Events of Fertile Ground

This sermon was delivered at First Baptist Church of Austin, TX on July 13, 2014. It was a great morning at our church, mostly because the music was so powerful. Below is the text of the sermon, which I followed fairly closely. It's always better to watch the video of a sermon, in my opinion. If you like good sermons, you should go to fbcaustin.org and listen to some of the ones there. Dr. Roger A. Paynter, our pastor, is amazing. Peace to all of you.

Events of Fertile Ground
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

    I love this sanctuary. I know there is an architectural reason it was designed the way it was, but when you move the pulpit and the choir to the side, putting the table and the cross in the center, you make a theological statement as well. It says, none of the people who occupy this space, whether they sing, or preach, is as important as the God who has called us here.
    When we watch a movie, or television show, read fiction or poetry, look at art, or even listen to music, our minds start searching for meaning to these images and metaphors that are presented to us. Stories and images excite our minds in a very unique way. We pick out sages and Christ-figures, heroes and villains, and the like, but all of these help us to make sense of the medium. When those lenses of interpretation can be established quickly, we begin to invest in the story and are more likely to stick with it to the end. When those lenses are absent it leaves us without an emotional anchor to ground their involvement.
    In the book, Reel Spirituality, Robert Johnson talks about this interpretive practice, in relation to movies, as something we all do, and often it happens unconsciously. However, our minds require interpretation in order to bring these alien characters, who often live lives very different from our own, closer to us. Humanity craves these interpretations so much so that we can take things that have little or no meaning and give them a great deal of weight. Bob Dylan never talks about the meaning of his songs because he knows people will make their own regardless of what he says. Mark Twain, when asked to respond to some literary critics interpretation of the meaning of the Mississippi River in the books Tom Sawer, and Huck Finn said, “It’s just a ‘blank’ river.”
    Today, we are looking at this first parable from the book of Matthew, and it paints a picture using agriculture as its theme. According to the last US census, our population has made a significant change. For the first time in American history, the majority of people live in large urban or suburban areas instead of rural locales. The reason I point this out is to highlight that very few of us can connect to agricultural images the same way our parents and grandparents did. That includes all of us sitting here. I mean we are a downtown church. You would have to drive, at least 45 minutes, maybe more depending on normal traffic, and if the president is in town maybe an entire day just to get to a place where there are farms around. Myself, I grew up in a small community and my grandfather did farm, but I don’t understand agriculture out side of the general knowledge I picked up in school.
    In the nine verses that were not read from Matthew 13 today, the Gospel writer tells us that Jesus teaches his disciples that there is a reason why he teaches in parables. It is so God can allow people to make meaning and interpretation of the parables. Then, he goes on to explain what’s happening in the parable of the sower. Even then, theologians, preachers, teachers, and laypeople have interpreted this parable to narrow down certain images that Jesus used. We have heard them. This passage is used often as a source to inspire evangelism, defend interpretations of Scripture, and exemplify the role of Jesus as our Savior. The sower has been cast as the evangelist who goes out to tell the world about the work of Christ, and we are to take up this call. I’ve even heard the Holy Spirit cast as the sower and Christians cast as those who follow along into the world to reap the harvest. These sermons were all in different locations, different churches from different traditions and even in different countries. And for those places, all of them made sense to the people who received that message.
    Now, some of you probably had a sick feeling in your stomach when I said people have interpreted the words of Jesus, but we’ve already done that. Hop in the “Way Back Machine” with me, and let’s go way back. Way back to earlier in the service when my wife, Meg gave me that very inflated introduction.
    Anyway, when you heard her read that passage from Isaiah and the phrase, “...so shall the word that goes forth from my mouth,” you interpreted “word” in that sentence to have a meaning. Either it was the prophetic statement come from God through the prophet Isaiah, or you expanded it to mean the entirety of the Bible, or maybe you connected it to John chapter one and took it to mean that when Jesus moves, things happen. Regardless, you did not just leave it as it was on the page, you put some meaning to it, and hence interpreted it. Just think, people with initials after their names get paid to do what you just did by listening. Maybe I paid too much for seminary?
