Preached at Marion Friends Church, June 10, 2012
The story of the sower collected from Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8
Here is a picture of the secret of the way God
governs:
Listen up! A sower went out to sow. And as he
sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed
fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up
quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched;
and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and
the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into
good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding
thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear
listen!” ... The sower sows the word.
What is “the word”? It can legitimately be a number
of things: a story, an event, a doctrine, an instruction, an explanation; for a
follower of Jesus, it is speaking what God tells that follower to speak.
Some don’t understand what they hear, so they
instantly forget it; some receive it with joy but don’t let it go deep in their
lives, so they lose interest when times are hard; some allow the cares of the
world, the lure of money, the desire for other things, the desire to be
important, the need for affirmation to choke out any growing they might do, so
that they don’t see any results from their belief; some are open and ready and
honest; these take it seriously and act on it, and they see lots of growth and
results.
Jesus says to his disciples then, and to us now,
pay attention to what you hear. The more
you listen to what God says and act on what you hear, the more you will hear;
if you don’t act on what God tells you, you’ll lose the little ability to hear
that you have. God doesn’t whisper
things to you so that you’ll keep them secret, but so you can disclose them to
others.
And be encouraged: the kingdom of heaven grows
quietly under the surface—your obedience will have results in due time. Trust God to tend the seeds you’ve sown. And
the little seed you have sown will grow into a tree. Trust God to make this happen.
And if you see that some weeds grow up in the field,
don’t worry about it. Let God separate
the weeds from the grain. If you try to
pull them up, you’ll pull up the good plants also. God can handle this in God’s own time.
The most obvious teaching here has to do with
sharing the good news that Jesus has brought the Kingdom of God, the area where
God rules, right down among us and within us. We can publish the truth of what
God has done for us, and then trust God with the results. God has set us free, has given us permission,
to tell what we know of God’s love and mercy and to bring healing and freedom
and forgiveness to others, just as Jesus did.
God is closer to us than the air, eager to help us live life well and
joyfully, and present to carry with us the things that weigh us down. We can tell people about this by how we live
and also by what we say, both of which we are doing in obedience to the
government of God.
But there is more here in this story. I know because of how I used to read it and
how I read it now. I used to read it as
four different kinds of people. But I came to realize that I have all four of
these soils in myself. I have the part
that doesn’t understand what God is saying to me, so it slips out of my
mind. I have the part that doesn’t get
into my deep soul, so it dies under pressure.
I have the part that doesn’t affect how I live because I am worrying
about money or job or who did me wrong.
Thank God I also have the part that eagerly, honestly, openly welcomes
God’s word and lets it affect how I think and behave by obeying it.
So
is there anything I can do about worrying, shallowness, or simple hardness of
heart? (For the following, I use Richard Foster’s The Celebration of Discipline as a general framework.)
The
stories I’m going to tell you are simply all illustrations of the fact that God
honors us when we take our small, ineffective efforts to inch nearer by
blessing us and others through them. I want to encourage those of you with
hearts that long to be more and more open to the spirit of God to hear what
follows and take the parts that speak to you. These are my stories, and they
are not all for everyone here. But I
hope at least one will be for each of you.
Praying
The
writer Flannery O’Connor ("The Enduring Chill") has a priest say to an agnostic young man who doesn’t
pray, “Well, you will never learn to be good unless you pray. You cannot love Jesus unless you speak to
him.” A number of times in my life, I have kept a prayer journal. At times I’ve written out my prayers, at
other times, I have just kept a list of the requests I’m praying for and
written down when there was closure on them.
The latter was more helpful to me in learning to trust God as I saw God
answering so many prayers. Praying about
little things and seeing that God cares and answers gives me faith to pray
about big things like war, famine, dying children, injustice, politics.
Frank
Laubach, a missionary in the 20th century and the founder of an
effective literacy program, said that perhaps we were put on earth to pray for
our neighbors. I have yet to have
someone say, “No, don’t pray for me,” even if they themselves are not able to
have faith.
The
50 days of prayer in preparation for YM came out of a concern from a whole
bunch of people. I hope you are
participating in this because as a denomination we want to hear from God and do
what God says, we want to learn to be good and to love Jesus.
Studying
or Paying Attention
Several
years ago, I read the book of Mark all at one sitting for several weekends in a
row to see how the readings might change. It blew my heart open to Jesus. You try it.
Jesus leaps off the page when the whole story (all 20 pages) zips by.
You can see why people dropped everything to follow him and hear him
speak. You can also see why people got
mad at him, and you see why St Paul says that if Jesus is not resurrected,
humans are completely miserable. The
universe without that person in it—not much of a place, really, particularly
once you’ve seen him in action.
