The LCA Provides This Sermon Edited for Lay-Reading, with Thanks to the Original Author s9

The LCA provides this sermon edited for lay-reading, with thanks to the original author.

Proper 10, Year A Matthew 13.3

God the farmer

The farmers of today are a far cry from the early pioneers who broadcast their seed by hand. They are much more careful and efficient – they need to be to make a living!

Australian farmers are among the most efficient in the world. They fence off their good soil to protect their crops from animals. They carefully sow the seed with equipment which is constantly being improved so that they get maximum germination. No farmer today would dream of letting any seed fall on pathways or roads. If there are stony areas, the farmers drive round them and no seed is wasted there. If there are weeds or pests, they are sprayed with poisons by crop dusters to wipe them out: from the heavens so to speak!

In comparison, God is wasteful! God the farmer is so generous with his seed he scatters it everywhere, even on the path, among the stones and in the weeds as well as in the fertile soil. His message of Good News is cast out to all types of people all over the world! God doesn’t put up fences in the world to keep people out, unlike the fences the Israelites are building now to shut people out of the Holy Land; or like the Berlin wall under communism.

No, just like the farmer in the parable, God scatters the Word among all types of people, including those whose hearts are hard and dry and devoid of any spiritual life.

He sows his seed among those who only went to Sunday School a few times... the children whose parents dropped them off on Sunday morning but didn’t go into church themselves; or the parents who only went when it was their turn to teach Sunday School or do morning tea duty. Even in such a shallow spiritual life, God’s Spirit is busy sowing the Word there too.

God also sows his Word in the hearts of those who have no time for spiritual growth. Their top priorities in life are to chase after wealth and whatever is the current fashion or lifestyle this week. For some people money is their god. Their main concerns might be about bank overdrafts, credit cards, maximising their investments and finding a better paying job. For others it might be sport, fitness, education, their relationships, and community clubs. None of these things are bad in themselves, but a person can chase after them and become spiritually dead. One can live as though one has no heavenly Father. There are too many competing weeds for a sprout of eternal life to keep growing, so the seed is choked out.

God is so wasteful with his Good News!

On the other hand, we would be far more careful! We’d wipe people’s names off the Parish address list if we haven’t seen them at church in the last 12 months. We’d fence some people out! But God wants us to pray for them. God has such a heart for them he would never have us give up on them.

God knows that people’s hearts can change. Just as a hard, dry soil can become productive through cultivation, mulching and judicious use of fertiliser, people who are spiritually dry and barren can become spiritually fertile.

A pastor and his wife (who were avid gardeners) decided to pull out a section of an old hedge that was in their front yard so they could grow flowers on either side of the front steps. But on the side where the

1 hedge had stood, the ground was hard and dry and infertile. The flowers hardly grew at all, compared to those on the other side.

One of the members of their congregation went on a long holiday and left his worm farm at the manse. They put the worm juice and their castings (along with some worms) on the front garden, especially where the hedge had stood. Over time, the worms worked away unseen under the soil, and eventually that side of the garden became more fertile than the other side.

That is how it can be with people’s spiritual lives. There are people who appear spiritually empty, even quite dead, but there is a change going on in their lives. Deep down, where we cannot see, the Spirit of God is working, and the Word takes root and grows. The new life is watered with the miracle of baptism. It is fed on the miracle food of forgiveness, which works like a rich fertiliser through the Lord’s Supper. Some of these people become spiritually strong, producing good fruit and they are a great blessing in the Church.

Human hearts and minds can change from day to day. We know this is true in our own lives. There are times when we are more spiritually open to growth than at other times. There can be days, for example when we are physically here in Church, but our minds and hearts are somewhere else. The Words, like seeds, bounce off the surface and don’t even touch our spirits.

Or there are times when we listen to the stories or illustrations in a good sermon, but we tune out when the story is applied to our own lives or the message hits a little too close to home. There is no spiritual growth at all!

Some days we can be so flat out with work, running the kids here and there, doing the school tuckshop duty as well as the church cleaning for that week, plus a host of other things to see to, that we don’t take time to read the Word. One barely has time to thank God for anything, or even to talk with God at all.

Then there are the times when one’s heart is spiritually open to the Word, and one is deeply touched and one’s life is enriched. It can happen reading a spiritual book on the train to work. It can come from a prayer offered for you by someone else.

A Christian woman once said, “If I rush to church with a dozen things on my mind, then I get little if any benefit from attending the service. But if I go, and sit down quietly and say, ‘I am here today God for you to speak to me. Open my heart to your words’, then I grow spiritually and my life is enriched.” We should all make the most of our time here each week to open our lives to God so his word can enrich us and we can grow spiritually.

We Christians are privileged to share in sowing the Word in the world, with no fences. It is not our job to shut some people out, or to point our finger at others and say, “We won’t waste our time throwing the Good News among those people; or bother including them in our prayers.” People’s lives can be changed by the Word.

Luther reminds us that the seed grows best in the compost of this life: in the selfishness and greed and other evils within us. There God’s grace flourishes. There Jesus grows within one. There is a special statement about God’s grace in Romans 5.20: “where sin increased, God’s grace increased much more.” This is great news for anyone haunted by evil things they are ashamed of in their lives. There God’s grace can flourish at its best and deepest.

2 Finally, God the farmer programs Jesus within the seed, just the way a grain of wheat is programmed to produce stalks of wheat. Christ sprouts and grows in us: unseen, nourished by the Word. Some seeds, such as wattle seeds, will only germinate after a fire. Daffodils will only produce their cheerful blooms if the bulbs were buried in the ground months earlier.

When one dies and is buried, or is cremated like the wattle seed, up out of the compost and ashes of death there is the risen Christ-like person: transformed. Full of perfect love and joy, like a beautiful flower, like Jesus himself and so different from the original selfish person that one hardly recognises it.

Yes, God the farmer is always busy sowing seeds and creating a garden of everlasting Jesus flowers. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.