Our Response to the Seed of God – Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

The parable of the Sower is one of the better known of Jesus’ parables. The image has been used over and over again in Christian mission and service. Today when people see the image of a person with a bag of seed casting seeds to the wind, one of the organizations that come most readily to mind is that of the United Bible Societies.  The Canadian Bible Society adopted the image of the Sower from the British & Foreign Bible Society and that image can be found throughout the world in all of the partner societies in one form or another.  For the Bible Societies, the Sower illustrates the main aim of the societies.  They exist to ensure that the Bible is not only translated, published and distributed in the languages of the people of the world but also at an affordable price.  The subsidization of the cost of a New Testament or full Bible is critical to giving access to the Word of God in so many places in the world.  And while the Society has had many fine preachers in its ranks over the years, the responsibility they hold is the same as that of the Sower – to spread the seed, to spread the word.  Support for the ministry of the local church has always been a key element in this work and it is this partnership in sowing, tending, and reaping that has enabled the Bible Societies of the world to be a positive force in the spread of the Word of God.

Of course the success of the Sower depends upon where the seed falls.  Anyone who has done anything with seed knows very well that you can’t grow a good crop in a field of rocks. The rocks need to be removed. We also know that weeds and thorns are strong and determined and that they grow without any effort on our part.  They are also well suited to snuffing the life out of anything that seeks to displace them.  We also know that if seed is spread on hard ground that it really has no chance to germinate because – with no protection from the elements of sun and rain – it will either be scorched by the sun or washed away by the rain.

And while this image of the Sower is well-known and well-loved, it is also one of the hardest of the parables to accept for all of us know people whose lives can be found in each of the places where the seed fell.  I can remember the first time I heard this parable. It was in the days when we were all encouraged to ensure that our hearts were open to the Word of God so that we would not be like the people who could neither receive nor sustain faith in God. We were counselled about those people and how their lives were lived selfishly for themselves.  We were to be different – if not better than that.  The mystery of why our hearts were open to God and not the hearts of others never seemed to really be addressed.  The parable was given as a warning – a warning to keep our hearts open to God so that the Word of God could grow in our lives.  If only it were so easy.  There are few people in my life that I know who could say that their heart has always been that place where the Word of God could penetrate and yield a rich harvest of faith and trust in God.  For the most part, I have found people who struggled with faith and who have found trust in God something that changed with their circumstances.

And perhaps that is one of the lessons we need to take from this parable.  Certainly the parable helps to explain the mystery of why not everyone believes in God and why the Word of God seems to have little impact in many people’s lives but rather than seeing the parable as simply a way to explain away other people’s lack of faith in God, we could see the parable as a way of understanding the struggles others have with faith and perhaps finding a way to change what is preventing God from penetrating into their hearts and lives.

Even God has not had 100% success in spite of his best efforts; but he has continued to strive for that success.  We are not perfect people. Even those people who appear to be so solid in their faith and who we see as the ultimate example of faith have their times when they find their faith in God challenged.

So much of what we have been taught about faith and our life in the Church has tended to be black and white. As much as we know that life is composed of more shades of grey, our church structures and organizations have repeated the errors of the Pharisees and sought to ensure that we live lives beyond reproach.  We too have created rules that have done more to take the joy out of believing and replaced it with a system that ensures conformity.  True enough, we need to have some rules and there needs to be some expectations of those who form the community of faith; but we also need to be conscious that our rules and expectations encourage people to seek for God.  Perhaps we will always struggle with allowing God to be God and letting him be who he is with us and wanting a predictability and order to our faith and life with God that will remain constant.

I know that I look at my life with God far differently today than I did when I was young.  Part of it may be the wisdom of age but I believe a lot of it comes from the time I was able to step back from being in a position of leadership within one branch of the church and was able to not only embrace the faith journey of so many different branches of the church but also to be free to explore traditions within the faith that challenged some of the accepted beliefs of this denomination.  I studied theology in an ecumenical setting at McGill with professors who came from different branches of the church.  That experience taught me that no one denomination possesses the truth about the faith.   It also showed me that the struggle to pass the faith on to the next generation, to convince people of the value to their lives that faith in God could bring, was not a struggle that one branch of the church faced; it was the struggle of every branch of the church.

We are a creation of God set into a world created by God out of chaos.  We have been given the opportunity to live in this world and be sustained by the plants, animals, fish and birds that inhabit it with us.  We have been given the Spirit of God and through it our life and breath.  And we have been given the freedom to accept that gift and respond to God and his Word and way as we seek to not only pass our days here but as we prepare ourselves to continue our life with God in heaven.

In a real way, the parable is not about four different groups of people; it is about the four different movements of our lives.  For each of us has – at times – found ourselves to be hard as a beaten path, unwilling to let anything of God penetrate our spirit; we have found ourselves like rocky ground full of enthusiasm for our faith but not able to sustain it; we have found ourselves like the thorns and weeds surrounded by so many cares and concerns of surviving in this world that we have put God to the side in pursuit of what the world would seek our lives to be.  But we have also experienced times in our lives when we have felt the Word of God deep within our spirits and have felt a real peace knowing that God loves and cares for us.

So what are we to make of this parable for our day and age? We can know that the Word of God will not always take root in the lives of all people.  That is reality. We know that the Word of God has not always flourished in our lives the way God hoped it would but we are not to look at this parable and resign ourselves to whatever fate may befall us or others in this world when it comes to knowing and believing in God.  We are to live our lives conscious of the reality that there is much in this world that would seek to draw us and others away from finding and accepting the love, life and way of God.  And through this consciousness be ever mindful of the hard paths, rocks, and thorns that can draw us and others away from a life with God. AMEN.