7th Sunday After Pentecost

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Today our season of discipleship takes a turn toward growing things.  In gospel story for the week, we hear the first of the many parables that we will hear over the course of the summer that Jesus tells about farming and growing things.  Before the end of the season we will hear about seeds and plants, weeds and shrubs, vineyards and fruit trees.  But today we begin at the beginning with the planting of seeds.

Now I have always loved all the agricultural metaphors in the bible.  For you see, my dad grew up on a farm, and was always a farmer at heart, even though we lived in town.  So instead, he turned his attention to gardening.  And he was a professional crop and soil scientist so you would not believe how much he managed to get out of that patch of garden in our yard.  It was quite the serious operation.  And I always loved to ‘help’ him with the garden.  He always had everything carefully planned for maximum efficiency, carefully choosing plants and seeds, even starting them early under grow lights in the basement. 

But no matter how careful he was, as every gardener knows, not everything we planted was successful.  Some seeds never sprouted at all, some sprouted but died when they were transplanted in the garden, some got sick and never bore fruit after they had been planted.  And as hard as we tried some inevitably became food only for the local rabbits or the woodchuck.  It is just part of the nature of gardening that not everything you plant bears fruit.

This was something that the ancient people that Jesus first told this parable to knew all too well.  Today farming is shockingly efficient with a fairly high success rate, but in the ancient world, farming was much less precise and much more risky, especially since the back then you used the raw grain as seed, so you were literally planting your own food stores and if they fail, you starve.

And so Jesus uses this parable to demonstrate to his followers some essential truths not only about farming but about faith as well.  For both farming and ministry are very hard work, sometimes with a low success rate.  I think we have all experienced the pain of having an idea or a ministry event fail or fade away.  Of thinking you have found a great way to reach people or energize their faith and having it not quite work out.   Or of having family members or friends turn away from the church despite your best efforts.  Sometimes it can feel like the seeds we are planting will never bear fruit.

And yet, Jesus has another message for us as well.  Those that do bear fruit, bear it abundantly.  I think in our modern age, it is easy to loose sight of just how abundant the harvest that Jesus is describing here really is.  In Jesus’ time, a 5-fold harvest was a decent year, a 7-fold was a great year.  Even today, with highbred seeds on great land and the best scientific farming in the history of mankind, farmers are just now routinely starting to make 30-fold yields.  University scientists still can’t hit 100.  And here Jesus is talking about 60 and 100-fold yields like it’s no big deal.  Abundance unheard of even today.  Can you imagine what a 100-fold yield would sound like to an ancient farmer hoping for 1/20^th as much. 

But this shows us just how precious each person who comes to bear fruit is to Jesus, how important this is, and how worth the effort this seed planting can be.  Because even if most seed fails, that one that grows makes it all worthwhile.  For when God is involved, the normal rules of production no longer apply, what would be plainly impossible for us on our own, is suddenly commonplace with Christ.

And there is another important lesson that we can also learn from this parable.  And that is about how Jesus uses seed.  The potential abundance of the harvest leads to abundance in the planting.  In a world where we are often and rightly consumed with preserving scarce resources and deploying what we have in the most efficient manner possible, this sower scattering seed haphazardly here and there without any thought to soil quality or chance of success can seem terribly wasteful.  Doesn’t this guy know that if you preserved your seed and planted only where you thought it would grow you’d be better off?  Right?  But not with the gospel because Jesus’s abundance changes the math.  If any single seed is capable of bearing 30, 60 or 100-fold.  Then you’d better put it everywhere you can on the off chance something will grow someplace unexpected.

When it comes to the Good News of Jesus, we are free to give it away abundantly, we need never worry about running out.  The gospel is self-sustaining, it can bear fruit anywhere, at any time, in great abundance.  And so Jesus, the good sower, scatters the good news everywhere he can.  He invites sinners and tax collectors, religious leaders and roman officials, Jews and gentiles, men and women, rich and poor.  One look at the motley crew of Jesus’s disciples tells us that we really never do know where the gospel is going to take root.  Sometimes we just have to spread our seed and wait to see what God will do with it.

Which isn’t to say that any of this is easy.  Doing this ministry is still really hard work.  And we as sowers aren’t necessarily the ones who get to enjoy the fruits.  Doing things like Crossroads like we did this week is hard work.  We are down there far from home feeding kids that aren’t Episcopalians, that we are likely never going to see again.  But for those few hours they were safe and loved, well fed and treated with dignity.  Seeds were planted and if even one bears fruit, the world becomes a better place.

And similarly, all our mission projects are hard work.  Milford memories is ton of work, setting up the these outdoor services and all our wonderful lunches and coffee hours is work, delivering all these things we collect and keeping this building going is work, all the thing you do that I never even see happening is hard work. One thing I always knew growing up was that getting something to grow was always hard work.  Farming’s not for sissies man.

But just think of all the lives you have changed.  The hope you have brought.  The chain reactions of love and care you have set off.  You may not always see the fruit that your ministry bears, but I assure you it is there.

Because the love of Jesus has given us powerful seeds.  Seeds with limitless potential, seeds that grow in unexpected and disregarded places, seeds the beat the odds, and when God is involved, seeds that can grow to unfathomable abundance.  Seeds that change the world.

Casting the seeds of the good news is something worthwhile not only in the expected places where we think there will be a good chance of success but everywhere.  In your neighborhoods and workplaces, among friends and family, when we serve in the community and how we live our lives at home.   Christ is working in our lives to bring an abundant harvest no matter where we cast the seed.  Amen.