How Does Your Garden
Grow?
Exodus 3: 1-6
Matthew 13:1-9
The first
time I ever planted a garden I did it wrong.
I turned over only a small patch of ground but planted as many seeds as
I possibly could. My rows were only
inches a part. By August it was a
tangled mess overgrown with weeds I could not reach. My harvest that year was very poor.
The next
year I did much better because my garden was prepared and planted by a
professional. The reason I did that was
because in the middle of my Mother’s Day sermon the retina of my left eye
detached. It was as if a shade were
suddenly pulled down. After the sermon
(and yes I did finish the sermon) I went to the hospital and the next day I had
an operation to re-attach my retina. My
recovery period was to last at least six weeks so I would miss planting season.
That’s when
Phil and Becky, farmers in my congregation, offered to put it in for me. The first thing they did was to bring a whole
pick-up load of fresh fertilizer that they collected from the cows in their
barn. They worked that into the soil and
planted the seeds in proper proportion and number. They left room for me to weed the garden and
left instructions for proper watering.
By August I had a bountiful harvest with zucchinis the sized of baseball
bats and tomatoes like softballs and a beanstalk that went up into the clouds.
That’s when
I learned that making things grow requires knowledge, effort, and God. Jesus came to the same conclusion when he
told us this story.
“A sower went out to sow, scattering the seed
to the wind, so some of it falls on the path and some on rocky soil, and some
in the weeds, and some falls on the good soil.”
Perhaps,
this was the first time Jesus used this form of teaching which are called
parables because the apostles, who were never a particularly bright group,
missed the meaning of this parable and asked him to explain it. So he did.
He, Jesus,
is the sower, the seed is the good news of the gospel, and the various types of
soil represent the different kinds of receptiveness people have toward the
gospel.
Some
people, Jesus observed, seem absolutely indifferent to God. They just don’t care. Speak to them of God and their eyes glaze
over. Spiritual matters are not even up
for discussion. The Word of God has no
more chance of entering into their minds and hearts than does a seed of taking
root in a foot worn path. Why is that
so?
There are
many reasons of course. For some,
memories of boring preachers, gossipy churches, or harsh parents have forced shut
every door or window through which the fresh breeze of God’s Spirit might
blow. Preachers, churches, and parent
who in the name of God act in hard and vindictive ways have drained every once
of joy from the life of a fragile child or tender spirit. So, God becomes
connected in the minds of many with an endless litany of rules and regulations,
of failure and guilt. To avoid feeling
that way many avoid God.
That is why
preachers and parents and churches must share in the best way we can the
awesome and abiding love of God. We must
take care we don’t walk over gentle plants and crush them beneath pious
platitudes or judgmental attitudes. If
we do we’ll harden their path and the seed will not take root. Jesus said, “the birds of the air will snatch
them away.”
Some people
become hardened to the word of God because of a difficult obstacle, challenge,
or even tragedy. Some time ago I read a
book by a Physicist named Jay Gould called “Rock of Ages”. He was addressing the apparent conflict that
some see between faith and science. In it he spoke of two great men of science,
Charles Darwin whom everyone has heard of and Thomas Huxley, also a biologist
who is not as well known.
Both saw a
real conflict between their understanding of the first chapter in Genesis and
their developing theory of evolution.
Both drifted away and eventually rejected the faith of their youth, but
Gould says it was not just their understanding of science that drove them away. Both had young children who tragically
perished. That’s when their hearts
became hardened, because God had not acted in the way they had hoped. God had not saved their children.
They are
not the only ones to feel that way.
Maybe you have as well from time to time when life has not turned out as
you expected. Hard soil is only softened
by work and a willingness to yield to the plow.
But, not everyone can do that.
Some see
fell on the rocky soil. Really, it means
“thin soil”. The rocks are not on the
top where you can easily pick them up and toss them aside. They are just beneath the surface so it is
shallow ground. You can’t really see
this on the surface.
When my
family moved to York in 1969, we bought a brand spanking new house on Greendale
road. At the time it felt like a mansion
compared to the house we had lived in before.
The paint was fresh. There were
no holes in the walls. It was perfect,
except for the yard. The developers had
scraped away most of the topsoil that God had put there, presumably to sell it
to someone else, and they left only a thin layer to plant some seeds. The grass did come up but it was spotty and
not very healthy.
My job our
first summer there was to rake up all the loose rocks that covered the yard and
toss them down the hill. But, the more I
raked, the more stones seem to rise to the surface. There seemed to be no end to them.
One preacher said, “It’s not easy to
be a Christian, but it is easy to start.”
Jesus had a
lot of experience with these kinds of folks.
When he was healing and performing miracles and talking about the grace
of God, people came pouring out of the woodwork to touch him, hear him, and
speak with him. But, when his teaching
moved from what God gives to us to how we should live for God, then fledgling
faith dried up and blew away. Jesus
would see the immense popularity he enjoyed on Palm Sunday when people shouted,
“Hosanna, hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”, quickly
fade away and be replaced by angry cries, “Crucify him! Crucify Him!”
