Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23;  Isaiah 55:10-11

A sower went out to sow…  I wonder how many times you’ve heard this parable.

It’s in all three of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, so it seems clear that the early followers of Jesus thought it was important.

The parable is an allegory, and when his disciples ask him to explain it to them Jesus tells them what the different elements represent.

• The seed, says Jesus, is the “word of the kingdom.”   In Luke he says it’s “the word of God,” and in Mark simply “the word”  But Matthew is more specific: the seed is “the word of the kingdom.”

• The seed that falls on the path and is eaten by birds represents those who hear the word of the kingdom but don’t understand or take time to consider it “so the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart.”

• The seed that falls on rocky ground represents those who are initially enthusiastic but there is no depth in their response.  The word of the kingdom can’t take root in their lives.
• Some of the seed is choked by thorns.  Jesus tells his disciples that thorns and weeds represent the cares of the world, the lure of wealth, the busyness of maintaining a certain standard of living.  These things suck away all the energy that would sustain the word of the kingdom.

• And then there’s the good soil which generates a bountiful yield.  But what is that exactly?  A rich spiritual life?  A pious life? A life devoted to religion and evangelism?  

It’s often suggested that it helps to understand a parable more fully if you try to place yourself in the story.  How would you see yourself in this parable?  Would you be the sower?  The seed? 

In all the years I’ve preached this parable, I’ve usually focused on asking us to reflect on what kind of soil we are.  Judging by commentaries and other sermons I’ve seen or heard, that’s a very common approach to this parable:  What kind of soil are you?

But that’s not the only possibility here.  We can place ourselves in the parable in other ways.  In fact, when I think about it, I know I have played other roles in this parable.

I think there have probably been times when I might have been a big, flat, underground rock in somebody else’s field.  I think of all the years I worked with young people and led youth events.  I remember the energy and enthusiasm of all those kids, and then I think about how few of them are still part of the church now, and I wonder—did we introduce them to a faith that was too shallow?  Did we give them too much flash and not enough substance?  Did we—did I— do something that somehow blocked their roots?

I know there were times when I was a weed.  I know there were times when my mere existence probably restricted someone else’s spiritual growth—if for no one else then at least for my parents.  I know that sometimes I was the “cares of this world” for them.   But maybe I imposed some care or busy-ness that stymied the growth of others, too.  It’s hard to live in any kind of interdependent relationship without bringing some of the cares of this world with you.  Relationships, especially family relationships almost always include pressures about time and money and other resources.  If you have kids or a spouse or a partner, then “the cares of this world” are just part of the package.  And once you get used to a certain standard of living and to making sure your loved ones enjoy certain advantages and opportunities, those things just become kind of automatically incorporated into your way of life and you don’t think too much about how all that might be affecting your relationship with the rest of the world or your relationship with God.  So maybe being the weeds or thorns in somebody’s field is just unavoidable if you have any kind of life at all with other people.

Then there’s the Sower.  We usually think of the Sower as God or Jesus.  That’s out of humility, perhaps, but it’s also a pretty effective way to make sure that our own role in this parable remains passive.  And I don’t think Jesus is calling us ever to be passive where the kingdom of God is concerned.

As I reread and rethink this parable, it occurs to me that Jesus could very well be inviting us to think of ourselves as the sower.  In fact, it really is our job as followers of Jesus to be spreading the word of the kingdom out there in the everyday world.  We’re supposed to be out there in the world scattering the seed everywhere we go.  It’s part of our discipleship.  In fact, you’ve probably already been the sower more times than you know.

Which brings us to the seed.  Just what is this seed that we’ve been sowing?

Assuming that in some way, shape or form you are indeed living out the gospel in your everyday life, just what Good News are you proclaiming?  What is the seed that you are sowing?

For the past 20+ years, religion in general but Christianity in particular has been in decline.  There has been a lot of analysis of why that’s happening, but one thing seems clear:  it’s not for a lack of Sowers sowing the seed.  There are still a lot of evangelists out there in the world using some of the most sophisticated tools in history.  There is no shortage of church outreach and church growth and church invitation programs.  So why aren’t we getting results?  Has the whole world turned into rocky or thorny soil?  Is it all one hard-packed foot-path of cares and worries and pursuit of wealth where the Good News simply can’t take root?

Maybe.  Certainly there seems to be a lot more of all that.  But maybe we have a different problem altogether. 

Maybe there’s a problem with the seed we’ve been sowing.

Let’s go back for a minute to all that seed that falls along the path.  People hear the word of the kingdom and they don’t understand it.  It doesn’t connect with them.  It doesn’t get their attention.  So it doesn’t take root.

Now let’s stretch the metaphor.  What if it’s the seed that’s the problem?  What if somewhere along the way we substituted a sack of hybrid seed for the original seed that Jesus was sowing.  

And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that that hybrid seed worked pretty well for a very long time but now it doesn’t.  What if, even when that seed is falling on fertile ground, people understand the message but it just doesn’t make sense to them anymore so they reject it.

For a long time, we’ve been sowing a seed of what Brian McLaren calls “carrot on a stick” theology—talking about our faith in Christ as if it’s primarily about going to heaven when we die.  Sometimes it’s called fire insurance theology.

Here’s Fire Insurance theology in a nutshell:  

• We’re all doomed to Hell.   Hell is the default afterlife because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  God is deeply offended by sin.  But sin is inescapable.  It’s part of the human condition.  So we’re all doomed.

• God demands compensation for the offense of our sin and the way we have become a blight on the perfection of God’s original creation.  “The wages of sin is death.”  Jesus is sacrificed to appease God and save us.  He takes the punishment we deserve and pays the debt we owe for our sin.

