Text: Luke 8:4-15
(Isa 55:10-13)
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
The sower in our Lord’s story doesn’t operate like a farmer. For a farmer devotes time to cultivating soil. He tills. He fertilizes. He clears out weeds and rocks and thorns. He makes sure that the soil in which he plants is all good, otherwise his time and his seeds will be wasted. A good farmer is selective about sowing, and he will plant the seeds at just the right depth at just the right distance from one another at just the right time. There is a science to agriculture, and the goal is to get a good yield, maybe even a hundredfold.
The sower in our Lord’s story could be seen as a bit lazy. He pays no attention to testing the soil, let alone improving it. He does not till, does not fertilize, and he leaves the weeds and rocks and thorns in place. He casts his seeds recklessly, scattered to good soil and bad. He seems unconcerned with wasting seeds or his time. The sower is indiscriminate, sowing in ways that appear to be random. His sowing is unscientific, though he too would like to see a good yield, maybe even a hundredfold.
The farmer judges his success or failure based on the yield of the crop, and whether he turns a profit or incurs a loss. The sower in our Lord’s story is not to ask “what prideful profit it may make,” as we sang in the hymn.
The good farmer and the sower in our Lord’s parable are quite different. The farmer is a scientist, while the sower seems a little bit crazy, if not lazy. And yet, Jesus uses the example of the sower to teach us about the Word of God, and how it is sown into our hearts by preaching. The apparently crazy, seemingly lazy sower is the preacher, dear friends.
While the life-coach, the self-help guru, the psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor, and confidant all seek to make bad soil good, the preacher pays it no mind. While the person in search of worldly success sets himself up to succeed, it almost seems like the sower, the preacher, sets himself up for failure. According to our Lord’s story, the sower fails 75% of the time.
In fact, the Lord’s parable isn’t even so much about the sower as it is about the different kinds of soil. And the sower’s job is to cast the seed everywhere, not to judge the soil or try to make himself a success, but rather to send the seeds flying over all the world, making disciples of all nations, and watering the fledgling seeds with baptism.
While the farmer tends his plants, the sower is called upon to, in the words of Luther, “let God be God.” The preacher puts forth the Word, even in hearts that seem unreceptive. For it is not the preacher’s job to judge the soil, but rather to sow, and allow the Word of God to do its work.
The prophet Isaiah says that God’s Word “shall not return… empty, but it shall accomplish that which [God purposes].” And regardless of what the world and even what the preacher may think when he sees the results – even a large rate of what appears to be failure, God says that “it shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
So in our Lord’s story, some seed falls on the path and never germinates. The devil snatches it away. That is not the preacher’s concern. He did as the Lord called Him to do. Those who hear the Word but do not allow it to penetrate into their hearts are without excuse. Some seeds fall in stony ground, spring up quickly, but lacking root, fall away just as quickly. Those who are not grounded in the Word of God, who are shallow and have other distractions, are also without excuse. Some seeds fall among thorns, grow for a while, but are choked out by the briars and weeds, that is, the “cares and riches and pleasures of life,” and never mature and bear fruit. They too have been warned, and are without excuse.
But when the Word of God falls upon the ears and the hearts of those who are receptive, dear friends, who allow the Word to take root, who are not shallow, who don’t have their priorities messed up, those who hear and believe, the little seed of the Word of God grows to be a mighty tree, bearing fruit a hundredfold – and those seeds in turn are sown into the hearts of others, and God’s kingdom multiplies.
The good news is that God sends sowers to every kind of soil, that is, God provides preachers to people in every nation, to the good and the bad, to the rich and the poor, to those in power and to those of humble estate. God causes the preacher to sow the Word into your heart, for He put you here today to hear, and He put me here today to preach. The Word of God is what bears the power, dear friends. Your part is not to do, but to believe, not to force God’s kingdom to come, but to hear – for “faith comes through hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ,” as St. Paul proclaimed to the Romans.
We Christians don’t just send churches to the wealthy. We have planted churches in every country and village – even where the Word of God is perceived – rightly so – as dangerous. For it is powerful and life-changing, even carrying with it the mighty power to raise the dead. Dictators fear the Word of God, and tyrants always, always, always outlaw the sowing of the seed. God’s Word has a power and might that the kings and emperors and presidents and prime ministers can only dream of.
Every political leader wants to be immortal, but they all end up in a whitewashed tomb. But the seed of the Word of God bursts open the grave. As St. Peter confessed to our Lord: “You have the words of eternal life.” Jesus entrusted Peter and the other apostles – and their successors in the preaching office – with the explosive power embedded in the seed, that is, the Word. The Word of God topples empires. And the mighty men of this world know it. The Word of God raises the dead.
But we who are entrusted with the Word do not seek personal power or notoriety. We just cast the seed everywhere like madmen, knowing that the work of cultivation is God’s work. It is the Holy Spirit who is the Harvest Lord “who gave the sower seed to sow” and who “will watch and tend His planted Word” as we sang in the great hymn.
Our goal is not “prideful profit” or to somehow harness the power of the Word for our own aggrandizement. We do not ration the Word of God to make people dance to our tune, nor do we offer it for sale to the highest bidder. The Word is free, and God provides it in abundance. And it never returns empty.
Dear friends, hear this Word. For it is the Word of the cross. And as St. Paul proclaimed to the Corinthians, “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
The Word is powerful, and the Lord is giving you that power, dear brothers and sisters, the power to rise from your own tomb, to live forever in glory, forgiven, redeemed, and made new! This is the hundredfold yield that Jesus points us to! And this fruit that comes from the matured seed is this free gift of eternal life, even as “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
May each one of you receive the seed, “hearing the Word,” and “hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience,” even unto everlasting life.
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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