Sermon July 13, 2008

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10

Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

Any gardeners here today? Yes? I thought so! How can you live on an island like this and - if you have the land for it - not do just a little?!

How many farmers here today? Folk who earn their living by farming? None!! No surprise there, either. You've probably heard, however, how "careful" farmers are - being a jack-of-all-trades to save money; keeping back some of the seed for next years planting - judicious is a good word.

There are obvious parallels between 21st Century and 1st Century farmers in that light, but there are some differences, too. We're going to talk about those similarities and differences now. One obvious similarity is that in both groups successful farmers are careful.

The Farmer in Jesus' parable was a tenant farmer working a small plot of earth. He would have to be super-careful and super-lucky as well as very skilled to come out at the end of the season with some produce left over after paying all his debts, taxes, and having set aside food for his family for the year.

So do you think the farmer would have been cavalier about spreading his seed? Broadcasting it everywhere? He wouldn't last long if he did!! He would have weeded, removed thorn bushes, got rid of the rocks and stones - done everything to make sure when he planted all his seed went into fertile soil.

We all make assumptions and here's one that we need to examine - what's a good harvest in the terms I just described? Is it two-fold? Five- fold? Ten-fold? The answer is a five-fold harvest.

What, I wonder, would you say if you got a ten-fold harvest? Manna from heaven! A great crop! A gift from God! Cause for celebration throughout the village. The 'gold standard' in crops. In years to come, the peasants would think wistfully back to the crop of that year, and call it 'golden', and reflect on the halcyon days of yore when all was well with the world.

Moving from generalities to specifics we need to look at the farmer in this parable. Did he prepare the soil? Did he weed, remove rocks, thorn bushes? What does Jesus say? Where did the seed fall? Among thorns, on rocks, everywhere! The answer is NO!! He did no preparation. You have to wonder how he could expect to survive!

This farmer is in big trouble. And what do you think the farmers Jesus told this parable to thought of him? Loser!! Forget even 2 fold.....his family's gonna starve!

Here's the kicker, though. What does Jesus say about the harvest? Some of it was wasted, Jesus said. But then, the seed that fell on good soil produced a good harvest - 5 fold, right? Take a look - Thirty, and sixty, and one hundred fold what he planted! It this were a stock portfolio the guy would be in jail for fraud! No one can get that much return on investment!!

So this is not a great harvest - not five-fold. Not a hundred year harvest - not ten-fold. But thirty, and sixty, and one hundred fold. Mind-boggling! Fantastic! Breath-taking!

Impossible for human beings....but not for God! This is the promise of God. The word "abundance" doesn't even being to describe it.

Isaiah says: "For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."

Here we have God as the sower, God as the gardener. But God doesn't work alone. Think of how Paul describes God's presence in this world of ours: "You are temples of the Holy Spirit". We don't get to sit back and watch someone else do the sowing - we're the hands (and the heart).

God is lavishly investing the abundance of sacred love and holy labor, and divine hope on us and through us, here in the garden.

All very well, you say, but what does this mean for us? So what?

One thing, I think, is this: we have a responsibility as stewards of God's creation - God's farm - to take care of that creation, that farm.

And the corner of God's garden we've been given to tend isn't going to grow on its own. Remember the parable of the talents - where the only steward not rewarded by the landholder was the one who did nothing but bury the money he had been given - he did nothing of value with it. Our responsibility is to start with some planting.

Another thing is that while we need to exercise appropriate and careful oversight over the things God has given into our care, over the seed we have been given to sow, we are not, the Parable of the Sower tells us, to be too obsessively cautious about how we sow.

We are, in other words, to be willing to take chances, take risks, to recognize that sometimes we will fail, but that it is better to fail than to have never tried.

Case in point: our Christian Education program for children and youth. We've taken three runs at this over the last seven years. This third time, when we were willing to risk some of our financial assets, we've been blessed with a rich harvest of joy.

What next? What next are we being called upon to do - what broad sweep of the arm, wide spreading of the seed are we to do?

I'm going to leave the answer to that question up to each of you - there are some pretty obvious signs around here, some stated directions we're moving toward.

But, in the end, it will be up to each one of you individually, and all of you together, to make the decision to chance your arms for God.         Amen.