• If we accept what Jesus has done and invite Jesus into our hearts, then God forgives our sin and we get to go to heaven

You’ve all heard this theological story, right?

Fire insurance theology doesn’t work anymore.   It’s not that people don’t understand it, it’s that they do understand it and it doesn’t make sense to them anymore.   And truthfully, it never really did, even in a world where every culture and every religion practiced sacrifice in some way, shape or form because the gods needed to be appeased. 

Carrot-on-a-stick theology, fire insurance theology doesn’t work anymore because the flaws in its internal logic have been laid bare:  

• It’s a theology that talks about a God of infinite love one moment but then sanctifies bloodshed and violence the next. 

• It describes a God who is satisfied if we agree to an intellectual transaction rather than a God who is passionately interested in living with us, working through us, and loving us as we endure the troubles of life. 

• It describes Jesus primarily as a cosmic dealmaker who goes through hell to buy our way out of eternal misery rather than as the very presence of Emmanuel, God with us, who teaches, inspires and leads us as we undergo a complete transformation of the heart, soul, and mind so that God’s vision of shalom for the world can become a reality “on earth as it is in heaven.” 

• Carrot-on-a-stick/Fire Insurance Theology leads to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”—a way of thinking that says “since I’ve accepted Jesus as my personal savior and he’s forgiven my sins, then not only is nothing more expected of me, but anything I do from here on out is okay.  It’s all forgiven in advance.”  

Carrot-on-a-stick/fire insurance theology has been the church’s primary theological story for a long time now.  But that’s not the Good News that Jesus preached.  That’s not the seed he was sowing.

In v. 19, Jesus calls the seed “the word of the kingdom.”  That’s what the sower is sowing. In The Divine Conspiriacy, Dallas Willard wrote, “The Gospel is less about how to get into heaven after you die and more about how to live in the kingdom of heaven before you die.”

Have you noticed that in the gospels Jesus does four basic things:  

• He announces that the kingdom of heaven is arriving.  It is within reach;

• He teaches what that reign of God looks like and how it operates.  That’s what the beatitudes and all the parables are all about.  When Jesus preaches and teaches, he is casting a vision of a new reality, a reality that is achievable if we will live as he lives;

• He liberates the spiritually oppressed so they are free to participate fully in this new reality; 

• And he heals people.  He makes them whole.

When Jesus sends his disciples out on their mission he tells them to do those same things—announce the kingdom, cast out demons, heal the sick.

THAT’s the seed the Sower went out to sow.

That’s the seed we should still be sowing.

The gospel is not just about your personal salvation—or anyone’s personal salvation—but it does include our personal salvation if we really understand what salvation means.  

For too long we’ve understood “being saved” simply to mean “being rescued” –-having our fat pulled out of the fire.  But that’s only one of its meanings.  Its older, deeper meaning is “to be healed, to be made whole.”  So when St. Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” another way to hear that is “work out your healing” or “work out your wholeness” with fear and trembling. (Phil. 2:12)  Oh, and by the way, “you” is plural here.  Work it out for all of you, all y’all.

Richard Rohr said, “When religion is not about healing, it really does not have much to offer people in this life.” 

Rohr goes on to say, “If there isn’t much of a relationship between our religion and our politics, I think it’s because we are not involved in healing ourselves. How can we understand the healing of the world?  Only whole people can call forth a more whole world.  Healing depends on relating with love and compassion.”

So here’s the Good News.  Here’s the seed we can sow, the seed Jesus was sowing:  

God loves you and wants to heal you.  You collectively and you individually.

God wants to heal your body.  I confess I don’t have much experience with that and don’t know much about how that works.  I do believe, however, that God is still in the physical healing business through medicine and the healing arts and prayer and every once in a while, through a miracle or two.

God wants to heal your soul.  God wants to heal your anger and your fear and your doubt and your brokenness.   God wants to find that place in you that’s turned hard and stony and soften it with love.  God wants to touch that place in your heart that feels like it will always be wounded and bathe it with compassion and joy.  God wants to heal your relationships.  And that includes your relationship with yourself.

God wants to heal you, body, mind and spirit.

But it’s even better than that. God doesn’t want to heal just you.  God wants to heal everything.  You.  Your family.  The community.  The culture.  The environment.  Our politics.  The nation.  The world.  

When John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world, the Greek word that gets translated as world is Cosmos.  God so loved everything.

Here’s my own translation of John 3.16-17 – 

This is how much God loved the world and everything: God gave his unique Son so that no one need be destroyed or lost; by trusting in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.  God didn’t send this Son condemn us, but so that through him the world could be healed and made whole.

The good news of the kingdom—the seed that the Sower has been sowing—is that God is at work to heal the world.  To heal all of creation.  To heal us.  To heal our relationships.  To make us whole.  That’s really been the Good News all along.  That’s been the real seed we’re supposed to be sowing—a healthier, more peaceful and more loving vision for the life of all humanity. 

It’s true, the soil has changed.  Fields we thought were fertile might not be and the good soil might not be where we expect it—but then the Sower in the parable doesn’t go looking for fertile soil.  He just casts the good seed all around and trusts that some of it will land in fertile ground and grow.  

I believe that if we get back to sowing that original seed—announcing that God’s vision of a whole and healthy and fair world is within reach, if we get back to living in a way that shows the world around us that God is working with us and in us and through us to make God’s vision of justice and equity and God’s ethic of shalom a reality on earth as it is in heaven—I believe if we proclaim that the reign of God is within reach and live as if it is already our reality, then we will see it take root and grow in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.   We will see what Isaiah promised so long ago: 

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven

                  and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

         making it bring forth and sprout,

                  giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

         so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

                  it shall not return to me empty,

         but it shall accomplish that which I purpose

                  and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.