to his
teaching, they would have heard that the
kingdom of God was not about taking over the government, but about turning
hearts to God. To further
demonstrate that, Jesus tells this parable.
And we get a bonus with this parable, we get an explanation:
The
four kinds of soils are four different ways that people hear God’s word. The optimum results come from the fourth way,
hearing and understanding and bearing
fruit.
Which makes it fairly obvious that it’s best
to be good soil. But how much control do we really have over that?
Two scriptures have been running
through my mind this week as I was pondering this parable. One is the scripture from Isaiah 55 that Carol read for us this
morning:
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 which I
purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Is. 55:10-11)
God’s word
is always effective at accomplishing God’s purposes.
We should also note, however, that this same passage also talks about
how God’s ways are different than our ways.
God’s purposes may be different
than our purposes, and so we may misjudge the effectiveness of God’s word.
The other scripture comes from the Apostle
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.
They were arguing over who was the better teacher and Paul put the
argument to rest by saying, “God is the
one who gives the growth.”
With those two scriptures in mind, let’s look
at the four scenarios.
#1
The seed
that lands on the path
is the person who doesn’t understand the word.
The soil is too hard for the seed to sink in. They are too hard-hearted, or the word is too
foreign to be understood.
Hard
soil is what we find in the desert
where there hasn’t been water for a very long time. On those rare occasions when it does rain,
the ground is so hard that the water just runs right off. It can’t soak in.
But what if just one seed didn’t get snatched
away but remained and gradually sunk in and lay there unsprouted, maybe even
for a long time, and when it did finally sprout it grew slowly, so slowly that
no one even noticed.
Hiking
in the mountains in California I have seen trees
growing out of the side of giant cliffs of rock. How the seed that became that tree even
got there is a mystery. I was always
amazed at the tenacity of those trees to have grown in spite of the impossible
conditions.
Good soil is best, but there is grace and hard hearts can be softened.
God says in Ezekiel 36:26, "I
will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove
the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” With humans this is impossible, but with God
all things are possible.
#2
The second
kind of soil is rocky. The seed grows but there’s not enough soil
for deep roots, so the plant is scorched by the sun. It can’t handle the heat and withers.
Jesus tells a similar story about two houses, one built on rock and the
other built on sand. Wind and rain
cannot blow over the house built on the rock,
but the one built on sand is easily
blown away. We tell this same story to
our children in a different way. Three little pigs each built houses –
one made of straw, one made of sticks, and one made of bricks.
When the big bad wolf comes to blow down the houses, the only one that
stands is the one made of bricks.
Whether we’re talking about building houses or
growing plants, we’re talking about strength of character, and a foundation built on faith in Jesus Christ,
instead of other things.
What if, even though the plants are scorched
and the house is blown over, there’s still just enough root to remain, or just
enough of the foundation left to rebuild?
There’s
a beautiful movie you may have seen that came out in the 90’s starring Keanu
Reeves called “A Walk in the Clouds.”[3] It’s set in the 1940s in the Northern
California wine country. At one point in
the story … spoiler alert…the family’s vineyard catches fire. It looks like all the grape vines are
destroyed, including the original plant that they’d brought from their family
home in Italy. They hurry to find that
vine. It too looks burned to survive, but as they peel away the burned part,
they find that there is still life at the center, and from that life they are
able to regrow the vineyard.
That glimmer of hope is what we have through faith in Jesus Christ. Romans 5 tells us how hope survives in the
midst of rocks and trouble:
Therefore, since we are [made right with God] by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through
whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast
in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not
only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering
produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces
character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope
does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
We grow roots into the rock that is Jesus
Christ.
#3
The third
soil is full of thorns
that choke out the sprouting plant. The
worries and cares of this world and the lure of wealth get in the way.
But what if the plants don’t die and they’re able
to push away the thorns and keep on growing?
Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol, is a pretty thorny
guy. He’s all about saving a penny and
has no room in his life for people.
What’s growing in Scrooge is his bank account. But those ghosts that come on Christmas Eve help push away the thorns and cares that have crowded out the life
that still lives deep down inside, and on Christmas morning Scrooge has become
a new man.
Jesus talks about worry in Matthew 6:
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will
we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32. . . your heavenly Father
knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for
the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well.
