Seeds of Faith (Luke 8.4-15)

A Baptism Talk on the Parable of the Soweer

Introduction

Everyone loves a story, especially if it’s told well. Jesus knew that perfectly well. He told lots of stories. In fact, there was a particular time in his life when the Bible says he didn’t say anything to anyone without telling a story.

It must have been a bit weird. “Morning Jesus, how are you today?” “Well, once upon a time there were two pirates in a haunted galleon…”

He was a masterful story teller and some of his stories are among the most popular in the world but they are usually called, not stories, but parables.

The story we just read this morning is one such parable and what it says is simple - a farmer scatters seeds, throwing them all over the place. That’s the way they do it in the Middle East, not planting seeds in neat rows as we do but spreading it all over the soil.

You can go out there today and see that they still do it that way now. And because the farmer has this scattergun approach, the seeds land in different places with different results.

We’ll think about all that in just a moment but first, what actually is a parable? What makes a parable different from any other story? There are in fact three things that make a story a parable.

A Story with a Moral

Firstly, parables usually have a moral to them. The Hare and the Tortoise is not just a story about a race, it’s a lesson about being arrogant. The moral is that pride comes before a fall.

Here’s a story with a moral: A sales rep, a secretary and a manager are walking to lunch when they come across an old lamp. They rub it and a genie appears. The genie says: "I'll give you all one wish." "Me first!” says the secretary. I want to be in the Bahamas, on a luxury yacht, with a spa." Puff! She's gone. "Me next!” says the sales rep. I want to be in Crete, on the beach with my personal masseuse and an endless supply of beer." Puff! He's gone. "OK, your turn now" says the genie to the manager. The manager says: "I want those two back in the office straight after lunch." The moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.

A Story with a Meaning

Parables not only have a moral, they also have a meaning. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is bit like this; it’s not really about pigs and sheep and chickens or agriculture. It’s actually about Communism. That’s the hidden meaning. Jesus’ parables are like this; you have to look deeper to see what they’re really saying.

Jesus calls this a “secret” in v10. Some people unlock the secret and get the meaning. Others don’t.

Getting the meaning of a parable is like one of those magic eye pictures; when you look at it a certain way, it reveals a hidden 3-D shape. Some people see it quite quickly. Others try for a bit, get annoyed and give up. Some don't even bother.

If you're not interested in spiritual things, you'll only see a nice little story about sowing seeds. If you don’t want to know God, all this will go over your head, you’ll be glad when the service is over so you can leave. That’s precisely what Jesus says will happen.

But if you're in this place because you're looking for God, what you experience here today will make sense. If you are motivated to get to know God, when you hear the words of Jesus you will see truth.

A Story with a Mirror

Parables not only have a moral and a meaning, they are also a mirror. In Jesus’ stories, if you engage with them, you see things about yourself, and what you’re really like.

That’s what happens in the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus tells it to a religious man who is basically looking for an excuse to avoid the riff raff. But as he listens to Jesus'story, he realises that he is like the pompous priest who walks on by on the other side because he doesn’t want to get involved.

The story is a mirror and he gets a nasty shock when he looks at it – which is something I can relate to every morning.

In today’s story, Jesus said that there are four different ways that people approach God.

1. The Path

In the Middle East, you find many beaten down tracks that lie between fields. They’re like public footpaths; this is where everyone walks and so they become very hard, like concrete.

The farmer says, “Some of my seed fell on this path. Before it had a chance to take root, in fact before lunchtime, the birds ate it up and it was gone.”

These are people, Jesus says, who switch off. As soon as you mention God they glaze over. Some have a hardness of heart – perhaps because they’ve been hurt or upset by someone they associate with the church. With others it’s hardness of mind; a kind of prejudice that says “whatever you tell me, I don’t want to know.”

I once knew a man who plied me with questions about my faith. Some questions were really good. What about suffering? How can you believe in miracles? Does evolution disprove creation? What about other religions? Other questions were a bit silly. What about the Da Vinci Code? We worked through the questions together but each time we did, he’d raise some other objection.

So one day I said to him, “Look, if I answered all your questions to your complete satisfaction, would you believe in Jesus Christ?” He said “No.” He was like the seed on the path – for all his apparent interest he was in fact closed.

2. Rocky Places

So the farmer says “Some of my seed fell on rocky places. The plants grew really quickly here – but they didn't last long. They quickly withered away because they didn't have enough soil to grow good roots.”

You can find this sort of ground all over the place in Israel; hard limestone which is porous so it soaks up rain very quickly. Plants spring up in no time but they soon wither in the hot sunshine. You need a layer of soil for plants to survive, so that the roots can use the moisture before it dries up.

These are people, Jesus says, who are enthusiastic when they hear about God’s power to change lives, but it’s only shallow. They believe for a little while, but life moves on and they forget all about it.

For Gracie and Sienna being baptized this morning, today is only a start. Baptism means very little by itself; it’s like seeds you water only once and then leave to dry.

