"Scattered Grace" | Rev. Sarah Bird Kneff preaching | 07.12.26

"Scattered Grace" | Rev. Sarah Bird Kneff preaching | 07.12.26

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Our gospel lesson today comes from Matthew chapter 13, verses 1 through 9 and 18 to 23. Hear the word of God. 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. 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. The word of the Lord. Will you pray with me? And now, O Lord, open my mouth that I might speak your living word to your people this day. Open our ears that we might hear and understand. And God, open each one of our hearts that we might be changed, changed by your power and through your grace. Amen. If you have ears, hear. My daughter Grace will be four at the end of this month, and we are working on our listening skills. That, of course, is the royal we. It's her, really. She is working on her listening skills. My husband Michael and I will often prompt her to pay attention by asking her, where are her listening ears? Because there's a difference, a difference between hearing and listening. I'm sure we've all been there before, caught up in our own thoughts, not fully engaged, and then suddenly called upon to respond to what has been said. We freeze. We don't know. Because you were hearing, but you weren't listening. Or perhaps you've been on the receiving end of this phenomenon when you were sharing the deepest secrets of your heart and realize that the person you're talking to is a million miles away. Listening in a world of such ubiquitous distraction often feels impossible. And yet there are moments when our ears perk up and when our hearts are cracked open and we listen. My prayer is that this morning is one of those moments. That was what Jesus was saying two thousand years ago on that boat pushed out into the crystal clear waters of the Galilean Sea, speaking to a crowd filled with mixed company. There were Pharisees teeming with jealousy and anger. There were curious bystanders looking for the next miracle, the next spectacle. And there were faithful disciples, faithful disciples hungry for the living word. They're all there. And Jesus has their attention. Finally, after twelve chapters of teaching and miracles, being misunderstood, being threatened, Jesus is here with this large audience and a chance to tell them what it all means, to give some clarity to his mission. And so he begins. A sower went out to sow. What? No, Jesus, we don't want a story. We want a roadmap. We'd like a creed. We'd like marching orders as to how it is we're going to overthrow our Roman oppressors and finally bring back the restored kingdom of Israel. We want clarity. We need a rally cry. At least that's what the people thought. Perhaps that is what we think as well. Unexpected tragedy or disappointment hits, the lost job, the broken marriage, the distant child, or just the daily barrage of bad news. And we need Jesus to make sense of it. We want clarity, but what we get is a parable. Listen. If you have ears, hear. One of the practices here at Westminster that I'm still getting the hang of is this call and response before the scripture reading. Hear the word of God. I've not done this in any other context I've served before, but boy do I like it. I like it because it requires something of us. We all know the response, thanks be to God, the one we say after the reading of God's holy word, but to speak corporately, that our ears are open before listening to God is to intentionally tune in. It is to believe that God's word doesn't lie fallow on the pages of our Bibles, but that God continues to actively engage with God's people from generation to generation, if you have ears here. This is the first parable we find in the Gospel of Matthew. Up to this point, we've heard the Sermon on the Mount with some of Jesus' greatest hits. Do not judge, lest you be judged. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven. Clear teaching, direct instruction. You could put it on a coffee mug, you could put it on a bumper sticker. But now something has shifted. Opposition is growing, and people in power are getting angry, crowds, they misunderstand Jesus. And so he starts talking in stories, riddles. He talks about seeds and rocks and soil. No one can get mad at him for that. That's not revolutionary language, is it? Those who have already discounted Christ's ministry will take his storytelling as further proof of his lunacy. You can't believe anything, this madman goes around saying. But those with ears to hear, they will listen. They will receive the good word in the fertile soil of their hearts. They will taste the coming kingdom. There's something unique about parables. I've always found it difficult to preach on a parable because, in a way, they are intentionally mysterious, almost cryptic, even. So for me to stand up here for approximately 17 and a half minutes and try to explain to you what Jesus meant in this passage feels like an exercise in futility. But the beauty is that's not my role here, a parable, and I would contend a good sermon, doesn't simply give information. It invites participation, active, intentional engagement, considering these ancient words and believing in faith they still speak today. After all, Jesus doesn't really want