34 So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will
bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
And
Paul says in Phillippians:
6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything with prayer
and thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And
the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil 4:6-7)
The
best way to deal with our worries is to keep on bringing them to God in prayer.
One of the great debates among commentators is
how we should see ourselves in this parable.
Are we the sowers or the soil . .
. or both?
If our hearts are the soil, then the only one
who can help us make things grow in our hearts is God, so the way to be good
soil is to ask God for help with this. Each of the kinds of soil can be changed
through seeking God in prayer.
If we are the sowers, then we still need God
to make the seeds grow and so we still need to be praying as we sow.
If we are the path – the hardened soil – then we can pray, “Change my heart, God.” And if we are sowing on hard soil, they we
pray for that person’s heart to be softened and we keep on sowing seeds of
love, hoping that at least one will sprout and take root.
We
can also pray for understanding – God, help me to understand what I’m reading
in the Bible or hearing in a group or sermon.
If we’re the one teaching or speaking, we pray that our words will find
softened soil, listening hearts.
If
we are the rocky soil, we can pray
to ask God to help us withstand trouble, to help us to remember that God is
still with us even in the midst of the trouble.
If we are the sower, we can pray for someone who is having trouble and
look for ways to be the help that they need.
If
we are the thorny soil, we can pray
for God to help us see beyond the thorns, and for God to help us know that his
ways are good and trustworthy, and we can look for ways to be thankful for what
we have. We can ask God to help us
remember Jesus’ words, to seek first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to
you as well. If we are the sower,
we can pray for those who are having trouble with thorns, and look for ways to
help clear them away.
Whether we are the soil or the sower, we
can be good soil and good sowers by being consistent and constant pray-ers. How do we do that?
1
Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to pray
continually. This is what God wants, and this is our goal, to be in
conversation with God through as much of each day as possible. Most of us probably fall short of that. Wherever you stand on prayer, join me in a challenge
- to spend the next 40 days praying more.
God says in Jeremiah: You will
seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)
You’ll
find an insert in your bulletins (see below to download jpgs) on light brown paper with a tree on it. Take a
look at it now, and you’ll see that it has a chart on it. Next to each date there are 5 boxes to check
off for praying. Our growth challenge is
to go the next 40 days checking at least one box a day.
There
are boxes to check for up to 5 times a day.
I chose 5 because it sounded easier to me to remember to pray when I get
up in the morning, when I go to bed at night, and at breakfast, lunch and
dinner. There’s also an ancient
tradition of praying the hours each day which would mean praying at 6am, 9am,
noon, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm.[4] That’s 6 instead of 5.
Next
to each day there’s also a space for putting a word or two, a note to yourself,
whatever you want to put there. It could
be a scripture you prayed that day, or something that occurred to you as you
were praying, or the names of people you prayed for.
At
the bottom of the back of the card is a version of the Lord’s Prayer, which
makes a great template for prayer.
Writer Ann Lamotte has a great book about
prayer called Help, Thanks, Wow. She encourages us to not worry so much about
the words, but to call out to God throughout the day to ask for help in big and
small ways, to say thanks for things as we go through the day, and to notice
God’s blessings and say Wow to those.
Please add to your prayers a prayer for those
who are finding this challenge difficult, or who are having trouble deciding to
pray at all.
Please also pray daily for our church, that we
would grow in our understanding of God’s vision for us as a church.
"Praying is a joining of realities,
making a live connection between the place we find ourselves and the God who is
finding us."
--Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor
The place we find ourselves. I think reality is that sometimes we are good
soil, and sometimes we are thorny soil, or rocky soil, or even hardened
soil. We are people in process. God says in Ezekiel that he will take our hearts of stone and soften them, turn them into hearts
of flesh. All of us are somewhere in
that process.
I know for me even in the course of a day
there are times when a seed falling on the soil of my heart might hit any one
of those kinds of soil. Early in the
morning I’m better at listening to God than I am later in the busyness of the
day.
Throughout the day, wherever we find
ourselves, the more we can think to talk to God and say, “Here I am, God. Help me bring
your kingdom of heaven on earth to this place, to this part of my life,”
the more we will be good soil and good sowers of God’s love and grace in the
hearts of those around us.
God is so patient with us. Only God can make us grow.
Let continually open our hearts to him with
thanks and praise.
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