The Unstoppable Kingdom

Mark 4:26-29

26 He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

            Time. We measure it in millennia, centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds, and nanoseconds (that’s one-billionth of a second). We can capture events in time with print, pictures, and film. We can keep track of time with wristwatches, clocks, and calendars. We can even observe the effects of time as we gaze up into the night sky or down into the deepest places of our planet. Yet for all the ways we can track, observe, and experience time we cannot stop it. Time marches on whether we like it or not, and it marches at its own pace whether we like it or not.

            When I reflect on my own life I can see the reality of time’s inability to be slowed, quickened, or captured. When I was in elementary school, I wanted time to speed up. I couldn’t wait to go to high school, where we got to change classes and put our books in lockers. When I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to turn sixteen so I could get my driver’s license, get a job, and buy a car;  after I got my car, graduation and the real world couldn’t come fast enough. In college, I couldn’t wait to graduate, so I could get married and start seminary. Now, here I am, married for six years, three years out of seminary, quickly approaching my thirtieth birthday, and at times I find myself wishing I could wind back the clock, slow down time or reverse, to go back to those days of regulated nap times, when paying the bills was someone else’s responsibility, and all I had to worry about was whether or not there were marshmallows in my breakfast cereal!

            On the other hand, I think we all experience those days when we wish five o’clock would arrive a little sooner, those weeks when we wish Friday would hurry up and get here, or those vacations when we pray for time to slow to a crawl so we can see every site or soak up more sun while we lounge in allowed laziness. But alas, we are not masters of time, for time continues to grind on without our assistance or approval. In a word, time is unstoppable.

            Now, perhaps that’s somewhat of a discouraging thought for you, but may I suggest that simply because something is unstoppable that does not mean that it isn’t beneficial; just because we are unable to completely control something doesn’t mean that it’s all bad.

            Take, for instance, the way children grow. How many of you parents have ever said something like this about your children: “I wish they would just stay this age and not turn into teenagers”? Or how many of you have ever sent your child out of the house for his or her first date, afraid of what trouble the changing effects of time and biology may lead to? Inside the door frame of my grandmother’s pantry there are painted over scratches and faded pencil marks that all continue halfway up the length of the jamb. Each mark tells how tall my cousins and I were at certain points in our childhood, but none of those marks gets shorter. Just as time’s passing is relentlessly unstoppable, so is the growth of our children. Try as we might to slow it down, stop it, or even reverse it, they grow up whether we like it or not. It is unstoppable.

            Like the passing of time or the growth of children, today Jesus tells us a story about the way in which a seed grows. Once it is sown in the good soil (reminding us perhaps of the story we heard from Jesus a couple of weeks ago), nature takes over and the seed in the ground germinates. Once the first, frail leaf of the plant breaks through the darkness beneath the dirt into the warm light of the daytime sun, the great miracle we call photosynthesis takes over as the plant absorbs sunlight and nutrients from the soil to grow taller. Jesus describes the action of the growing seed in verse 28: “first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” What really puts the point on the parable, however, is what Jesus says at the beginning of that same verse: “The earth produces of itself…” The earth is producing the growth, not any action of the scarcely mentioned one who scattered the seed. In this story, the understanding here is that the seed grows from the earth on its own, in its own time, in its own way—whether the farmer likes it or not.

It’s actually quite fascinating to think about how much faith it took for one to grow something in Jesus’ day. Today, we genetically manipulate seeds to produce bigger fruits or greater yields. We scientifically craft their DNA so that they can resist pesticides and herbicides and grow in harsh weather conditions. In the first century, however, the understanding of why and how plants grew was left to little more than experience and faith, as Jesus says in verse 27 “the seed would sprout and grow, [the sower] does not know how.” So a farmer planted seed in his field, prayed, and waited for the earth [to] produce of itself. Once a plant started to grow, there was no stopping it, no reversing its growth because the season wasn’t right or the farmer wasn’t ready. When a crop began to grow, the farmer had no choice but to see it through to harvest. He couldn’t slow it down or halt its growth—in a word, it was unstoppable. Jesus tells this story about the unstoppable growth of this seed for the same reason he tells many of his stories, in order to describe the kingdom of God. He says in verse 26, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground…” The kingdom of God is like the growth of this seed—once it starts, its growth is unstoppable.

