This sermon was originally preached at St. David’s by the Sea on July 16, 2023. The lectionary texts were Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11, Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 (Proper 9, Year A, Track 1).
I’m a Dapper Dan man, proclaimed Ulysses Everett McGill.
In the movie, O Brother Where Art Thou? Everett had a knack for getting into, and then out of, tight spots in life. Based on Homer’s The Odyssey, O Brother focuses on the shared journey of three recently escaped convicts named Everett, Delmar, and Pete in 1930’s Mississippi. As the self-proclaimed leader of the group, owing to the fact that he is not as “stupid as a sack of hammers” like his companions, Everett is on a mission to find a buried treasure.
In the early scenes of the movie, our comedic, protagonistic trio is driving down a rural road in Mississippi after Delmar and Pete have just been baptized in the river. Everett is busy chastising his friends for their religious superstitions and silly rituals when they encounter a black hitch-hiker at a crossroad. With no buildings in sight and nary a house for miles around, they pick up the stranger and begin asking him questions. The young man introduces himself as Thomas Johnson and he tells his captive audience that he had to be at the very intersection for a reason. Here is the rest of their conversation:
Tommy: I had to be up at that there crossroads last midnight, to sell my soul to the devil.
Everett: Well, ain’t it a small world, spiritually speaking. Pete and Delmar just been baptized and saved. I guess I’m the only one that remains unaffiliated. What’d the devil give you for your soul, Tommy?
Tommy: Well, he taught me to play this here guitar *real* good.
Delmar: Oh son, for that you traded your everlasting soul?
Tommy: Well, I wasn’t usin’ it.
And for that you traded your everlasting soul??
And Tommy isn’t the only one! Esau did it in Genesis 25, and, according to Romans, we do it too! Oh the things for which we are all too willing to sell our souls! We happily trade in our heavenly birthright for a “pocketful of mumbles,” as the theologians Simon and Garfunkel once quipped. We are all too willing to mortgage our future glory for present pleasure.
Part of the problem is that what we want to do and what we ought to do are often polar opposites rather than one in the same. I ought to be eating a healthy diet with nutritious foods, but what I want is the greasiest, slimiest, fattiest, cheesiest cheeseburger you can imagine. My oughta’s and my wanta’s don’t match up.
Sadly, the truth of humanity’s sin runs deeper than that, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’d like to start with Jesus’ Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 before turning to our other passages. So, join me in Matthew 13 by turning in your Bibles to page 788. Ready? Let’s go!
We can only make it 3 words into our Gospel passage before having to pause. Matthew begins chapter 13 with the words, “That same day,” which should have all of you asking: what day?
If we look back to chapter 12, we find out that this is the same day that Jesus healed a demon-possessed man, the same day that he was accused of being in league with Beelzebul, and the same day that his mother and brothers tried to see him while he was speaking to the crowd inside a house. He famously said, “Who are my mother and brothers? Those who do God’s will!”
On that same day Jesus left the house where was teaching and he went out to the sea. It’s not too hard to imagine Jesus leaving a house over here on Yawl or Yacht Haven and walking down 4th Street South to the beach.
As he sits down on the sand, the crowd begins to swell and surge. The gathering crowd is so vast that he has to get into a boat, push off from shore, and begin teaching from the water.
Notice, he doesn’t turn the crowd away. His response is never ever to get mad at the crowd for gathering. He always has compassion on the lost sheep who approach him.
Jesus thus teaches a parable to the entire crowd gathered around him on the beach in Capernaum. Parables are like onions and gemstones. With regard to onions, there are many different layers that you can peel back. With regard to gemstones, you can hold a precious stone in your hand and turn it over as you view it from every angle, constantly seeing a new scene or image. Parables operate in the same way…they are something for us to peel back, to turn over and there discover a new layer, a new angle that we have never seen before.
This parable is called “The Parable of the Sower,” but if you read closely enough you find out that it isn’t actually about the sower, nor is it about the seed. In fact, the focus of this parable is the four different soils where the sower has sown seed and the varying effectiveness of his efforts.
The presentation of the parable in verses 3-9 is straight forward:
A sower casts his seed upon four different kinds of soil.
The seed on the path is eaten up by the birds.