You see, baptism doesn’t make you a Christian; only ongoing faith in Jesus can make you a Christian. So I want to encourage you to keep watering the seed of faith by reading the Bible and teaching your girls to pray and encouraging them to be part of this Christian community.

3. Thorns

So the farmer says “Some of my seeds fell among thorns. Nothing really grows here – only thistles and weeds which take over.”

Palestinian thorns can grow 5 or 6 feet high. Busy farmers might have time to lop the tops off, the visible part above the soil, but if they leave the roots in they get nowhere. Anyone who has a garden knows that weeds and thorns grow faster than anything else and you’ve got to root them out or they’ll just be worse than before.

Jesus said this is like the worries and distractions we all have that smother our life of faith until it suffocates. All of us are busy. All of us are pressed for time. All of us have interests and cares. And that’s good. The question is “Am I prepared to let the important and the urgent choke to death the essential?”

4. Good Soil

But the farmer says “And some of my seed fell on good soil and it became a harvest.”

Only some who hear the good news about Jesus become believers. And Jesus says that they produce a harvest of love and joy and faith.

A few years ago, (this is a true story), the Christian author Tony Campolo flew to Hawaii for a conference. He checked into a hotel and went to bed.

Unfortunately, his internal clock woke him at 3:00am. He got up and looked for somewhere to get an early breakfast. Everything was closed except for a grungy café down a small alley.

So he goes in and a guy with greasy hair and dandruff comes over. “What d’ya want?” Well, Tony isn’t so hungry anymore so he says, “I’ll have a black coffee please.”

As he sits there sipping his coffee, in walk eight or nine prostitutes just finished with their night’s work. Tony finds himself surrounded by this group of chain smoking, hard swearing and underdressed women. He decides to gulp his coffee down and make a quick getaway.

But the woman next to him says to her friend, “You know what? Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m gonna be 39.” To which her friend replies, “So what d’ya want from me? A birthday party? Huh? You want me to get a cake, and sing happy birthday?”

The first woman says, “Ah, come on, why do you have to be so mean? I’m just sayin’ it’s my birthday. I don’t want anything from you. I’ve never had a birthday party in my life. Why should I have one now?”

Tony sits and waits until they leave, and then he asks the guy with the greasy hair and dandruff, “Do they come in here every night?” And it turns out that they do.

He says “I heard that the one next to me has her birthday tomorrow. Do you think we could maybe throw a little birthday party for her in the café?”

“That’s great,” he says, “I like it.” He turns to the kitchen and shouts to his wife, “This guy’s got a great idea. Tomorrow is Agnes’ birthday and he wants to throw a party for her.”

His wife appears. “That’s terrific,” she says. “You know, Agnes is so nice. She’s always trying to help other people and nobody does anything for her.” So they make their plans.

At 2:30am the next day, Tony is back. He has crepe paper and other decorations and a sign made of big pieces of cardboard that says, “Happy Birthday, Agnes!” They decorate the place from one end to the other and get it looking great.

The man with the dandruff and greasy hair (whose name is Harry) got the word out about the party and by 3:15am practically every call girl in Honolulu is there.

At 3:30am, in she walks. They all shout “Happy Birthday, Agnes!” She is absolutely stunned, her mouth falls open, her knees start to buckle, and she almost falls over.

And when the birthday cake with all the candles is carried out, she starts to sob. She pulls herself together and blows the candles out. Everyone cheers, “Cut the cake, Agnes!”

But she looks down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, says, “Look, is it all right with you if we don’t eat it right away?”

Harry shrugs and says, “Sure, if that’s what you want to do. Keep it. Take it home if you want.”

She says, “I live just down the street; I want to take the cake home, is that okay? I’ll be right back.” She picks up the cake, and carries it high in front of her like it was the Holy Grail. Everybody watches in stunned silence and when the door closes behind her, nobody seems to know what to do.

So Tony stands on a chair and says, “What do you say that we pray together?”

And there they are in a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon diner, half the sex workers in Honolulu, at 3:30am, hanging on a preacher’s every word as he prays for Agnes, for her heart, her health, and her salvation; that her life would be changed, and that God will be good to her.

When he’s finished, Harry leans over, and says, “Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?”

Tony says, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for hookers at 3:30 in the morning."

Ending

That’s when the seed falls on good soil. Jesus said that the seed is the word of God. The power is all there in the seed. You take a small, wrinkled, dry seed – any seed. There is enough life in that tiny pip to crack concrete. There is enough power in God’s word to change broken people into mended people, and cranky people into sorted people and lost people into found people.

I want to finish with one last story from World War II. A church in London was preparing for its harvest service. People had been in decorating the building and filling it with the fruits of the earth. But the Saturday night before the harvest festival a bomb fell on the church and completely destroyed it. Not a brick was left on another, not a pew, hymn book or Bible survived; everything was totally ruined.

But the following spring, amidst the rubble on that site, a new shoot appeared. It was from the seed of some of that harvest produce on display. You can raze a brick building to the ground in an instant, but all the dynamite in the Third Reich cannot kill the life stored up in one seed.

The words of Jesus, like a seed, have the power to produce life in people, whenever a heart is open to God. 

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 19th October 2014