But this isn’t the easiest of concepts for us to understand. For something to be unstoppable means it’s out of our control, and we want control—we need control. We like being able to control when something begins and when it ends. We like being able to make our own schedules and live by our own rules. Do you realize we now live in a world where a person can pause live television, grow a “fresh” tomato in the dead of winter, remotely start the engine in his or her car, and manipulate the temperature and humidity in his or her house from a different country with nothing more than a smartphone carried in a pocket?! Our powers of control are only increasing, so a story from Jesus about an uncontrollable movement, and uncontrollable kingdom might not sit that well with us. If we can’t control it, we often don’t want it.

There are exceptions of course. For example, I remember watching the first infomercial for the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ in my grandmother’s living room nearly a decade ago. Today, according to the Ronco website, the company sells thousands of those machines every week.[1] What is the claim about this machine that makes it such an enormous seller? Ron claims you can “set it and forget it!” Nothing to control; just set the dial and forget all about it until it’s ready. The machine controls itself. To tell you the truth, that’s one of the things I like about the automatic transmission in my truck; I don’t have to manually select gears in order to accelerate or take a steep incline on the road. I just drop the transmission into drive and I’m on my way. And I’m sure many of us can testify to how convenient it is when our banks or credit card companies have some sort of automatic bill pay that handles paying all our bills on time each and every month. It’s one less thing to worry about, one less thing to control. I guess sometimes it’s nice when things are out of our control; we just like to call them “automatic.”

“Automatic,” however, still carries with it a sense of control (we can always cancel online payments and put the car in park). The kingdom of God, however, doesn’t work like that; it doesn’t begin and end simply because we want it to. No, the kingdom of God, like a seed growing up from the ground, is unstoppable once it starts—and the reality is it has already begun. Jesus’ first words in Mark’s gospel are found in chapter one, verse fifteen, and with Mark’s first recorded words of Christ we hear him proclaim "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." The kingdom of God is at hand, and all throughout Mark’s gospel we hear of how unstoppable its growth is as Jesus gathers followers on his way to the cross and the ultimate expression of the kingdom’s unstoppable power as even the power of death could not hold it back—the grave could not stop it!

In the words of Jesus, “the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.” It has started and it cannot be slowed or stopped, for it grows by the power of God and the moving of the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God is here, growing among us even now, so each of us is faced with a decision: will we join the growing kingdom, or will we let it pass us by? We cannot slow it. We cannot stop it. We can only choose to join it or ignore it. For the kingdom of God is unstoppable; Christ’s reign as king and lord is unstoppable, God’s will to reconcile us unto himself is unstoppable. Through faith in Christ we join in this unstoppable kingdom, for just as the seed grows and the earth produces of itself, the kingdom grows and produces of itself.

Yet there is coming a day when the fullness of God’s kingdom will be realized, “when the grain [will be] ripe” and “the harvest [will] come." There is coming a day when God will be fully known, and as the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans: "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God." So it seems that even our eternal recognition of the kingdom is unstoppable. However, the decision still remains: will you recognize the unstoppable power of the God’s kingdom present among us even now, or will you continue to ignore its presence, hoping to ignore whatever work the Holy Spirit may be working in your own life?

The unstoppable Kingdom of God is at hand. It is here among us today. It is as a seed scattered on the ground, which grows in a mysterious and unstoppable way, and the time for its harvest, its fulfillment, is coming. Will you join this kingdom now, giving your life and trust to its king, Jesus the Christ?

Let us pray…

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[1] https://www.ronco.com/

Stories of Change

Matthew 13:44-53

44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. 47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 51 "Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." 52 And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." 53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.

Last month, The Atlantic magazine’s website, TheAtlaticWire.com, published an article titled “A Dictionary of Despicable Words.”[1] Picked from various website comments, facebook posts, and tweets, this dictionary consists of words that many people feel are abused, misused, or overused. The list of words found in this dictionary include artisanal, damp, epic, firstly, hipster, literally, moist (which is the least favorite word of my college roommate), troll, um, winningest. Missing from the list, however, is a word I personally cannot stand, yummy. It’s not that I don’t like the people who use the word (or any of its various forms), there’s just something about that word I find, well…despicable. It’s a word I don’t like to use, a word that sort of makes my skin crawl.

