Sermon Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, July 10th

Sermon

Text: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

I love Johnny Appleseed. It is one of my favorite tales, and the fact that it's based on a real person makes it even better. John Chapman was called Johnny Appleseed during his years of travel. He was a missionary with a church called “The New Church,” and in his travels he started nurseries of apple trees throughout Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. It wasn't quite as random as him throwing seeds all other the place, but it was still rather random. The fact that I am so interested in Johnny Appleseed also has something to do with the meal-time prayer named after him.

Oooh the Lord is good to me,
And so I thank the Lord,
For giving me the things I need,
The sun and the rain and the appleseed
The Lord is good to me...

And I know another verse.

For every seed I sow
Another tree will grow
And soon there will be apple's there
For Everyone in the world to share
The Lord is good to me...

Many a camp meal were begun with that prayer. I always had this image of Johnny Appleseed walking with groves of bright, shiny red apples behind him, all exactly the same. But, Apples are actually what Botanists call, "extreme heterozygotes". Which is a big word, I don't really understand. But, essentially it means that they do not carry the same gene's as their parents. For a normal flower, if you take seeds from it and plant them, the same plant based on who the male, and who the female plants were will come up. Apples just mix the genes however they want. So if you carefully pollinate one tree with another, and then plant the seeds, doesn't really matter, it's going to turn out how it wants to. So, they are bred by cuttings, you take a branch from the apple tree that you like and splice it into another tree, so you get the same kind of apples. And that's the only way they spread in the same way. So, every red delicious apple at some point was attached to an original tree. If you want to know more, I learned most of this from a book called “The Botany of Desire” by Michael Pollan, I would recommend it if you also want to learn more of the history behind apples and other plants. The image of Johnny Appleseed, the carefree seed flinging version, all kinds of different apples springing up behind him. That's the image I have in my head when I read this Parable.

Jesus specifically refers to this parable as the parable of the sower. He tells of a sower who goes out, sowing seeds abundantly, all over the place. And some of the seeds land in good soil, some on a path, some among thorns, some in rocky soil. All the other seeds are lost in various ways, but the seed on good soil bring forth grain, some a hundred-fold, some sixty, and thirty. Now, I know a little about farming, and a even less about farming in that time. But, at any time thirty-fold is great return, sixty-fold is tremendous, and a hundred-fold, is an almost unheard of, incomprehensible amount. If you know anything about farming, you know you don't waste seed. If a farmer today were to plant like this sower is doing, just dropping seed all over the roads and ditches, well, they wouldn't be a farmer for very long. They wouldn't produce near enough to make up for the waste they are generating. But, that's what this sower is doing. Just seemingly flinging the grain all over the place, no care it seems, and it works! From this seemingly insane method of sowing, there is massive return. From abundant spreading comes great growth.

We miss a small section from verse 10 to verse 17 where the disciples ask Jesus why he talks in parables, asking in a way for the answer to this parable, which they will also do for the parable we see next week. And Jesus gives an answer. He talks of seeds landing in different types of soil. Some are consumed by the evil one, some hear, but when persecution arises, fall away, others are distracted by the cares of this world and are choked away. Others are those who understand fully, hearing the word and understand it, and they bear fruit.

I sometimes wish Jesus wouldn't give explanations to parables. It just leads to more problems and more questions, leading us further away from the message of the original parable. When we hear parables, for many reasons we want to understand them. We need to know where we fit in them. That's why the disciples ask Jesus for the meaning. But really Jesus' explanation is just as confusing as the parable itself, because it just leads to another question. When we start asking, what does this mean? We really want to have the answer to the question, who are we? Am I good soil? The parable becomes about us, and us needing to know.

And do you know what, we don't know. We can say we do, but then like Paul from last week, we do the things we do not want to do. Nobody really fits the idea of the one who hears the word and understands it. The disciples don't even do that, they abandon Jesus before his death, and Peter, the rock, denies him. So why do we ask this question, when we won't ever like the answer? Why is it that we need to define stuff? And I think the answer is an apple. Ok, I know that the fruit in the Garden was not what we would consider today an Apple, it just says fruit in Genesis. But, this need to know goes back to that moment of eating the fruit, to our inmost sinful desire to be God, to have the knowledge of good and evil. It is the question that first turned us from God, and still turns us today.

What we need to remember is that what this parable and all parables talk about is, yet again, God. I wonder if I've said that enough. Another Pastor friend said, we need to keep that on our minds at all times. “it's not about me, it's about God.”

In this parable what we learn of God is that God sows. God sows, and sows and sows and sows. God never stops sowing. And with wild abandon, God seems to not be concerned about where the seed lands, just that it is spread. God throws the seed of the word to every corner that we can hide ourselves. Sometimes it does not connect with us at that moment, at times when we may be on rocky soil, or on the path, but at the time when we need it the most, when we sit on good soil, it stays and grows within us, bringing forth life abundantly. Every time we read the word, every time we receive the bread and wine, every time we feel a curious twitch run through us, every moment of every moment. God sows into us grace. God sows into us love.

We cannot make the seed grow in us ourselves. We hear the word, but it does not sprout of our doing. God's grace in Christ Jesus causes it to spring up out of us, and through that we give wonderful fruit to those around us. And like the apple tree, sometimes our fruit looks gnarly, sometimes beautiful, sometimes green, or red, or yellow, sometimes small, sometimes big, suited for different purposes, some for baking, some for eating, some for juice, but it is always nurturing, not for ourselves, but those who we in turn feed.

Let us pray,

sing with me if you know it.

Oh, the Lord is good to me,

and so I thank the Lord,

for giving me the things I need,

the sun and the rain and the appleseed,

The Lord is good to me.

Amen