Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Today we have the parable of The Sower. With the exception of The Prodigal Son, none of Jesus' parables is better known. People like it. It's so simple and straight forward. Or is it? If I personalize the story (make it about me), as most do today, I find there are three places for me to fit in, three possible roles: I can be either the sower, the seed or the soil. And, understood that way, the parable has a lot to teach. If I generalize the story I discover that it's not so much about me as about the Kingdom of God - and how it grows. Let's look at it both ways. In my first semester at Drew Seminary I was fortunate to be assigned a class under a very prestigious theologian, Carl Michaelson. During one of his first lectures I, being quite green, raised my hand to ask a question. I began it by saying, "Dr. Michaelson, I'm not a theologian, but…." He stopped me. "Mr. Boyer," he said, "we are all theologians. But some of us are better at it than others." I thought of that because I had intended to begin this sermon by saying that we are all sowers of the Word of God, but then the thought occurred to me, "Some of us are better at it than others."

If we take upon ourselves the awesome responsibility of sowing, spreading God's word, we better make sure we get it right. We better make sure we're sowing God's Word and not our own. That's number one. It's an easy point to slip off of. There's a whole bunch of wisdom out there that may constitute good advice but is not necessarily the Word of God, that is not "necessary for salvation," as John Wesley might have said: Eat right. Get some exercise every day. Don't walk against the light. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Go to college. Don't smoke. Good thoughts, but not the Word of God. When we turn the Bible into a manual of good advice for living, we trivialize it, and we miss its power. One mother wanted her little boy to eat his prunes, so she made the mistake of saying (several times), "If you don't eat your prunes, God will be angry, God will get mad." Finally, when he still refused, she sent him to his room. But, a few minutes after that a terrible thunder storm erupted: long streaks of lightning and loud claps of thunder. The mother thought her boy might be frightened. She went to his room, cracked the door, looked in and saw him standing by the window looking out, and heard him say, "What a terrible fuss to make about a couple of prunes." If we are to speak for God, we must be sure that it is His word we are speaking and not our own. That is a warning to those who would be the sower in this parable.

If, on the other hand, we think of ourselves as the seed, if we believe that we, ourselves, can actually be God's Word, that's even scarier. And yet it has happened. Jesus was (and remains) the Word of God. In a way, the apostles and early martyrs were, in their own settings, God's Word. They were God's word in the coliseum, dying courageous deaths, praying, before thousands of unbelievers, convicting people (as they used to say) and bringing many new souls to Jesus. It is possible for us to become the seed itself: the word of God for the people of God.

Traditionally, however, when we interpret the Parable of the Sower, with us in it, we are not the sower nor the seed. We are the soil. The seed of God's Word is sown in us and we receive it, cultivate it, nourish it (or don't). When the parable's looked at this way, the important question becomes, "What kind of soil am I?" Am I the dry, hard kind - the soil of the pathway, where God's Word doesn't have a chance? Where the birds (the agents of Satan) get to it and gobble it up before it has an opportunity even to germinate? Some of us are like that: we don't even answer the door when God knocks. How can he touch our lives? Or am I shallow soil, making an appearance of receptivity, but hiding a hardness just beneath the surface. The word begins to grow in me, but never roots well, and therefore is destroyed when the heat's on. Fad religion. Flash in the pan faith. Or maybe there's nothing wrong with my soil at all -- maybe the problem's with the company I keep. A tangle of weeds and vines in me (other competing interests) choke out the Word of God. Lord knows, in this hectic world, we're familiar with that. Or am I (perhaps) good soil, ready to receive the Word, to care for it and nourish it so that it will produce a rich harvest in me? That's how we would understand this story in a personal way.

But there is a simpler message here, and one that is more powerful, I think. It says: the sower sows the seed of God's Word. The seed encounters difficulties of many kinds, but in the end, (by the mysterious, concealed workings of God) it produces a bountiful harvest. The emphasis is on the sowing and the harvest, not on what happens to the seed. By the way, in the ancient world a harvest of ten times what was planted was considered excellent. (Sow a bushel of wheat and get ten bushels back - that's as good as it gets!.) So when Jesus speaks here of seed that, in spite of difficulties, would produce a harvest 30, 60 even 100 times itself - he is talking miracles. And his hearers would have understood that. It is we who miss the point. The point of this parable, then, is the same as that of the mustard seed and the leaven in the loaf and the feeding of the five thousand, a major theme in Jesus' teachings: God's word may appear small and helpless to meet our needs, as a seed or a lump of leaven or five loaves and two fishes seems small and helpless to meet the need, but such little things, when they are employed in God's name, contain explosive power. Little things done for God generate enormous results. Rosa Parks sitting in the front of the bus. Just one person - and soon there were millions. Martin Luther, standing before all the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, refusing to recant. "Here I stand. I can do no other." One man, and soon there were millions. The seeds of the Gospel produce an amazing harvest.

As I was preparing this sermon I received word that Tillie Gartska died - very sad news for us all. Her absence will leave a big hole in the life and fellowship of this church. And yet she held no offices among us. She didn't teach or preach on Sunday mornings. Tillie knew the power of "little things" (and now I would put those words in quotation marks) - she knew the power of little things done in God's name. She was always there to help. She always had a smile. She would supply the church office with coffee - in the hope, I guess, that we would stay awake. On Valentines day, or Halloween, she would prepare little favors (maybe a heart, and one piece of candy, in a tiny paper basket, or tied up with a ribbon) and give them out. When my mother was in a nursing home, I know Tillie sent her fifty cards. She spread the word of God in caring and in cheerfulness.

Jesus is saying to his disciples, in the parable of the sower, I am about to leave you and you are about to face daunting challenges. There are ravenous birds and choking weeds everywhere. You are ordinary people, no money, no power, no education. But don't lose heart. Do the "little things" every day, sow the seeds, endure the hardships, and you will produce a wonderful harvest. And, indeed, that is exactly what they did. And the Word spread like wildfire. We don't have to have a grand plan. We don't have to know the answers to all the world's problems before we can begin doing something about them. Give Jesus five loaves and two fish, or a mustard seed, or a lump of leaven, and see what he can do with our "little things."