us to give the right answers. Jesus wants us to give him our hearts. And when Jesus tells these stories, he isn't hiding truth, he's inviting people willing to wrestle with it, to do so in relationship with him. And so gathered by the Sea of Galilee, many in the crowd expected Jesus to inaugurate another kind of kingdom. They hoped for revolution, a messiah raising an army, driving out Rome. And to be very sure, throughout Scripture, you'll notice that talk about seed time and harvest has often become symbols of God's coming redemption. So you might think when Jesus starts talking about sowing seeds, people lean in. Yes, finally, victory, power. Instead, they hear about wasted seed on rocky ground, birds, thorns, disappointment. This isn't how God's kingdom is supposed to begin. Exactly. This is the upside-down economy of God, an overzealous sower with three quarters of his seed failing to produce a crop. Did you catch that? And yet God is not deterred. God is persistent, God is gracious. Besides all that, who is to say where the good soil is anyway? Certainly not us. That is up to the master sower. But we get to tag along. We get to join the mission of sowing the good news of the kingdom with hope, trusting God's grace, not our own assessment of the suitability of a particular plot of land. Not every endeavor or ministry or mission is going to yield a hundredfold, but that's not our work to foresee. Our work is to join in the scattering of the seed wherever and however and to whomever we can. Yes, we are called to be good stewards, but that doesn't mean we can't sow generously. We don't have to manage the unfolding of God's kingdom like shrewd investors. Rather, we can joyfully sow the good news in places that might seem to us totally barren, rocky, thorny. And then perhaps we'd recognize that there are times when those rocky places might be right here or right here. The text this morning is often read as some sort of personality test. What kind of soil am I, right? Am I choked by the weeds? Am I eaten by the birds? Am I? Am I the good soil? But notice something here in verse 18. Jesus doesn't call this the parable of the soil. This is the parable of the sower. It's about God. It's about grace, extravagantly scattered grace. Traditional farmers would be careful to plant their seed 13 inches apart in fertile soil so as to yield the best harvest, but not the sower in this story. This sower seems unconcerned with efficiency. That might be why this parable makes us uncomfortable. Efficiency is one of our culture's deepest values and fiercest idols. We want to ensure that everything we do is efficient and expeditious and productive. We want results. The most bang for our buck. Which, of course, is not an evil thing in and of itself, but much of that cultural emphasis has found its way into the church and into our personal lives of faith. How do I optimize my time? Is this hour of worship really worth it? What am I gonna get out of the service? Was this mission project worthwhile? What are the numbers? What are the statistics? How are we doing? My husband Michael has spent most of his adult life leading short-term mission trips every summer all around the world. And without fail, there is at least one group every year that seems to be completely obsessed with productivity. The group is asked to build a house, so they spend all day working feverishly to accomplish the task without ever meeting the family for whom they are building. Or a team is invited to facilitate a vacation Bible school for a local community. And they never really form relationships with the kids because they want to make sure that they get through all of the curriculum on schedule. But when groups realize that their real mission is not a project, but a relationship, the week they're together takes on a totally different energy, and it is not work at all. It's playful, generous scattering of seeds. It's entrusting the task of transformation to the one who called them to serve in the first place. The master sower scatters grace where nobody else would bother. God keeps speaking to people everyone else has given up on. God keeps speaking to us again and again and again. The hero of this story isn't the good soil. It's the generous sower. And what a gift that is, because if this was a story about trying our hardest to become fertile soil, this would not be good news at all, right? This isn't a story about assigning different types of soil to different types of people, because when we are honest with ourselves, we recognize that we, all of us, are all of those different types of soil at any given point in our lives or in our day. There are moments when we don't have ears to hear, when we're too distracted or selfish or shallow to receive the loving word of our Creator. But there are also moments, rare as they are, when we are caught off guard by beauty or tragedy, or when we are silent just long enough to discern that still small voice. There are moments when we listen and we hear an invitation addressed not just to you, not just to me, not just to those of us in this building or in this denomination or in this country, but an invitation extended to all of creation from a generous sower who is just dying to love us. So are you listening? What do you hear?