Of course, it seems that in the life of many congregations there is one word in particular that is often seen as despicable. It is a word that many church folks fear—it can give them a bad case of indigestion or perhaps make them a bit light-headed. It’s a word so common outside the walls of steepled-sanctuaries, however, that it can easily go unnoticed as just a part of everyday conversation, yet it is a word that can turn a calm, quiet business meeting into a hurricane of out-of-control emotions and can cause even the most saintly of souls to drop their attitudes of civility in the midst of the people of God. It is a word that can cause such frustration in the midst of many congregations that church buildings sit empty on account of this word. Now, maybe it’s more accurate to say that the effects of this word are not the fault of the word itself but the reactions of those who hear this word. The reactions to this single word can cause such trauma and such drama in the hearts, minds, and spirits of many a church member that part of me hesitates to say it even now in this room, so if you’re a bit worried about what effect this word may have on you, now is the time to cover your ears. What is this word that can cause such tremors in the lives of so many congregations? It is a simple, six-letter word: change.

Are you still with me? (If the person sitting beside happened to cover his or her ears you can nudge them now and tell them it’ll be alright.) Yes, change is a word, an idea, which causes so much trouble in the life of many congregations. Don’t believe me? Well then just ask any pastor who decided to cancel Sunday evening worship services because no one was showing up, or ask the music minister who decided to include an acoustic guitar, an electric bass, and a drum set in the morning worship service. Ask the minister who made the suggestion to put a screen and projector in the sanctuary or the publishing house that changed the format of their Sunday School literature. They’ll all tell you, change can be an awfully powerful word when spoken in the midst of many a congregation.

But why? Why is it that so many church people and the congregations of which they are a part flinch at the idea of change? I have a theory. I think it’s because change often means giving something up and most of the time the something we’re asked to give up isn’t necessarily something we’re willing to give up. It’s something that makes us comfortable, something that helps us feel at ease about the approach to faith we have chosen to take. That something that we’re often asked to change is one of the few things we can hold on to from the so-called “good ole days.” Change often asks us to give up something—or in the most extreme cases, everything—in order to take up something else, something different. It is beyond strange to me that so many congregations, so many “good, Christian people,” fear change. After all, aren’t we called by Christ to change ourselves?

I think theses short “Jesus stories” (parables) we’ve heard here today are in fact stories about change. They are stories that speak about the most drastic kind of change—change that calls us to give up everything in order to take up one thing.

Look again at the first of these stories Jesus tells in verse 44: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” According to John Claypool, this story isn’t nearly as far-fetched as we might believe today.[2] During the generations of wars fought between the superpowers of the Ancient Near East all over the Judean landscape, residents of that land with any belongings of value would bury their treasure beneath the earth to protect it from pillaging hordes. However, many times those who buried their treasures were often killed, imprisoned, or exiled, never to return to uncover their belongings. Therefore, it wasn’t all that uncommon for a farmer to be plowing along and suddenly bang the blade of his plow on some long forgotten treasure. It’s quite likely that there were those in the crowd around Jesus who had themselves found some buried trinkets or who knew someone who had.

In this story, Jesus tells of a man who finds a treasure hidden in a field, perhaps while on a stroll through the countryside or while working in the garden of his superior. When this man discovers this treasure, he makes what comes to be an enormous judgment call: he decides this treasure that he has stumbled upon is so valuable, that he hides the treasure in the field, returns home, posts his belongings on Craigslist, EBay, and Amazon, holds a yard sale, and sells his last possessions to the pawn shop down the street in order to buy that field where he found the treasure. In Jesus’ words, he “sells all that he has and buys that field.” Talk about a change! The man in Jesus’ story went from his normal, comfortable life with his home and all his belongings to only owning a patch of dirt with a treasure he found to be worth more than all he possessed before. He is willing to give up all that he has, willing to accept the change that comes with buying the field and the treasure hidden in it.

The second of Jesus’ stories we’ve heard today is quite similar. In verses 45 and 46 Jesus says, "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” The only noticeable difference between the man in the first story and this merchant in this story is that this merchant is actually out searching for something. Jesus says he was “in search of fine pearls” and when he found one—just one—of such a great value, like the man from Jesus’ first story “he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” He deemed this pearl to be perfect and of such great value that he was willing to sell all that he had—to change his whole life—in order to posses this perfect pearl.

