Is God a Good Farmer with Indiscriminate Planting of Seeds?

Lectionary Link

4 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper10, July 10, 2011

Isaiah 55:10-13Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Romans 8:1-11  Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Text:

    So here we are living close to some of the most productive farm enterprises in the world.  Agrabusiness is not really a hit and miss kind of business.  This is the age of Monsanto and Archer Daniel Midlands and genetically altered seeds, specially design to produce maximum yield for the conditions of the land.

  So how do we in the age of agribusiness return to the sort hit and miss farming of the parable of the sower as told by Jesus?  Well some us do some hit and miss amateur gardening at our homes and can get real proud of our tomatoes and squash, even while we don’t mention all of the other failures to produce fruit in our gardens.

  We have read the parable of the sower and its explanation.  I really think that the explanation was an effort by a later community to try to specify what the original parable meant.

  What was the purpose of the parable?  I could see Jesus being posed with a question like: Rabbi, why is it that some people are following you but not everyone?  Why are we attracted to become your disciples but why do you seem to be irrelevant to other people?  Why don’t they have the same excitement about your good news?

   And Jesus answered this question with the parable of the sower.  And his parable respects the mystery of why some people come to faith and why some do not.  Why do some people come to understand and accept the Gospel?  Well, the conditions for it to happen are just right.

  That seems to be the meaning of the parable of the sower.  People come to their faith expression because the conditions are right.  Why do fisherman catch fish some days and none on other days?  Well, the conditions have to be right.   How do you like such a vague answer?  Couldn’t one say that about anything that happens, “Well, the conditions have to be right?”

  I think the follow up explanation of the parable was given by people who wanted to make some precise applications as to what conditions are favorable or unfavorable as it pertains to accepting the good news of the Gospel.

  The conditions have to be right.  Is that too vague of an answer to be satisfying?  Certainly in today’s agribusiness, the goal is to make the preparation and the adjustments for the conditions to be right for every crop to be a bumper crop.  Modern science and modern farming is all about having the knowledge to be able to intervene to control the quality of the crop.

  What insights can we gain from this parable even in our age of wanting to have as much scientific control of outcomes?

  The parable of the sower can still give us some insights about God and about having faith.  The unwritten assumption of the parable is that the sower already owns the land on which the seed is planted.  In faith application, this means that God as creator already owns the world, but the world of people do not always know this or acknowledge this in the way in which they live.  Since people are oblivious to God’s kingdom and ownership of the world, and because people live with the presumption of a world without God, there needs to be intervention.  The sowing of the seed of good news, of God’s kingdom, of God’s love and forgiveness, has to be done for people unaware of the possibilities for their lives. 

  The sowing of God’s good news is “indiscriminate.”  What wise farmer would toss seeds onto the path and into rocky places?  The sun shines on the good and evil.  The good news is offered to every situation and circumstance, even when logic would tell us that the seed has no chance to grow.

  Before building a church building at a former parish in Texas, we rented a store-front building in the downtown area.  Outside at the back of the building in a corner to which the parking lot asphalt reached, there was a tree that just seemed to grow out of the side of the building.  I would cut it off, and in a few months, it would be growing again.  I often thought that if I tried to plant that tree in the middle of my yard it would not grow, but for some odd reason, it kept growing out of the side of the building.

  What nature reveals is that the uncanny happens in the mix of nature, nurture and the degree of freedom that each person has.  In the mix of human freedom, the social conditions and the individual nature, the possibility of coming to faith happens.  And with evangelism, we try our best to be “wise” farmers to promote the very best hearing for people to be able to come to faith, even while we must rely on the mystery of conversion to work to see people come to faith.

  I believe that God gives us a task of evangelism; God asks us to be a part of the sowing of the good news of God’s kingdom, God’s love and God’s forgiveness.  We need to learn how to be used by God to be creative lures to draw people to their better selves.  And they know their better selves when they can acknowledge God as the owner of life and when their lives can be motivated by love and forgiveness.  They become their better selves when they realize that the hybrid seed of God’s Spirit is a reality to be discovered within each of us.

  The parable of the sower invites us to ask ourselves the question:  How has the seed of the good news of God’s kingdom done in our lives?  This is a question that St. Paul struggled with in his life.  St. Paul discovered within himself the law of the Spirit of life.  He discovered that God had called creation good because the Spirit of God is the hybrid factor of excellence in our lives.  God’s Spirit within us is the guarantee that we can come to fruition in our lives.

  I believe the parable of the sower invites us to some questions of internal assessment today:  How is the good news of the Gospel doing in our lives?  Are we making the choices to enable  God’s love to be successful in us?  Are we discovering the winsomeness of God’s Spirit within us?  Further, are we making ourselves available to create the conditions that make it attractive and inviting for other people to know God’s love through us?

  Let us remember that our lives need to be witnesses of the success of God’s love.  And so our lives need to part of the right conditions for helping other people know the presence of God’s kingdom and the love and joy and the peace of Christ.  Amen.