July 12, 2020
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Isaiah 40:28-31; Matthew 13:1-9
Matthew tells us that Jesus had
to explain this parable to his disciples.
The text reads, “When he was alone, those who were around him along with
the twelve asked him about the parables.
And he said to them, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of
the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.’”[1] The disciples don’t understand the parable,
so Jesus gives them the secret. The
secret is this…
The seed is the Word of
God. Those on the path hear the word,
but evil takes it away from them. Those
on rocky ground hear the word, but when trouble comes, they fall away. Those in the thorns hear the word, but the
desires of the world choke them. Those
in good soil hear, accept, and bear fruit.
Matthew tells us that Jesus gave
this explanation only to the disciples. Some
scholars suggest that this explanation of the parable originated with
Mark. Others suggest that it predates
Mark, but that the explanation was added by the early Christians, and may not have
been given by Jesus. However the
explanation originated, it doesn’t do much for those of us who aren’t in the good
soil.
Have you ever felt stepped
on? Have you ever felt like you had an
opportunity stolen away from you? Have
you ever been unsure of yourself, unprepared, not up to the task? Have you ever felt like other people are
pulling you away from what you love?
Have you ever been told that something you really liked was stupid,
boring, or not true? I think that more
often than not I feel like I am stuck on the path, or the rocks, or surrounded
by thorns. Good soil seems harder and
harder to find.
One scholar[2]
suggests that this parable is a warning to those of us who are touched by the
gospel. As the seed of the word is cast out
into the world, some of it will fail to grow.
This parable is as much about failure as it is about success. Another interpreter offers a more bleak
analysis. “We preach the gospel, but the
results are scarcely impressive.”[3] Our churches are shrinking; people are going
elsewhere to get their spiritual needs met.
Why bother speaking, you might ask, if no one is listening?
In the parable, much of the seed
fails to produce. After three failures, there
must be some good news. There must be
some success coming, right? There is an
expectation that there will be a harvest, and it had better be a good one. The harvest does come. The seed in the good soil produces fruit,
thirtyfold, and sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.
But, “Is this harvest of thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold
superabundant? The contemporary evidence
indicates that it is within the range of the normal.”[4]
The seed of a grain or fruit produces a plant that has many grains or fruit, as
many as a hundred. The seed fails to
grow three times, and finally the harvest comes, but it is average. How is this a miracle? How is this the
kingdom of God?
When I was a kid, Michael Jordan
was still playing basketball. How many of you remember watching Jordan? Well,
he was pretty good; possibly the best to ever play the game. But he also
failed, a lot. On a poster in Kaleidoscoops Ice Cream in Crystal Lake there is
a quote that reads, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost
almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and
missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I
succeed.”
A message printed once in the
Wall Street Journal was entitled “Don’t Be Afraid to Fail.” It read,
You’ve failed many times, although you may not remember. You fell down the first time you tried to
walk. You almost drowned the first time
you tried to swim, didn’t you? Did you
hit the ball the first time you swung a bat?
Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a
lot. R.H. Macy failed seven times before
his store in New York caught on. English
novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564
books. Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times,
but he also hit 714 home runs. Don’t
worry about failure. Worry about the
chances you miss when you don’t even try.[5]
Now, I know that I fell down a
lot when I was learning to walk. But I
did learn. I did finally succeed, but
you know, I’m not a world champion walker, or anything. I’m no Olympic sprinter. I can walk, I can even run, but it’s a pretty
average skill. Is the parable suggesting
that the ability to walk, something almost everyone can do, is a sign of the
kingdom?
Maybe the point is that not
everyone can walk. For some
people, just being able to stand unassisted would be a miracle. Remember, Jesus went around Israel preaching
and teaching, but he also healed people.
Jesus said to the paralytic, “stand up, take your bed and go to your
home.”[6]
A tremendous miracle for the paralytic, to be sure; and it was probably not
easy to do, just get up and walk home, even having been healed by Jesus. That person would have to learn to walk all
over again, and would probably fall down a lot.
But it was a miracle to be given that chance, to be able to do something
as ordinary as walking. Even something
as ordinary as walking can be a miracle.
Have any of you been tent camping?
Were you in scouting? I’m pretty sure that none of you were able to pitch a
tent or start a fire on your own the first time. It took practice. You had to
fail before you could succeed. Those are good skills to have, and once they have
been learned it is right to acknowledge the accomplishment. But there is a
bigger lesson in the trying and failing.
Sometimes the miracle is in the
failure. When we fail, we learn to try again. We learn to seek help from
others. We learn that the best things in life don’t come easily, but require
hard work, discipline, and perseverance.
And sometimes, when we fail, we
learn that we can’t succeed at everything. Sometimes we learn how to move on
and accept our limitations. Sometimes, when we don’t get what we want, we find
that we have received what we need in spite of ourselves. Sometimes, when we
don’t get what we think we need, God provides what we really need.
When you are farming, failure is
inevitable. You plant your seed, and not
all of it is going to grow. Things
happen. Not everything works out. In fact, failure is to be expected. However, it is possible that “In failure and
everydayness lies the miracle of God’s activity.”[7]
The kingdom comes, but it’s not where we expect. The kingdom comes not in the miraculous, but
in the ordinary. God is found in unexpected places, on the path, in the rocks,
in the thorns. Jesus chose his
disciples, not from among the mighty, but from the ordinary. He didn’t choose the Roman emperor, but the
fishermen, James and John. Jesus didn’t
choose the chief priest, but Levi the tax collector. Jesus chooses his followers from among the
ordinary people, people like you and me.
The disciples of Jesus were
people who had walked the hard-packed road of life. They were people who had
found a way to move the rocks out of their fields. They were people who had
managed to heal from the scratches left by the thorns. They are people who have
learned to pitch a tent in the rain and build a fire to warm up by. They are
people who have made serving others their goal. They are people who have made
following Christ the way they live. They are ordinary people who recognize the
miracles to be found in the failures.
What miracles can be found in
the ordinary? Simple water, blessed and
poured over the head of an infant becomes the sign and seal of membership in
the body of Christ. Plain bread and
ordinary wine, when broken and shared at the table, become a sacred remembrance
of the one who died that we might have eternal life. Ordinary elements are transformed into the
holy sacraments. A group of people
gathered in a room, with a candle, and a book, find God in one another. The message of forgiveness allows the addict to
feel God’s grace, and to begin again.
The sun came up this morning.
A song called “Testify to Love”
captures this feeling:
All the
colors of the rainbow, all the voices of the wind,
Every dream that reaches out finds where love begins.
Every story, every star, every mountain, every sea
Every hand that reaches out in mercy and in peace
Testifies to the love of God.[8]
The miracle is there in the
ordinary and the everyday. Tell me, what
miracle can you find today?
[1]
Matthew 13:11. The scripture quotations
contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright ©
1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the
Churches of Christ in the
[2]
Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the
Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1989).
[3]
David Buttrick, Speaking Parables: A
Homiletic Guide (
[4]
Scott, 357.
[5]
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken
Soup for the Soul rev. ed. (HCI, 1993), 228.
[6]
Matthew 9:6.
[7]
Scott, 362.
[8] “Testify to Love” by Henk Pool, Robert T. Riekerk, Paul Field, and Ralph Van Manen of Avalon. Copyright © 1998 Universal Music Publishing Group, EMI Music Publishing.
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