Sermon Opoho Church Sunday 16 July 2017 Pentecost 6 Baptism

Readings: Isaiah 55: 10-13, Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23, Psalm 65: 9-13

We pray:  may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you O God, our rock and our sustainer.  Amen.

It is a very agrarian focus that we have in our readings for this week and I would like to add to it by reading the psalm for today – 65: verses 9-13 where the psalmist gives thanks for God’s bounty

You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it. 
You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. 
You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness. 
The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.

What a picture of beauty and abundance – evocative language painting a picture of overflowing goodness and bounty.  It reminds me of some of those works of art from a few centuries ago full of grazing sheep, serene shepherdesses and green pastures with nary a thistle to be seen.

The Isaiah reading too is a vision of hope to offer his people – reminding them of the abundant harvest that was to be found in following the word of God, and that nature itself would celebrate the amazing fruit that would come from the word.

One would be forgiven for being a little cynical at such a perfect picture – especially those who have anything at all to do with farming.  We recognise, especially this last week, the factors that are beyond our control like weather, the cycle of the good and the bad years, and our own propensity to make the wrong choices – we don’t get it right all of the time, that’s for sure.

Jesus lived in a time when agriculture, living with the land, was known to most people.  The sower of the seed would have been a common sight as would the knowledge of seasons and growth and failed harvests.  Someone who had recently been to Israel recounted how they seen that person out sowing seed – or as they put it flinging seed in all directions with not a thought to where it was going nor looking back to see where it had landed.

This is the imagery Jesus uses to encourage his disciples in their ministry at the beginning of their journey. 

And so we place ourselves into the story – seeking to understand Jesus word for us today and in this place, for our journey.

There are three distinct parts to this parable.  There is the role of the sower, there is the soil in which it is sown and there is the harvest that is yielded.

First of all the sower – the spreading of the good news.  I think that we could say that it is an example of extravagant sowing!  None of this carefully building up the soil before we sow, surrounding it by fences, doing everything we can do to make the soil so receptive that we can probably guarantee a decent harvest.  Instead we chuck the seed everywhere we can.  Some, quite a lot perhaps, will fall by the wayside but maybe that is not for us to know.  And certainly not for us to pre-judge.  We have no idea what lies under the top soil and whether the seed will flourish, this year, next year, never.  We don’t look back to evaluate our work – we keep on sowing.  It doesn’t fit so well into our present day approach really, certainly not in the business world and not in some of our churches – strategic plans, carefully assessed programmes, looking for a decent return on investment. 

The lesson for us here: that the gospel might be bigger than our expectations, bigger than just ‘good’ soil and that God’s vision for the world goes well beyond our planned enclosures and into the broken, barren, rocky places as well.

And so we come to the soil.  Good soil is the place where the seed takes root and grows, a context that offers nurturing and encouragement; that teaches understanding, attentiveness and perseverance.  Bad soil is where things like shallowness and blindness and distraction inhibit not just the seed sprouting but our growing in faith. We get that.

Maybe the point to make here is whether the soil we have so carefully prepared, eagerly anticipating a harvest that will fill our pews and grow our church, is providing a nurturing place for all who seek to grow.  And the answer has to be – not always, not everywhere. 

There are the stories of the most unlikely sprouting of seeds, the hard heart prised open by a word of kindness rather than judgement, the helplessness proffered in a time of grief, a conversation of listening, no words, cynicism falling to an act of vulnerability, an unlikely receptacle in an unlikely place proving to be open to God’s word.  How we as the body of Christ encourage, provide the soil in which those seeds of faith, ones that have emerged on the periphery of the church, can grow is a challenge to us today and it will only be met by having that same sense of anticipation that the sower has – that in so many different ways and unexpected places, and often against all odds, there is fruit to be grown and nurtured for God.  Maybe not now, maybe not in the way we would expect, but then our imaginations are nowhere near the possibilities that God can see. God just asks us to be the environment in which the seed can be nurtured to full maturity, however that might look.

And finally there is the fruit, the miraculous yield that is beyond our control – turning weeds into shelter, stumbling rocks into strong foundations, slick pathways into deep refreshing rivers.  And in many ways this is the biggest challenge of the parable – understanding that we can not anticipate or determine what impact our living as Christ followers will have but that we can believe that the harvest will be abundant.  

That is a big ask sometimes: for us to be that extravagant high risk sower of seed, indiscriminate, truly believing that every seed planted, all soil nurtured in the name of God has the potential to sprout and take root planted in God.  It will take us into circumstances that are not predictable, effort which is not obviously rewarded, fruit that we might not have encountered before.

But in the end if we believe in the power of God’s love, we have to believe that there is no place or circumstance in which God’s word cannot take root and produce fruit.  And that is a promise for us to receive and to sow. 

We pray: Abundant God, may we trust in your abiding love, walk confidently in the way of Jesus and know that spirit surrounds and guides us to new possibilities every day.  In the name of Jesus who showed us the way.  Amen.

Margaret Garland