Why were these two individuals in Jesus’ stories willing to change their entire lives for the purchase of a single field and a solitary pearl? What motivates any of us to take the kind of risks that have the potential to change our lives? What is truly powerful enough to cause us to make decisions that appear foolish and downright irresponsible? It is the belief in the kind of change that leaves us better than we were before. It is the belief that the risk is worth taking—a belief so strong that the notion of risk no longer exists. And in the end, it’s ultimately a matter of judgment. That’s where we hear Jesus’ third story.

In verses 47 and 48 Jesus says: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.” In this short parable, Jesus describes the all too familiar actions of the ancient, Judean fishermen. They would row out into the water or stand on the bank, cast out a great net, and when it was full, haul the net to the shore to sort out the good, marketable fish from those that were too small to sell. The vocation of fisherman was not simply one of brute strength and physical ability; it also involved the ability to judge what was valuable and what was worthless. A great haul of worthless fish was a wasted cast of the net, but a net filled with fewer, valuable fish, could put change in their pockets and bring change to their lives.

But Jesus doesn’t just leave us with this image of the fisherman for us to contemplate its meaning. No, instead he offers an explanation in verses 49 and 50: “So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Apparently, fishermen, pearl merchants, and treasure hunters aren’t the only ones who make decisions of change! Jesus gives us a look at the “end of the age” and how it is not unlike the practice of the fisherman—it will be a time of judging evil from righteous, a time of eternal change no doubt!

Now, I have to be honest with you. I cannot claim with the certainty of those in verse 51 that I have understood all of this that Jesus has said here in these stories. I do, however, find his last story in our passage today to be a bit out of place; it doesn’t really seem to make sense to include it with these previous stories. But then again…maybe it does make sense. Hear it again from verse 52: "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." At first, this saying seems a bit odd, with the mention of a “scribe who has been trained for the kingdom,” yet here again we are faced with a story that is actually about judgment and change.

On the far, back corner of my uncle’s house in Enterprise there sits an old, cinderblock house. Once upon a time, that house was the meeting place for a local motorcycle gang, but my granddad (we called him “Pa”) bought it and eventually sold it (or gave it) to my uncle. After Pa died in 1994, that block house became a place to store all his old radio equipment, junk parts from boats, cars, and lawnmowers, and even a few bottles of homemade wine. Eleven years later, when my grandmother (we called her “Ma”) died, my mom, aunt, and uncles sold her house and put the rest of her belongings in that old, block house.

A few years went by, and my uncle decided to clean out that block house and sell what things could be sold and give away the rest. My sister and mother called me while I was at school. You see, my uncle thought it might be better to clear out all the old, worthless junk in that house so that it could be used for something, but there were two or three in my family who wanted to hold on to those old, rotting and rusting belongings. Somehow, they felt that if they could just hold on to an old answering machine, or a few cheap plates that they could live in the past, that they could hold on to something old (even if it was kept in a drafty, cinderblock house on the other side of town). My uncle brought out from that house everything that was old and reminded my family of the past, but there was nothing new at all.

I’ve seen the same thing happen when church attics or basements are cleaned out. Old hymnbooks, rotting and crawling with silverfish, are put in boxes and kept to take up space because some patriarch from another century donated those hymnbooks. Antiquated programs continue to put a strain on the church budget and volunteers simply because there was once a time (several decades in the past) when such programs would bring dozens of people to church. Churches and church people have a strange tendency to bring only the old treasure out of their houses, ignoring the possibilities of the new.

There again, we see that even this simple parable is a story of change, for the "the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” still possesses the treasures of the past, yet he has had to make room for the new; he has had to judge what is better—to change and take on what is new, or cling only to the old treasures.

You and I are faced today and everyday with the reality that being a follower of Christ, or as he put it himself a “scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven,” means we are called to change. However, we do not change simply for the sake of change, but like that man who stumbled upon a hidden treasure, that merchant in search of the perfect pearl, or those fishermen sorting their catch on the shore, we change because we know that whatever we leave behind, whatever we may cast aside, can never compare to the grace of God and the love of Christ. We change because we believe that the dominion of Jesus is far greater than any kingdom we could ever create for ourselves. We change because we trust that Christ is far greater than anything we have, have ever had, or ever will possess. We change, because if we hold fast to where we are the kingdom of God will pass us by.

