Text: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The Parable of the Sower
13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2 And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat there; and the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6 but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 He who has ears,[a] let him hear.”
The Parable of the Sower Explained
18 “Hear then the parable of the sower. 19 When any one hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart; this is what was sown along the path. 20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.[a] 22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 23 As for what was sown on good soil, this is he who hears the word and understands it; he indeed bears fruit, and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
Today, it’s all about promises – promises made, and promises kept.
God, being God, fulfills His promises as He sees fit – which is good and proper – and in His own time. But that last part – that God fulfills His promises in His own time – is what sometimes poses a problem for us. Because, after all, God is infinite; we are not. Although there’s truth in the old saying “in waiting there is fulfillment,” we mere mortals do not have the luxury of unlimited time. So it seems to us sometimes, as it certainly did for Israel, that God has forgotten us and His promises to us. Psalm 13 begins with a cry of deep anguish at God’s apparent indifference and forgetfulness:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (ESV)
Then there’s Jesus’ own lament on the Cross, where he quotes Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?” (KJV)
Let’s start with the passage for today from Genesis. It may come as a shock to you, but even though Genesis is the first book in the Bible, it is not the oldest. According to many scholars, that distinction belongs to the Book of Job.
Depending on which scholars you read, Genesis was written somewhere between 1440 to 1400 BC, or between 538 to 330 BC. That’s quite a difference in dating! I mention this because, no matter what set of dates you prefer, Genesis records the earliest of the Jewish traditions, traditions going back to quite literally the Iron Age. Many of these traditions find an echo in what we do here every week. Even more significantly, Genesis is, as one website has described it, the “seed-plot” of the entire Bible: “Most of the major doctrines in the Bible are introduced in ‘seed’ form in the Book of Genesis. Along with the fall of man, God’s promise of salvation or redemption is recorded (Genesis 3:15). The doctrines of creation, imputation of sin, justification, atonement, depravity, wrath, grace, sovereignty, responsibility, and many more are all addressed in this book of origins called Genesis.”[1]
Today’s passage from Genesis drives home the point that the fulfillment of God’s promises sometimes takes longer than we’d like. We read about Isaac, Abraham’s son – you remember him; he was the one who very nearly was sacrificed by his Dad – praying to God that his wife Rebekah might conceive and bear a child. Recall that God’s promise to Abraham was “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17). But this promise was off to a rocky start – verse 20 tells us that Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, and verse 26 tells us that Isaac was sixty years old when the twins Esau and Jacob were born. That means that Isaac had been praying to God for twenty years before the miracle occurred. Twenty years of failure, shame, frustration, and deep, deep sadness.
Yet Isaac and Rebekah never quit trying, they never quit praying, and at long last, God bestows on them the gift of not just a child, but children – twins!
God never fails us. Getting back to the two Psalms I quoted a moment ago – if you read them in their entirety, you discover that both of them are actually psalms of praise, faith, and confidence in the goodness of God. Psalm 13 ends with these words:
But I have trusted in thy steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
And Psalm 22, quoted by Jesus on the cross, ends like this:
The afflicted[d] shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
May your hearts live for ever!
All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.[e]
For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.
Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and he who cannot keep himself alive.
30 Posterity shall serve him;
men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation,
31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
that he has wrought it.
Even in the midst of pain, sadness, and impending death, even when all hope seems lost, it is still possible for the faithful to trust in God’s promises, and not only that – it is possible to realize and affirm that these promises will be and are being fulfilled, whether we see evidence of it or not. The Psalmist of Psalm 13 yet trusts in God’s steadfast love, yet rejoices in God’s salvation, yet recognizes and celebrates how bountifully God has dealt with him. Jesus, in quoting Psalm 22, affirms with the Psalmist that those who love God have hearts that will live forever, and that God will deliver His people.
God has never let us down; and He’s certainly not going to do so now.
God fulfilled His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Rebekah. Where do we find the fulfillment of promises, though, in today’s Gospel lesson? There doesn’t seem to be much there having to do with promises; it strikes us that it’s really a story about having faith – and the word “promise” is nowhere to be found.
But it is certainly implied. The first part of the lesson is the parable Jesus tells about the sower scattering his seeds all over the place. This sower is ridiculously generous, even reckless, with his sowing – he doesn’t seem to care how much seed he wastes on stony soil, or thorny soil, or thin soil – he just chucks it out there by the handful, come what may.
The German theologian Joachim Jeremias considered this parable to be original to Jesus – something he actually said, verbatim or nearly so, and not something that was doctored up out of Jesus’ words by later writers. On the other hand, Jeremias concluded that the second part of today’s lesson – the interpretation of the parable – was in fact the product of the Evangelist Matthew, who used it to help those in his community to “keep the faith” in the face of hardship and persecution.[2] The tone of the two parts is striking – the first part evokes the image of joyful, reckless abandon, of abundant grace, which is a hallmark of the Kingdom of God; the second part, by contrast, changes the focus from the sower and the seed to the soil, and makes the analogy between the different types of soil and the different kinds of believers. And, of course, the obvious question then hangs in the air: Which kind of soil are you? Although it’s useful for us to ask ourselves that question from time to time, it’s the first part of the passage where I see God’s promises at work. After all, the sower is a metaphor for God – our God who gives us all things, including eternal life in Jesus the Christ, freely, happily, and in mind-blowing abundance. And by so doing, God fulfills His ancient promises to us, His children.
God never fails us. God showers us with all the gifts at His disposal. God’s abundance is inexhaustible. God’s love is infinite.
These are things we need to remember. When we think of St. John’s, it’s easy to fall into worry – about our size, for one thing, or about our future, or about … well, so many things. I know I have my moments of worry.
But consider this: St. John’s has been here for 157 years. In those 157 years, our church has seen it all. Wars have come and gone, droughts have parched the land, epidemics have taken people before their time, and so on.
Janine and I recently had occasion to do some research in our old records – and one of the things we discovered when reading the minutes of meetings from long ago was that the concerns we have now are the same concerns our forebears had ‘way back then!
But they persevered. They kept the faith. They recognized that God does not and will not fail us. They knew that God keeps His promises.
And here we are today – the current generation of faithful members who are keeping St. John’s a light to the nations.
And what a privilege that is!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] “Book of Genesis,” https://www.gotquestions.org/Book-of-Genesis.html
[2] Jeremias, Joachim, The Parables of Jesus, SCM Press, 1954, quoted in Lose, David, “Pentecost 6A: Enough!:, “…in the Meantime,” July 13th, 2017, http://www.davidlose.net/2017/07/pentecost-6-a-enough/