    But all kidding aside, no matter how much you truly believe that we can take every passage in the Bible literally, none of us can actually do that. There are places where it just doesn’t make sense, just like in the Isaiah passage. Sometimes, the interpretations we give the passage make perfect sense. The bringer of the message struggles and strives to find exactly how to best reflect the Biblical teaching in our current society with all of its technological, sociological, ecological, and economic differences. Sometimes, the bringer is repeating what they have always heard without testing their faith, as the book of First Peter asks us. Well, we have this same struggle with this passage, but we get some help. Jesus does move us from just the images of seed and ground; to the word of the kingdom and the heart of people. However, we still have to wade through some misconceptions and influenced memory to get back to the heart of this parable.
    For instance, how many of you thought Jesus was talking about the “word of God?” It would make sense. The Old Testament reading already talked about words, and if you are a regular member here, Roger often prays about “words and word.” If you grew up Baptist, you may have heard the phrase, “We are people of the Book,” and often that is used as “word of God.” Unfortunately if you did think Jesus he said “word of God,” Jesus never says this or “Kingdom of God” in the book of Matthew. Instead, he says “word of the kingdom” here. In other passages, when naming the kingdom, he uses the phrase, “Kingdom of Heaven.” It’s a small thing to point out, for sure, but if we are to take the Bible seriously, then we have to be serious about what Jesus says, and where it is said.
    So, what do we do with this “word of the kingdom?” For most of my life, I have heard of this word being, “Jesus has come to forgive you of your sins, if you believe in Him, so you can go to heaven.” Faithful men and women from my childhood, youth, and even in churches where I have served have uttered some form of this statement with total conviction. I’ve taught that from so many pulpits in so many places, and I was wholeheartedly behind this. For more than two decades, this was the altar call that many of us responded to. Billy Graham, probably the most effective evangelist of the twentieth century, always spoke of belief leading to forgiveness. While it is a beautiful thought, I mean who would not want to be forgiven of their failures, I don’t think that is what Jesus is talking about, and the reason, Jesus did not say, I have come to forgive you of your sins, if you believe in me, so that you can go to heaven.” I know I’m stepping into some sticky mud with this. However, to be people of the Book, we should be looking at the Book. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus talks about the kingdom, and what is the acceptable response to the kingdom, for three chapters. We call it the sermon on the Mount and it is the longest single discourse from Jesus in any of the four Gospels. In that sermon, Jesus gives a vivid description of the kingdom, and what kind of life this kingdom calls all of us to take up in response. The word about the kingdom calls us to live differently. It asks us to shift our focus from us as individuals and look out at others as our neighbors.
    In Luke chapter four, Jesus quotes from the prophet Isaiah when he is reading in the Nazarene synagogue. And says,
    “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And then he hands the scroll back and tells the gathered people, “And what you see before you, he’s the one who is going out, doing those things.” I have not been a member of First Austin very long, but if I, or Meg, were to stand up here and say that, you would probably take us down to the Congress Street bridge and throw us in the lake. Or at least, you would tell us to leave and not come back.
    But Jesus is making these kinds of claims, and it does not sound like, “believe in me as the Savior and I will take away your sins so that you can go to heaven when you die.” Instead Jesus says, this is the life I live, and you should live this life if you want to be known as a child of God. Those are very different statements. One is something we are to believe, the other is something we are to live toward. The former takes the responsibility for our missteps away from us through an act of God. Jesus, however, calls us to respond to our missteps by reorienting our life, because God has reconciled us through Christ. You can tweet that if you like.
    The Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, described the word not as something spoken but something that is manifested in the presence of people when the Church, as a community, reflects the life of Christ. The word, then, is not something that we say, or can be said really, instead it is living. This corresponds so much to what Jesus said about how we are to take up our cross, do as he has done, and love as he has love. Why, then, does the idea of Jesus coming into our heart become the dominant metaphor? Well, let’s look at what happened to Jesus when he lived this life. It ended with Jesus being put on a cross and dying a horrible death. That’s not exactly the part of the story we want to emulate, even when we know that Easter Sunday is coming. It’s a lot easier to focus on believing in Jesus because we can talk less about the living like Jesus part. Because when we talk about living like Jesus, it makes us confront the fact that we like our lives just the way they are. We don’t want to rethink political affiliations in light of the Gospel. We do not want to rethink our feelings on social issues in light of the Gospel. And we certainly do not want to be thought of as weird or different, like Jesus was, because that means we might get ridiculed and loose our position in society.
