sermon text on Parable of the Sower

I haven’t been preaching for Community of Christ for very long, but by virtue of different demographics and traditions than the denomination I grew up in (in short, I preach more often for Community of Christ than I would have continuing in Latter-day Saint congregations), I suspect that I may be soon approaching the number of “talks” that I’d given in my past religious life. Maybe not this year, but that might happen in the next couple of years if I keep up the schedule that I’m on. Anyway, I bring that up because in my short time preaching for Community of Christ, I’ve never struggled with a sermon as much as I have with this one, and I’m trying to remember if that’s also true of my contributions to Latter-day Saint worship services over the years.

I mentioned in this morning’s review of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (which, I forgot to mention, feels truly written for the 2020s and not just because it’s set during that time) that I listened to that book in order to prepare for the sermon but ended up not using it much. I think I could have if I hadn’t finished the book in the minutes before I arrived at the church building, and that’s something to think about for next time.

This time, though, I wound up solving my problem by addressing that difficulty head on and talking about how I can’t see this parable as a metaphor for missionary work anymore—to make any sense of it, I need to think of it in a broader sense of building the peaceable reign of God. Here’s the text"

introduction

My parents recently moved, and one of the consequences of that move is that I am going through a bunch of stuff that they kept from my childhood and teenage years and that they don’t want to keep anymore. Now it’s my responsibility to go through this stuff and decide if I want to keep it.

In one binder I went through, I found a handful of pieces of paper with outlines for speeches written on them. When I was in 10th grade, one of my friends encouraged me to join our high school’s speech and debate team, which I did. I quickly learned that I enjoyed competitive extemporaneous speaking, where you had 30 minutes to research, write, and memorize a 7-minute speech in response to a question that you were given on the spot.

This was a very nerdy thing to do in high school and was not as impressive as being on a sports team, but it gave me a lot of experience that has been very helpful ever since. For example, when you only have 30 minutes to research, write, and memorize a speech, you learn to think on your feet. I have found in the past couple of years that this is really helpful for sermon writing. Even though I have a lot longer than 30 minutes to prepare a sermon, and even though I need all of that time to do it properly, my high school instincts mean that I often have the broad outline of a sermon in my head within a day or two of receiving a scripture assignment.

Or, at least, that’s usually the case.

the Parable of the Sower

A couple of months ago, I got the latest worship schedule in an email and looked up my name so that I could start preparing for anything that I’d been assigned. This time, my assigned scripture was the Matthew 13 version of The Parable of the Sower. You’ve probably heard this scripture before, but let’s go over the first part together:

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. If you have ears, hear!”

Well, friends, when I read over this scripture back in May, all of my high school instincts failed me. I had no idea what to preach about when it came to this parable—not just in the day or two to come, but for a solid month or two: no matter how often I thought about it, it just didn’t seem like any ideas were coming.

the disciples and parables

If there’s one comfort I can take from just not getting this parable, it’s that Jesus’s disciples felt the same way. The Parable of the Sower appears in Matthew 13 (today’s scripture) as well as Mark 4 and Luke 8. In all three tellings of this parable, the disciples sheepishly walk up to Jesus afterward and say “hey, Jesus, do you mind helping us out here? what exactly are you talking about?” In all three tellings of the parable, Jesus agrees to explain what he meant, and here’s what he says in Matthew 13:

“Hear, then, the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet such a person has no root but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

my real issue

Knowing that the disciples needed things explained to them brings some comfort, but to be honest, I already knew that explanation when I was struggling to know what to preach about. I’ve heard this parable countless times since I was a kid, so I already knew that the seed is the word, and the ground is the people who hear the word, and all the rest. I just didn’t want the parable to be about that.

I mentioned earlier that my parents just moved. They moved because they accepted an assignment from the church that they attend (and that I grew up in) to go supervise missionary efforts for that church in another part of the world. They will probably talk about the Parable of the Sower a lot to the missionaries that they work with, encouraging them to be sowers who sow seed, hope that it grows, and know that it won’t always grow the way they hope. I know this because when I was younger, I took two years to be the kind of missionary that my parents are off supervising. We talked about the Parable of the Sower a lot, encoouranging ourselves to be sowers who sow seed, hope that it grows, and know that it won’t always grow the way we hope.

