Sunday, July 10, 2011

The prophet Isaiah recounts the words of God, who made heaven and earth:

¹⁰For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

That’s pretty heavy, isn’t it? I mean, ALL of what God wants to accomplish with the Word is going to be done? That’s a loaded theological statement. What about the bad things in the world, then? Does God want those things to happen? How do we reconcile our claims of a just and righteous God with a world that seems, at times, beholden to the merest whim of fate?

Perhaps the secret lies in big rocks.

I come from southern Alberta, and not far from where I grew up is the site of Big Rock – the tremendous glacial erratic that was deposited by a glacier some 10 000 years ago. If you’ve been there, you’ve seen that the rock has been split in two.

What you’ve maybe not seen, though, is the lichen and other growing things that cover some of the smaller pieces of the rock, breaking them down into smaller and smaller pieces.

One little seed of grass or moss can bring the largest mountain crashing down, simply wearing down hardness with eons of stretching, and growth.

Something living overcoming something of stone: cold, and dead.

That’s what a seed can do.

Today, Jesus sits down with his friends and tells them about the way God relates to them, but in a puzzling way. Speaking to a group of fishermen, he uses a farming analogy. But it’s probably harder to be a farmer than a fisherman.

(I hope there’s nobody from either coast here today).

So he tells them a parable: a sower went out to sow. And some seed he threw on the rocky ground, some among the thorns, other seed he threw on the path, and still more he threw on the good soil, which was deep, and rich, and receptive.

Birds ate the seed off the path; the thorns choked out the plants that grew among them; the sprouts in the rocky soil withered under the glare of the sun; but the seed that fell on the good soil returned 30, 60, even a hundredfold of the seed sown.

So I’d like you to think a moment about the field this sower must be standing in: it must be really, really small. It’s got three times as much useless soil as good stuff: there’s a path, rocks, and weeds. In fact, this may be the crappiest field in all of creation. But there’s a small part of it that produces amazing results.

Which is a good thing, because that sower really stinks at his job.

In the time that Jesus lived, seeds were a precious commodity. From every crop you harvested, you washed, cleaned, and kept some of it for next year’s seed. You had to preserve it, so that you had a future. What the sower does in this parable is ludicrous. You don’t waste good seeds on bad ground. How many rocks must there be in this field? How many thorns?

When I was a kid, we had a neighbour who was working on bringing a field of pastureland under cultivation. He was a old-timer, which meant that he didn’t just hook up the 700-horsepower John Deere to the harrow or the plow. Every afternoon, he would go out and spend an hour or two with a wheel barrow, picking rocks.

Well, one summer’s day I’d been working, and a friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to go into the city to see a movie with him and another friend. We did. On the way home, another friend called and invited us to a party. We had time, we were young, we went.

And the next morning I came home with the worst case of the “flu” I had ever had. I was deeply disappointed when I realized that I wouldn’t die; it seemed such a waste of good suffering.

And my mother was, of course, a deeply caring individual, a delicate and godly woman who trusted her youngest son. And seeing him in such deep distress on the one of the hottest days of the summer, she had mercy upon him and sent him out, into the field. To pick rocks.

That is the cleanest field in Vulcan county, I’m proud to say. Sad that nothing will grow in it. But very clean.

The sower in the parable could have learned something. Or maybe we can learn something from that sower.

We can learn to trust.

Are you familiar with the tale of the prodigal son? Well, this is the tale of the prodigal sower. It the tale of God, who casts the seed of his word with incredible abundance, so that it lands in every nook and cranny of our lives and our hearts, so that not one little bit is missed. It is the story of God, who scandalously wastes grace and love on those who don’t deserve it, and yet is ready again to sow when the ground is ready.

And it’s also the tale of the ground of our being; the rock of our hearts and the thorny thickets of our minds.

And the good soil of our souls.

God casts the seed into our lives; and some withers, and dies. We are vulnerable to our own needs and desires, likes and dislikes, sinfulness and self-centredness. But when it finds root in our heart, it grows, breaking down the rock at our core and replacing it with something much, much more alive: something that when it grows, it expands up to a hundred times bigger than the little seed that began it.

And then WE become the seed; breaking down the hard hearts of our world. Withering, dying, and being sown and raised up again by the word of Jesus Christ.

And our lives fulfill their purpose; returning the word of God to where it was spoken, knowing that we are part of the great narrative of God’s creation; word spoken, which creates; word claimed, which heals; word killed, which breaks down; and the Word proclaimed, which gives eternal life.

Our national church meets in convention next week – and it will be contentious. There are issues being debated that have polarized many in the church, but one thing must remain clear: the word of God, once spoken, will not return empty. We are equally sinful; were are all in need of grace.

When it is over, the face of our church may look different; it may look like the face of that Big Rock where I grew up – split, pained, and hard. But still, in that rock, is the seed of life that we proclaim to be the Spirit of the Living God, at work among us, declaring to us that when God has spoken his word will not return empty.

No, it will not return empty. We will return it. With joy, because of what we have first received. With peace, because God is bigger than we are.

And with grace, because our hard hearts have been broken, and only Christ remains.

Let the people of God say ‘amen’.