    But the seed, is only part of the parable. The soil where the sower spreads the seed has a very important part to play in this Gospel. In this parable you can not grow seeds without soil. I do know what dirt can do to clothes. I grew up near the Red River, and all of our lakes up there were the same color. I remember having some swim trunks that had a little white on them. For the Fourth of July, when I was a kid, we were going to the lake to spend the day with the family. We swam, fished, skied, tubed and kneeboarded behind the boat that was much older than I am today. And I remember the next day, after we had gotten home, and I was going to play at a friend’s pool. I grabbed my swim trunks, and the white was now a nice reddish brown. That’s the kind of soil I’m used to. I don’t don’t know if that is the soil that Jesus was used to.
    But what I do know is, that if I were to spread seeds to grow a crop, I would definitely make sure that they all end up on good soil. Seeds are expensive, and if I were a farmer this would be my livelihood. There is very little to waste, and so I need to make good choices from the beginning. However, the sower of the parable starts spreading seed, seemingly, everywhere. There is no perceived thought to what kind of soil this is landing on. It is put on the path. It lands on rocks. It flies in among the weeds. It is put on fertile ground. It makes me wonder if this sower is blind or something because I am not a farmer but I know where I would rather spread seed of these four choices. For certain, this sower left the original audience just as perplexed , but that is part of the joy of the parable.
    This word is too precious to be limited by good business. God as the sower shows that this seed needs to go everywhere, even places where it will be choked out and snatched up. But what is this soil supposed to mean to us? Again, in my past experience with this parable from books and such, the soil is supposed to be the hearts of individuals. I remember how this interpretation helped to explain the kids I went to all those conferences with as a kid. I remember watching them respond to the big altar call. If you went to the youth camps I did, then you remember. It was always the last night before everyone went home. We were exhausted, fed a big meal, then lead to worship. The lines would be up the aisles with young women and young men crying over the words from the speaker about how if we died in our church van the next day we wouldn’t know our eternal destiny unless we came down to the front that night. But as we went back to school, things usually faded. My youth minister would talk about how they might be the path, or the rocky soil, or even the weeds. The seed had just not been able to find fertile ground in their hearts.  It makes us recoil a bit now, but individualism is the American way. Our society thrives on it, and our theologies reflect it.
    Instead of seeing the soil as the hearts of individuals, what if the soil is the hearts in communities.  Imagine that. This fertile ground is where, like the Barth quote earlier, the life of Christ becomes manifest in the people of God. The New Testament is full of images of communities living together and working out beliefs. They are not making decisions in a vacuum, just like we are not today. We are responding to the influences around us all the time. What does it look like to be a Christ-follower in 21st-century America? That’s the struggle we are confronted with, and we move in that very particular and powerful context. Just like geologists are telling us about topsoil in response to erosion and water. It is not the same soil from day to day. These are not static locations set in some geographical place or point in time. This is not rock because you can not plant crops in rock. It is fertile ground, combined with good seed that makes these bountiful crops grow. You can not have just part of the equation. Good soil grows nothing without seed, and seed needs the good soil, just like the parable says.
    Combine this good word of the Kingdom with the good soil of hearts in community that are responding to that word, and you have vibrant communities. They are not characterized by right doctrine or proper worship, but vibrant living. That makes good seed in fertile ground an event where the people of God live into the life that was shown to us. It means we have to be active. The event erupts into our lives when the people of God respond to this call from Jesus to live like he lived. It is about movement toward the future of the kingdom not statements of our past comforts. Events are spontaneous, and sweep us away as communities in a movement of God drawing humanity towards the kingdom.
    It’s about loving enemies, turning the other cheek and not resisting evil. Fertile ground and good seed touches the unclean, eats with sinners and prostitutes, returns evil with good, love for violence, bringing in the poor and downtrodden to the great banquet. It loves refugees, heals the brokenhearted and turns the world on its head. It doesn’t just give money for charitable causes but speaks out against injustice and refuses to sit down or be quiet because everyone deserves to be loved. And it says, “You do not get to define love because I am God and I am love.” When it springs up it has a habit of throwing open doors and flinging wide gates. It tears down walls that separate and builds bridges.
    When that event happens, the good seed growing in good soil tells the world that everyone is loved by God and no one is excluded.