St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for the Ninth Sunday After Pentecost (July 13, 2008)
Liturgical Color: Green
Reverend Doctor Lyle E. McKee
The Wrong Questions
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today's gospel speaks much of soil. Soil is a topic much on our minds these days. Soil and mud is being mucked out of thousands of homes across the Midwest following a late spring and early summer of devastating rain. On Tuesday, the front page of the newspaper declared, "With help from kids, Owen fair rises from the mud." At our home, we lost tons of topsoil in the rains, washed down the back hill into the ravine, and that hardly bears mention in the face of so many who have lost everything.
And so, a parable that tries to turn soil into a metaphor becomes harder to work with; our minds want to stay with the real thing.
Still, once I dislodged those immediate associations, the familiar parable brought two basic thoughts my way. One concerns God. The other has to do with people.
The parable depicts a God who is incredibly lavish—foolish, some would say—in casting seed. There seems to be little thought to whether it will take root. There is no consideration given to the soil types. It is the indiscriminate spreading of seed, equally upon all soils, with the apparent willingness to let happen whatever will take place.
To be fair, the broadcasting of grain in Jesus' day was done much like I used to pass papers as a paper boy. I carried a sack, reached in, got a folded paper and let fly. It's similar to the way we sow grass seed on a bare spot in the yard. You reach in the bag, grab some seed and fling. Some tends to bounce on the driveway. It gets swept or washed to the side, and birds come and snap it up before it can germinate. Some gets in the flower garden, where it grows easily for a while, but gets uprooted when you get a chance to weed. Some falls in the plot where you have spaded, raked and smoothed. There is where the good and productive growth is made possible for the long run.
It really is a wonderful image of grace. No matter what kind of person we are, God sows the seed of the word. Every person has the same opportunity to hear the word and let it take root in the soul. There is no hardness of heart or shallowness of character that can prevent God's love from being available.
At its most basic, there is here the revelation of God's boundless love for every human being. It is bold, wasteful, lavish, risky, and amazingly abundant. There is always more than enough to go around. Grace is always there--abundant, undeserved, unmerited, and free.
The other thought suggested by the parable, that has to do with people, is connected to the various soils. When I read this story, I can't help but ask myself, "What kind of soil am I?" "Is the soil of my heart fertile enough?" Which, of course, is the same as asking, "Am I good enough?"
The first thought is about grace. The second alludes to law.
This second leads in the opposite direction of the first. These are questions that lead to guilt. They might even move us back to the matter of casting seed, suggesting that we consider whether our actions of spreading the word are worthy of God's grace.
Ponder the following re-statement of the parable:
A farmer's wife said to her husband, "Fred, it's time to go out and sow the seed." "Aw, Martha, I don't want to go out and do that. I'd rather sit here and read about the harvest in this catalogue."
"Why don't you want to go out and sow the seed? It's your business as a farmer to sow the seed."
"Well, I'm not very good at sowing the seed, for one thing. For another thing, it will just make people think I'm trying to show what a better farmer I am than they are. Anyway, most of it won't grow."
"Fred, who is going to sow the seed if you don't?"
"Aw, there must be others who can do that sort of stuff. I'm willing to give some money. Maybe we could hire somebody to do it."
"Fred, how can you expect a harvest if you don't sow the seed?"
It seems to be a preposterous conversation. Here is the explanation. The seed is the word of the kingdom—what Jesus means to me. Who are the sowers? We are. It's our business as Christians to sow the seed. It's amazing how reluctant most of us are to tell other people what Jesus means to us. We'd rather just read about what Jesus means to people in the catalogue (Bible). We excuse ourselves by saying that we're not very good at it, and that people will think we're trying to show we're better than they are. It won't get much result with most people, anyway. We'd rather give some money and hire somebody else to do it.
So a preposterous conversation in this context is not so preposterous after all—it happens all the time. Who on God's green earth is going to sow the seed of the gospel if we don't? How can we expect a harvest if we don't sow the seed?
And, with this, we've arrived at guilt. Not "Lutheran guilt!" There is no such thing as Lutheran guilt—just guilt. Because guilt asks questions such as: Am I good enough? Am I giving adequate witness to the word of God? Do I effectively communicate the new way I see the world and its foretastes of the kingdom of God? Do I let others know how God is at work in my life? Do I tell how I wouldn't have made it without the love and the care of the community of people we call the church? The questions go on and on. There is no end to guilt. We Lutherans are people of grace, not guilt.
God's grace and the over-abundant, free casting of the seed of God's word is one thing. This questioning of whether we are good enough soil is entirely another.
It makes me think of a three-hour-long parable. It is a movie being replayed of late—"Saving Private Ryan."
Beyond its excessively real depictions of war and its compelling story of the search for the one surviving son of the Ryan family, it is a parable about works righteousness.
The plot is simple. Private James Francis Ryan, his three brothers having already been killed in the war, suddenly becomes the subject of a special mission. And to complicate matters, he is caught behind enemy lines.
Captain John Miller leads the group of eight men on the long and exceedingly difficult search. Throughout the mission, he and his men ask themselves and one another how one life can be worth this much sacrifice. After losing his first man, Captain Miller says in disgust: "This Ryan better be worth it. I mean, he'd better go home and cure some disease or invent a longer lasting light bulb or something."
After losing nearly all of his men, Captain Miller's last words are spoken to Private Ryan: "Earn this...Earn this." Soon thereafter, the scene fades back to Arlington National Cemetery, where the movie began, the entire movie being Ryan's memory. He has brought his family to visit Captain Miller's grave after some fifty years.
In the cemetery, James Ryan bends to confess that every day he has remembered those words-"Earn this." He weeps as he says, "I hope that was enough. I hope that at least in your eyes I have earned what you have done for me."
He turns to his wife: "Tell me I've led a good life. Tell me I've been a good man."
"You are."
The final frames are of a sea of crosses, fading finally to a flag waving in the wind at sunset.
Am I good enough? That seems always to be our question. How could people—how could someone die for one who was not good enough? It is the agony of Private Ryan's life and that of so many of us.
And yet, there in the beginning and at the end of the movie is the answer. In the cemetery at Arlington, Ryan is surrounded by the answer. He stands in a field of crosses, as if the seed of the Word of God had been scattered regularly over the entire hillside and had sprouted into empty crosses.
One there was who died once long ago for every person who wasn't, isn't, and will not ever be good enough. It is the seed of his grace that Private Ryan longed to know, but missed in a forest of the promise of symbols of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are simply asking the wrong question when we ask the question about our own goodness. The question is not "Have I been or am I good enough?" The second question invited by the parable in Matthew, and in the other parabolic stories this morning always forces us back upon the first. When confronted with questions of our own goodness, we have no recourse but to turn to the goodness of God. We are returned to the sower, the abundantly loving, lavishly sowing gardener of creation, ever seeding the blessings of the word upon the various soils of our hearts.
We cannot ever determine whether the soil of our hearts is good, or good enough, or deep enough. Such reflections keep us focused on ourselves and not on the word.
All we can really do is ponder whether we have lived lives worthy of the One who died for us. We are worthy when we take the seed, when we cast the seed of the Word of God, not because we must, but because of the deep gratitude we have for the one who came into the war of our lives, found us behind enemy lines, and rescued us from the fate of all too many of those we love. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal life. Amen.