Listening
and Obeying
In
Quaker worship, there is often a spell where people sit silently and wait for
God to speak. I started feeling moved by
God to speak in high school, and I was so honored, and still am so honored,
that I want to be obedient. Often, one
or two people will tell me that what I said spoke to them, and that is
confirmation to me that I was supposed to share.
When
I was in college, Bill Vaswig came to speak in our church. Bill was a Lutheran minister who was
preaching about obeying the Holy Spirit.
He said, why not trust in those impulses to do good. Call that person on your heart; do that next
good thing you’ve been thinking of. See
what happens. So one thing to do is to
listen and do what you hear. George
MacDonald wrote that God always makes clear the very next good thing we are to
do, even if what we are to do after that is still unclear.
Dallas Willard taught me in The
Divine Conspiracy that God is closer to me than the air I breathe. Paul teaches that we are indwelt by the Holy
Spirit as if we were a house. I cannot
be separated from God. Thinking about
that fact, living in that truth, what an awe-inspiring honor to carry God from
place to place. My car is often a place
where God corners me and nudges me to grow up.
One of my most amazing experiences of forgiving another person took
place in a car, with the radio on even, because God was right there also,
pushing me to move a little closer to true forgiveness.
Confessing
I
really hungered for someone to confess to at one confused and desperate point
in my life. I confessed everything to
God, but I really wanted to tell another person. I did have a spiritual director/counselor at
that time to whom I was mostly transparent, and that was helpful. However, I hungered to hear someone tell me
that my sins were forgiven.
Almost
accidentally, I was able to tell someone this truth—someone said to me, why do
I feel so miserable about the past? And I said to her, you know, your sins are
forgiven. She witnessed to me a week
later that those words lifted a burden from her heart she had been carrying for
years.
Giving
For
me, this started with giving my tithe to the church back when I started working
for money in high school. Then as time
passed, I read C.S. Lewis’s suggestion that giving ought to cramp your style a
little. When I got a dog, I felt
convicted that if I could afford dog food and vet bills, I could afford to give
money to the hungry. Mark and I give
money to people working for parachurch organizations because I’m a missionary
kid, and to social causes or organizations I believe in because I’m a US and
world citizen. It does cramp my style a
bit—but it helps weed my heart of love of riches and possessions. I want to be thankful without being grabby.
I
have also repeatedly given myself as completely as I know how to God, and I
have discovered that God believes I mean it.
I
find the next two attitudes enormously difficult and linked by the necessity of
trusting God to give me what I really need.
Fasting
I
don’t think I’ve voluntarily gone without food for decades and maybe
never. I have friends who witness to me
that this is one of the ways God works with them. I get migraines when I skip meals, I get
faint and cranky and I can’t think straight.
So I don’t go without food.
However,
C.S. Lewis wrote that sometimes we think we really need something (like food,
but maybe something else) and we don’t have it, and this is a fast God has sent
us. Like if I miss a meal, I can embrace
that as a fast God has sent me, and offer it to God as a gift. Or if I think I need praise or affirmation
and none is forthcoming, I can embrace that absence as the fast God has sent
me.
Submitting
This
is the hardest for me—I don’t trust easily, not even God, and to take the
events of my life as expressions of God’s will for me requires very hard work
on my part. I try to start small by
saying when I am impatiently waiting at a RR crossing, this is God’s will for
me. I am practicing for when life goes
nothing like what I expected in big ways—it is an act of faith for me to take
this as being from God and trust in God’s love despite disappointment. And the part about letting anger go, letting
my rights go, not insisting on being vindicated—that’s very hard. Jesus said we need to take up our crosses
daily. This is what that word means to me.
One
final way to get to know God better is by Celebrating.
The
kingdom of God is compared to a party at least as often as it is to a garden or
field. When I hear God, I can risk being
obedient; being obedient produces joy.
When we celebrate, we can get over ourselves—we can be holy fools—we can
play games—we can sing out loud—we can do cartwheels or pump our fists in the
air because God’s team just won the championship—we can shoot off fireworks to
celebrate our freedom to love God; and we can invite others to join us.
So if, like
me, you recognize that you have all four soils in you, and you want to see more
results from believing Jesus’s message of good news, try praying, try
listening, try obeying, try confessing, try studying, try accepting, try
celebrating what God gives. We don’t
make God love us more by doing these things; we just make it easier for
ourselves to know God’s love.
Isaiah
55:10-11, 1-2
As
the water falls from the sky and does not return to the sky until the earth is wet
so that seeds grow, buds form, and plants flourish and yield seed for the
gardener and food for the eater, so my word (says God) goes out from my mouth and
does what I want it to do. My word does
not return to me empty.
All
who thirst, come drink the water; you with no money, come buy and eat; buy wine
and milk without money and at no cost. Why do you spend money on what doesn’t
feed you? Why do you work for what doesn’t satisfy you? Listen to me (says God), listen to me and eat
what is good for you and your soul will be filled with delight.
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