That missionary interpretation is a pretty common way of understanding this parable, so I don’t think that I was wrong to think about it in those terms or that my parents will be wrong to think about it in those terms. However, I have issues with how I used to think about that parable, and that stops me from appreciating the parable now. When missionaries from that church think about the Parable of the Sower, the seed doesn’t just represent “the word,” it usually represents the specific teachings of that church. For the missionaries that my parents are supervising, so long as I don’t believe the things that they do and practice my faith in the way that they do, I represent the path, or the rocky ground, or the ground with thorns—somewhere where the seed is not growing.

I think those missionaries have the right to believe that; when I was one of those missionaries, I did, and I believed it sincerely. But I obviously don’t believe that anymore: I’m preaching for all of you this morning, and not for the church I grew up in. I also don’t know that I can bring myself to believe it back at them, that just because they don’t believe the things that I do and that they don’t practice their faith the way that I do, they aren’t good soil, no matter how sincere they are. Besides those missionaries, I have friends and family members with lots of different beliefs—including no religious beliefs at all—and as deeply important as my Christian commitment is to me, I have to be honest: I don’t want to be in the business of sowing the word at them and judging whether it’s growing. Maybe that makes me a bad Christian, maybe that makes me a bad minister, but that’s where I am, and that’s why I struggled with this scripture for today.

what is the word?

One thing I loved about doing speech and debate in high school is that I never knew what I was going to get asked to speak on, and that forced me to learn a lot of things so that I would always have something to say. One thing I love about getting scripture assignments for sermons is that even when I struggle with the scripture, it is always an invitation to learn something new about my own faith. I found something I love about this scripture, something that helped me know what to say today, something that helps me transform this parable from the way I used to understand it to something that speaks to my faith here and now.

What is the word in this parable? At least in the version we read in Matthew, Jesus tells the disciples that the seed represents “the word of the kingdom.” In Mark, it’s just “the word,” which is mysterious; in Luke, it’s the word of God, which is good; but what I needed for today is Matthew’s version, which is “the word of the kingdom.”

In our foyer, we’ve got copies of a little booklet called “Sharing in Community of Christ.” One of the sections in that booklet is called “Basic Beliefs of Community of Christ,” which is pretty self explanatory, but it has an entry called “The Reign of God,” which is just another way of talking about “the kingdom.” Here’s how it goes—here’s how our denomination thinks about “the kingdom.”

The Reign of God is the coming triumph of love, justice, mercy, and peace that one day will embrace all of creation. Jesus’ life and ministry were the living expression of this promise. He taught his disciples to pray for the kingdom’s full coming and sent them out into the world to be living emblems of that new creation. “Zion” expresses our commitment to herald God’s peaceable kingdom on Earth by forming Christ-centered communities in families, congregations, neighborhoods, cities, and throughout the world.

Wow. If that is the seed in this parable, that changes a lot for me. I’d get a little grumpy if missionaries from another church told me that my heart was unprepared ground because I wasn’t learning to believe like they believe, but I do need regular reminders that “the cares of this age and the lure of wealth” are distracting me from “love, justice, mercy, and peace.” I’m hesitant about sowing the seed if that means convincing everyone else to practice their faith like I practice mine, but sign me up for building the better world that “one day will embrace all of creation.”

I know that that seed won’t always grow the way that we hope, but I do hope it grows, and I want to be involved in sowing it wherever I can.

conclusion

This sermon is a little more personal than usual, and I’m not sure that that’s how sermons are supposed to be. But thank you for letting me make this sermon personal, because it’s been a chance to think through a lot that’s been on my mind for the past couple of months. I love what we believe about the Reign of God, and I love Matthew’s emphasis on sowing the “word of the kingdom.” I hope we can all be sowers of that seed—and that we can all be prepared ground to let “love, justice, mercy, and peace” grow in us.

• sermons
• Octavia Butler
• hope
• Community of Christ
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• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Latter-day Saint missionaries