Prodigal Sower, Prodigious Seed
Romans 8:1-11, Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

The Gospel reading this morning is a fascinating parable – a story of farming told to those who lived by the seaside – and told from a boat sitting in the water at that.  Why not a fishing story?  And within the story itself, which is more important: the sower, the seed, or the harvest?

Earlier this week, I was talking with Edie Bird about gardening experiences and recalled my first attempt at that in the first house I owned.  I prepared a small plot at the end of our driveway, an end that opened to a vacant field behind a neighborhood church.  It was Labor Day weekend – time for fall planting in Texas.  I stopped by the seed store and bought 10 cents worth of turnip seed and dutifully planted those in my carefully prepared soil.

Well, in the terms of today’s parable, that soil was good indeed.  In spite of having a police chase drive through it in the wee hours of a weekend morning, in spite of my ignorance on how to tend it, in spite of all odds, it produced a 100-fold!  By the onset of the season of short days and cold nights, I had a garage covered in boxes filled with turnips.  Folks would turn away when I approached for fear I was going to offer them more turnips.  Too bad I could not duplicate that result with something like tomatoes or melons.

Let him who has ears to hear, hear!  A parable is a story told to reveal something about the teller’s thoughts at the time.   While parables are subject to being misunderstood or misinterpreted, they invite understanding without being overly analyzed or debated.  In the Bible, parables are commonly used to convey truths in that manner and make their point through the setting, the audience, the characters, or the punch line itself.  Our parable today falls into the latter category.

Jesus, staying near the sea side, draws a crowd.  Stepping into a boat allowed him to have a place from which he could speak to the crowd and be readily seen and heard.  Although they are in a fishing village, farming was so widespread that the story of the sower certainly wouldn’t be lost on those gathered around.  Sowing by scattering was likely quite common in Palestine.  Plows – iron plows, were not too common and very expensive.  The soil, although it could be quite fertile, was also quite rocky.  Rocks would continually rise to near the surface and from their undetected position could quickly ruin a metal plow whereas seed was relatively cheap.  Sure some would be lost – it would fall on paths on which people and animals walked, birds and bugs would grab some, other seed would find its way onto poor or shallow soil – the places where rocks lay just below the surface, some would be sown among thorns and weeds.  The chance for unproductive sowing was high indeed.  Ah, but some would find its way onto rich, fertile soil.  And the yield would make up for that which was lost and then some.  Agricultural historians suggest that grain produced in this manner would, in a good season, yield five to ten times what was sown initially.  For this to happen, the good soil would have to produce at an optimum level – about 20 fold!  And here Jesus is telling these folks that his sower’s good soil produced not 20 fold, not just 30 fold, not 60 fold, but some produced 100 fold!

Now, if you were a farmer who raises grain, a futures dealer concerned with bidding on crops, or a store owner who must purchase a supply of grain to feed his customers, this might be a really interesting story – but if you are a disciple, concerned with what it means to be a Christian in the second century or the twenty-first, what does this have to do with us?

Imagine in the early church that you have found something in the life and story of those who are disciples of The Way (some call them Christians) as they follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.  As you listen and participate in the worship and daily life of these people, something begins to happen.  You experience, perhaps for the first time, love, joy, peace.  You start to feel as though this way offers hope and meaning for your own life, that somehow it makes sense to love your enemies, to seek the good in others rather than always be looking for an advantage; that there is more to life than putting a few coins under the bed and scheming to find a way to get just one more.  You find yourself having patience, kindness, even generosity toward others.  You begin to share your gifts, no matter how limited; you invite others – even those who can’t return the invitation – to share a meal; you even begin to become more comfortable with the idea of sharing some of those coins you managed to horde with great sacrifice.  All because life seems to have possibility, there is hope in your heart, there is a sense that God, the God who sees all and is the source of life is pleased and is bringing you into a real of life that you had never imagined before.

BUT, it seems that others see the same things as you and chose a different way; friends and family begin to ridicule and despise you because they don’t believe.  Even some who started along this Christian path with you have fallen away.  Some felt it more important to keep the peace in their families, in their villages and when others were upset by their decision to follow Christ, they pulled back.  Others walked along but became afraid that they were at the mercy of the demands of the future and this idea of sharing their possessions freely was just too risky.  This parable addresses that in encouraging terms.

I think we should note that where the seed falls is, in this story, random.  The trodden path does not choose its existence; the rocky ground is but good soil in need of a few millennia of weathering – exposure to the elements and effects of time; the thorns are merely trying to survive; the good soil that produces many-fold was prepared by repeated plowing, by having weeds torn out, by left to lie fallow for periods of time so it might be productive in the short time it is called on to bear fruit.

Now is not the time for judgment; it is the time for showing the love of Christ that we have received in our dealings with one another.  The soil that is the foot-path today may well be the richest, most fertile in the future.  One of the arguments in ecology is that the massive parking lots which claim large amounts of farmland are, in a sense, serving as repositories for future places to find arable soil.  There is an analogy in the lives of those who seem so far removed from what we think Christian living is – in due time, all will be revealed.  What seems to be in the flesh contradicts that which is in the Spirit.

We easily slip into a pattern of judging others by the results of their lives, by the harvest that we see – but remember it is God who sows liberally on all types of soil, into all types of lives.  One of the complaints laid at Jesus’ feet was his friendship and association with sinners, with the outcast, with those whose lives were trodden down shallow, and full of faults.

In this life, our skills and tools for judging, for measuring eternal outcomes, is far too limited to be of much use.  We more often use those tools for harm than for good.  Rather than weighing produce, let us live with joy and anticipation.  Rather than being so ready to judge – ourselves or others – let us encourage one another.  Rather than trying to protect our individual ministries, the meager bit we have managed to grow, let us be ready to glory in what another has to offer.  It is, after all, not about law; it is not about life in the flesh – that which we can see with our eyes and grasp with our minds – but, as Paul has put it:

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death ... if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Spiritual produce – yields of thirty fold, sixty fold, even an hundredfold – the kind of fruit from which others will not run.  It is life eternal, expressed as Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians:

 …love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. (Gal 5:22-26)

Amen

The Rev. John Dryden Burton
St. James’ Episcopal Church
July 13,  2008

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