So, Jesus
said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the
kingdom of God.”[1] In other words, “count the cost before you
make the commitment.” As my father often
said, “anything worth doing is worth doing well” and so it is with our walk
with the Lord.
Some seed
fell among the thorns. Jesus said quite
clearly that these represent the people for whom, “the cares of the world and
the delight in riches choke the word.”[2]
You could probably best describe these folks as “busy”. They have too many places to go, too many
people to see, too many things to do, too much stuff to buy to have any time
left over for the Lord. And that may strike many of us as being a little too
close to home.
We are too
busy to pray.
We
are too busy to worship.
We
are too busy to study the Word.
We are too
busy to give a few moments or hours or days in service to another.
We are, just flat out, too busy climbing our
own ladders of success and spending the fruit of our labors to have much time
left over for the Lord. So, all of us
need to check, from time to time, our calendars and checkbooks and ask is there
anything left for God in here, or are the thorns choking our faith?
Finally,
Jesus described the good soil. The good
soil is the one who “hears the word, understands and follows it, and
consequently bears spiritual fruit.”[3] The Apostle Paul describes this fruit,
“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control.”[4]
That brings
us back to where we started. God produces
good fruit. He always has. He always
will. The Lord wants to make something
of your life and scatters seeds through the ministry of the Word and Sacrament,
from the witness of others and the whisper of the Spirit.
Now, for
years I always understood these four different types of soil to represent four
different kinds of people. Lately I’ve
been thinking that there are times in our lives when are lives became tangled
with too many places to go and people to see and things to do. There are times in our lives when our
commitment to the Lord is thin and lacking.
There are times in our lives when we start out in a Bible Study, and payer
groups with good intentions, but then after a while lose interest and fall
away. In other words, all of us have experienced
these different spiritual conditions at one point or another.
Our
question for today is: Can we determine
what kind of soil we want to be? If we’d like to live more faithfully and learn
to give more generously and love more freely; if we’d like to have a greater
sense of joy, patience, kindness, – can we do it? Can we just decide to change
from hard to soft, from shallow to deep, from weed ridden to freshly tilled and
ready for planting? If that were even
possible, how would we do it?
As I thought
about these questions, I remembered another place in the scripture where the
ground was described as being not only good – but also holy!
Moses, you
remember, was keeping the flocks for his father-in-law Jethro, when he stumbled
upon a bush burning, yet not being burned.
And from that burning bush God said, “Moses, take off your sandals for
you are standing on holy ground.” Moses
did, and hid his face for he knew he was in the presence of God.
That’s what
made that ground holy? Was it the bush
burning yet not being burned? Was it
made holy because of a miracle? I think
it was made holy because God was there, and that revelation eventually
empowered Moses drove him back to Egypt to call on Pharaoh to let the people
go.
Only when
we perceive the presence and reality of God, will hardened hearts become soft,
shallow faith become deep, and cluttered weed ridden lives become clear. That’s why we need “eyes to see and ears to
hear”.
So, when
you are at the lake this summer or the beach or in the mountains and you watch
the daybreak or a scarlet sunset, consider that you might be seeing something
of God.
Or if you
hear the cry of a newborn or the strings of an orchestra reaching the stars or
the songs of birds as they greet the day, consider you might be hearing
something from the voice of God.
Or if you
see someone stop and drop something into the cup of someone who’s only
possession is that cup, or even volunteered to teach Vacation Bible School or
Sunday School, consider God may be in these acts of service.
For many of
us we first saw God through the eyes of our mothers. We heard his voice through her prayers. We saw his work through her hands. We felt his love through her love. That’s why Isaiah’s promise makes so much
sense to us, “As one whom a mother comforts, so will I comfort you”, says the
Lord.
For those who have eyes to see and
ears to hear God is everywhere. For
those who do not, God is nowhere to be found.
In Jesus’ view those who see God in everyday acts of kindness live much
more fruitful lives than those who do not.
Any gardener will tell you almost
any plot of land can be redeemed with a little preparation and
perspiration. Hard soil can be tilled,
rocks can be moved, and weeds can be pulled.
Only God can make the garden grow, but we can still get in the field and
do our part – prepare the soil through God’s Word and Sacrament, through prayer
and praise, through service and sacrifice.
In these ways and more we allow God to work in our lives and so bear
fruit.
Let us pray:
Grant us
eyes to see and ears to hear O Lord, so that we might see your fingerprints on
everything we touch and hear you voice in the music of nature and in our songs
of praise. Soften hardened hearts,
deepen shallow spirits, and untangle lives cluttered by temptation so that we
lead faithful and fruitful lives.
Through Christ we pray. Amen.
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