So, brothers and sisters do not fear the word change. Do not be afraid to leave everything behind, all that you are and all that you have, to come and follow Jesus, because that change that is to come—that change that is coming even now—is greater than anything you could ever imagine.

Let us pray…

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[1] http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/08/dictionary-despicable-words/55464/

[2] See Claypool’s sermon on this parable in his book, Stories Jesus Still Tells. 

Parable of the Soils

Mark 4:1-20

1 Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 "Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." 9 And he said, "Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" 10 When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; 12 in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.'" 13 And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. 17 But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. 20 And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."

            Perhaps this is a bit of a confession (though one I am sure many of you can join me in confessing), but sometimes I have a great tendency to hear without listening. That is to say sound waves strike my eardrum, vibrate all those tiny bones in my inner ear, get interpreted by my brain into bits of neurological information, that I then understand as sounds, but I don’t always pay attention to those sounds or allow them to actually register as something important in my mind. I hear, but I don’t always listen. To perhaps put it another way, hearing is a passive act, while listening is active.

Many (if not all) of you can relate in one way or another I’m sure. I mean, have you ever gotten a phone call from someone, and after about the first sixty seconds you enter into this patterned response of “Yeah…mmhmm…I know…that’s right…”? Or what about those of you who can recall your days in high school or college, those days when you would sit at the back of the room while your teacher droned on and on about the actions of chromosomes during cellular mitosis or how the Prussian Empire dominated Eastern Europe? Surely you can remember hearing something like that at one time or another, but did you really listen?

            Now, I don’t mean to make too much of the difference between hearing and listening, but I think the passage we’ve heard here today from Mark is filled with words from Jesus that certainly call us to listen (To be fair, the difference between “hear” and “listen” is not necessarily there in the Koine Greek of Mark). This is, however, in a very real way, a parable about listening, so it’s no surprise to me that Jesus begins this parable in verse three with the imperative “Listen!” and ends it in verse nine  with the declaration “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" This isn’t just a nice story Jesus tells to pass the time on the long, hot roads of ancient Judea. No, this is a story that requires our listening. It is a story about how we listen.

            Now, in verse three Jesus begins telling this story by saying, “A sower went out to sow.” Often we’ve heard this parable referred to as “the parable of the sower,” but to be fair, Jesus doesn’t actually give the sower top billing; the sower is mentioned only as a necessary element in this story, as the one who sows the seed. Then we are told about the seed in verses three through eight. The sower sows this seed (think of someone simply taking handfuls of seeds and tossing them about as she or he walks around the field), and some of it falls on the well-worn path, some on the rock-rutted dirt, some in the briar patch, and some on the good soil. In all of that sowing the seed remains the same. Jesus tells us in verse 14 that the seed is “the word.” Now, please don’t misunderstand that phrase, “the word” to mean the whole of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments (especially the Authorized, 1611 KJV). No, when Jesus says that the seed is “the word” he uses the word logos which perhaps more directly means “message.” Therefore, the seed the sower sows in the parable is the message from God, the Good News, the Gospel, and while the word—this seed—is of great importance, it isn’t the primary focus of Jesus’ story. It’s the soils.  Jesus wants his listeners to focus their attention on the soils and how they received the seed. Thus, it is better to call this “the parable of the soils.” So let’s listen to what Jesus has to say about each of these soils.

            In verse four, he says “as [the sower] sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up.” Then Jesus explains in verse fifteen: “These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them.” It’s important to pause here and understand that throughout all of the gospels that contain his parables (that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus doesn’t really take the time to explain them. This parable is an exception. Now, notice what Jesus says about those who are like the path: “when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them.” In other words, those who hear the message and quickly dismiss it, cast it aside, or ignore it altogether, are like the path where the seed was sown—such seed doesn’t even have a chance to begin to grow.

            I want to make a brief observation here if I may: a path is not worn smooth simply by the passage of time or the existence of the ground—it must be worn down and packed smooth by the actions of those whose feet tread upon it. So, before we are ready to cast judgment and perhaps withhold the word from those who are quick to dismiss it, perhaps we ought to take into account that those who quickly dismiss the Good News—those who are like the path where the seed is sown—are those who have been trampled upon and walked all over by the rest of the world, and there’s an awful good chance they have been worn smooth by the treading feet of those who claim to sow the seed. Yes, the seed, the word, doesn’t have a chance to take root and flourish, but maybe it’s because the path has been packed down by the feet of bad experiences and hypocrisy.