The seed on the rocky ground begins to grow but then is choked out.
The seed on the thorny ground grows but produces no fruit.
The seed in the good soil grows and yields upward of 100, 60, or 30-fold.
Everyone who has come out to “hear the teacher” is given this parable… but then the scene shifts. In verse 10 we find Jesus and the disciples alone together. This is highly important because for the last two chapters Jesus has been teaching his “little ones,” the disciples, what it means to inhabit, teach, and spread the Kingdom of God.
He has told them that they will face persecution in their ministry.
He has told them that those who do the will of the Father are his family, rather than his mother and brothers.
He has explained to them the cost and the reward of following him.
So for Jesus to privately explain the parable to them, and to tell them why he teaches in parables in the first place, is indicative of the fact that their ministry is being described by the illustration.
We must not overlook that Jesus is using agrarian imagery in an agrarian society. We live in a post-agrarian, industrial society, but the people hearing Jesus’ parable would have immediately understood the farming references as many of them were engaged in such practices. These farmers are not operating under their own steam or for their own benefit; they were not their own masters. Living under Roman occupation meant that they served a higher master; all that they did was in service, at some level, to Rome and Caesar.
What’s more, the ground in Galilee was not known for its abundant yield. Farming could be done in certain places, but the soil was not like that of the fertile crescent or other highly verdant areas teeming with fecundity. The soil was actually pretty rocky and farming as a peasant under foreign occupation in land that was treacherous for farming would have been incredibly frustrating. Jesus’ parable would have struck a chord with his larger audience on that point.
But if we go a layer deeper, we discover that Jesus is not teaching about farming or financial practices.
Jesus is not revolutionizing the Galilean farming industry;
Nor is he introducing an environmentally-resistant wonder-seed into Galilean soil.
He is not selling Vitametavegamin, the cure-all for those who are “tired, rundown, or listless.”
At least not in an agrarian sense.
In verse 19, Jesus makes reference to hearing “the word of Kingdom” and then he will repeatedly refer to “hearing the word” at each stage of his parabolic explanation. The seed is the word of the Kingdom. We have to ask the question, then, what Kingdom? and this is where things get interesting, this is where we find out that the parable, per usual, is highly subversive.
He is talking about the kingdom of God rather than the Empire of Rome. Roman rule, Roman glory, Roman peace was everything in 1st century Israel. It colored every aspect of life. It germinated every detail of Jesus’ story, even his birth was shaped by the Roman narrative because Caesar Augustus ordered a census. The hearers of Jesus’ parable are actively living under the boot of the Roman empire, and yet Jesus is describing the glorious nature of another kingdom, a different kingdom, a kingdom without end.
This kingdom is good news for the poor, the downtrodden, the neglected, the forgotten, the overlooked, the abused and misused, the unemployed and underemployed, the sin-sick, the heartsick, and the soul-sick. This kingdom is freedom, it is release, it is salvation, it is jubilee, it is abundant life in the here and now. This kingdom is the news that God’s reign and rule is here, that God has put on flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood, that God is both covenant maker and covenant keeper, and that God will trample down death with his own death, opening up to us the way of eternal, abundant life.
If the seed sown is the Kingdom of God, then who is doing the sowing?? As we can glean from our reading of Matthew 11-13, it is the disciples and therefore you and I who are sowing. Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 3 when he writes, “I planted, Apollos watered, but it was God who gave the growth.” Within the context of the parable, Jesus casts the disciples as the sowers; within the context of salvation history, God is the grower and he calls us to be the sowers. We are called to plant and water as God’s co-laborers in the kingdom.
But why does this parable need to be taught at all? If the story of Jesus is the only really-real reality in the world, if the power that raised Jesus from the is the same power that lives in us, if they have been entrusted with the message of the Kingdom, with world-shattering, history-making, life-changing story of the crucified and resurrected Christ, then why would they need to be forewarned about differing soils? The disciples might be tempted, we might be tempted to think that the message of this good news, this radical reversal of reality, would be accepted by all people, at all times, and in all places.
But that is not how the world works…
All soils will receive the kingdom seed, but not all who hear will actually hear. There are times in a conversation when I am distracted that I might say to Rebecca, I heard you but I didn’t actually hear you. As in, I heard your words but they didn’t penetrate. In Scripture, to truly hear is to do. We live in a world that says seeing is believing, but in Scripture we discover that hearing is doing, hearing is obeying, hearing is faithing.
The intended and hoped for response to the “word of the Kingdom” is faithful obedience. But some who hear the word hear it without truly hearing it; they hear it for a minute before the noise of the world overrides that frequency; or they hear it but it doesn’t take root.
The planting and growing of seeds of faith can be affected by a host of external circumstances and forces. Jesus identifies these external forces as
– the evil one;
– “trouble or persecution”;
– and “the cares of this age and the lure of wealth.”
His list is by no means exhaustive; here are other external forces that negatively affect our ability to “hear the word of God.”
In Genesis 25 we encounter the birth of Isaac’s two sons, Jacob and Esau. The one son of promise has already doubled his legacy. Esau and Jacob come into this world as the eventual fathers of two different nations. We are painted the picture of competition and strife as Jacob steals his brother’s birthright. In just two chapters, Jacob will steal Esau’s blessing as well.
Esau’s birthright was tremendous. Culturally, the firstborn would receive a double portion of the inheritance. He would become the patriarch of the family, the one with authority over every other family member, and the inheritor of the wealth and estate. Theologically, in the case of Esau and Jacob, the birthright is even greater because it included the inheritance of the Abrahamic covenant and the covenantal promises.
And Esau traded all of that in for a bowl of lentil soup!
If you listen closely enough to Genesis 25, you can hear Delmar saying to Esau in the background: and for that you traded your everlasting birthright?!
God had promised a land flowing with milk and honey, a people more numerous than the sand on the shores and the star in the sky, and to bless the nations of the world through Abraham’s line, but Esau gave it up to Jacob, preferring the instant gratification of a hot meal instead.
What are the soils that will prevent the word of the Kingdom from growing in our own lives or in the lives of those around us? Here are 4 more options:
- We live in a day where we are becoming over-reliant, wholly dependent on technology. Technology isn’t bad, but who needs God when you have Google? Why ask the Almighty for something when you can get it on Amazon? For the biggest questions of life, Apple is still saying, “there’s an app for that.” We have exchanged the I-Thou relationship for i(nformation)-now craving.
- We are living in a time when there is a plethora of self-help gurus, do-it-yourself spiritualities, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps instruction manuals, and find-your-truth-within-yourself guides. We have traded in our heavenly birthright for the pleasure and privilege of staring at our own reflection in the pool like Narcissus.
- C.S. Lewis famously said “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Whether it be alcohol, sex, drugs, health, wealth, or prosperity, we are far too easily pleased.
- Finally, to our own detriment we have lowered the bar of expectations and convictions within the church. We have determined that the cost of discipleship is too high, the call to the cross too great, that we would rather have Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. We have traded in the omnipotence of God for the impotence of secularism.
This is the soil we are sowing in! Before we judge Esau or the world too harshly, let us remember that all of us have been there. We’ve all been Esau but the good news is that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!
As sowers, we are not instructed to go out judge the soil or to find good soil and to only plant there. Friends, God’s love is so extravagant, his purposes so holy, his promises so sure, his grace so complete, his power so wonderful that he calls us to sow the seed of his Kingdom everywhere. With the power of God, what is sown can be grown.
As disciples, we are called to spiritual growth. By God’s grace we grow in the Spirit after rejecting the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
As the Church, as ambassadors of the Kingdom, as the called-and-sent ones, we are called to Kingdom growth. God gives the growth, our job, therefore, is to plant, water, wait, and watch.
Kingdom growth helping others realize that the mud pies in the slums cannot compare to the ocean! It is discover that God’s extravagant love and enduring promises are always greater than the temptations and lures of this world. It is realizing that a pocketful of mumbles, or a hot bowl of lentil soup, or any other get-rich-quick or do-it-yourself scheme pales in comparison to the power of God which raised Jesus from the dead! Friends, in a world of want-to-be kings and would-be-kingdoms, we have been entrusted with the “word of the Kingdom” to sow in the soils of this world…may God give the growth!
Porter C. Taylor 