            Now, in verses five and six, Jesus continues to tell the story: “Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away.” He goes on to explain this part of the story in verses sixteen and seventeen: “And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away.” Any one of us who has ever gone on a short-term mission trip, chaperoned a youth camp, or sat in the sweltering summer heat beneath a revival tent know the truth of this soil all too well. There are those who go away for a while, take an intentional time away from the cares of the world in order to focus on things spiritual, and upon their return, they seek to set the world on fire with the Good News of the gospel. Yet, when the “new” wears off and suddenly their renewed devotion to God interferes with their comfort they soon return to the way things were—the way things had always been.

            Sometimes we call these people who revert back to their old, comfortable ways “backsliders,” or we cast our judgment on those who seem to let go of their faith as quickly as they received it, those who reject the call of discipleship before the baptismal waters have dried from their skin. However, I can’t help but notice how quickly those of us who call ourselves the Church do the same thing. We reject the difficult decisions of ministry in order to stay in a place of comfort and familiarity. I can’t help but notice how quickly believers in this country seek to justify their comfort and complacency with societal norms in baptized language. Perhaps our own soil is a bit rockier than we’d care to confess.

            But then there are, after all, the thorns, the briar patch. I have to tell you, I hate thorns and briars. I spent a measurable amount of time as a kid picking sand briars out of my socks and shoes, and I ruined numerous t-shirts snagging them on thorn vines and bushes. Jesus speaks about thorns in this parable in verses seven then in verses eighteen and nineteen: “Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain…And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing.”

            Of all the soils in this parable, I think the thorny soil may be the most tragic (if soil can be tragic). It’s so like the good soil: thorns have already taken root in it and seem to have flourished, yet this thorny soil is so overrun with thorns that they choke out the seed—the seed the sower would have no doubt wished to grow instead of the thorns. Is it no different with us? We may make time on a Sunday morning to hear the word, yet when the time for this small compartment of our lives has expired we turn our attention to other things; we have “bigger fish to fry” we tell ourselves. The cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things crowd our schedules, crowd our thoughts, crowd our spirits, and while we may still have a stalk of faith shooting up from the thorns and briars of our lives, there is no fruit. We make time to hear the word, but we just can’t listen over all the racket of our own busyness and our own desires. It’s here where I think we need to listen to the rest of Jesus’ story as he tells about the good soil.

            In verse eight Jesus wraps up his parable: “Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." The wonderful thing about this soil is that there really isn’t anything wonderful about it at all. In fact, it just does exactly what it is supposed to do; the thorn-free, rock-less, un-trodden soil receives the seed and produces a good to great crop (thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold would have been considered good to great for a crop of grain, not miraculous). With that in mind, listen again to Jesus’ explanation of this soil in verse twenty: “And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."

            There is nothing particularly special about this “good soil” in the parable. There’s no added fertilizer, no Miracle-Gro, no special chemistry; it’s simply free from those things that prevented the seed—the word—from producing in the other soils. And I believe that’s one of the lessons we ought to take away from this parable. Those who hear the word and accept it are not created special or different from those who do not. Those who hear the Good News and accept it are not any different in what they are than those who dismiss the word, those who recant under the slightest of discomfort, or those who allow the distractions of the world to choke it out. No, what is different is that the good soil is free of those things that prevent the word from taking root, growing, and (most of all) bearing fruit. So may we be mindful when we seek to share the message of God’s kingdom with others; may we be mindful that there are those who have been trampled over by so many things (even those who claim to share the gospel); may we be mindful that there are those who are not ready to take up their cross; may we be mindful that there are those who are too caught up in the distractions of the world and their own desires; and most of all, may we be mindful that we are no different.

            Let us work to be the good soil. Let us bring forth the fruit of God’s kingdom. Let us work to tread lightly upon the soil, ridding it of rocks and thorns, so that we may look forward to that day when the Good News will not only be heard by all, but all will listen and bear fruit for the kingdom. May we be people who listen and bear fruit, even now.

Let us pray…