The Seed Does It All
Text: Luke 8:4-15
Sexagesima Sunday, February 7, 2010
Rev. Carl D. Roth, Grace Lutheran Church, Elgin, Texas
© 2010 Rev. Carl D. Roth and Grace Lutheran Church, Elgin, Texas

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text is the Gospel reading which has already been read.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I was home at lunchtime back in Livingston on the day after Grace Lutheran Church had extended the divine call to me to be your pastor. Rev. Sullivan had called me the night before to let us know, and needless to say, Heidi and I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep that night. How in the world would I make such a difficult decision? Maybe what I needed to help make the decision was some sort of sign.

So at lunch the day after I had received the call, we were getting the kids' food ready, and the girls were going to have some Lil' Smokies sausages, and when we put them in front of Grace Ann, her face lit up and she said, "Mmmmm…sausage!" I looked at Heidi and said, "Well, I guess we have to take the call to Elgin, since it's the Sausage Capital of Texas." Maybe the sign was in the sausage.

Well, not really. Seriously, there is no sign-searching or waiting for the right feeling when deliberating a divine call; just a lot of prayer and discussion of serious as well as mundane things. I won't bore you with the details, but signs have nothing to do with it. And that is true of our Christian lives as well: special signs are not what we are to expect from our Lord. So many people are trapped in the prison of sign-searching, wondering if God will give them some sign that He has heard their prayers, or that He wants them to marry a certain person, or that He wants them to enter a certain career.

But look at what Jesus said about signs. Sure, He did lots of signs and wonders to show that He was the Messiah, but when people started to get fixated on signs rather than on Him and His Word, He would point them away from signs. When the Pharisees came to Him and said, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you," He answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth". And on the cross as He was being swallowed up by death for our sins, He refused to do a sign for those who passed by, mocking Him, saying to Him, "You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross…He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him".

When it came time for Jesus to answer for the sin of the world and our salvation hung in the balance, He rejected signs and wonders as the way to go and instead chose the way of suffering, self-giving love. Coming down from the cross would have been an impressive sign for onlookers, but it would have done us no good. It would have served to preserve Jesus' life, but as He Himself had said, "The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for the masses." He came to redeem all the masses of people in the world of all times and all places, to suffer for all us sinners to spare us from the wrath of God. He died and then fulfilled the sign of the prophet Jonah by being swallowed into the belly of death, the heart of the earth, a tomb of stone.

But it was impossible that death should hold Jesus, for He had done no wrong; in fact, He had done everything right, obeying the Law perfectly, something we could never do. It was impossible for death to hold Jesus, and so on the third day the Father reached down and snatched His Son from the tomb, declaring that He had accepted Christ's sacrifice for our sin, declaring us righteous and holy for the sake of Christ. And Jesus after showed Himself alive to His apostles, He did not commission them to go out and make believers by signs and wonders—although they would do signs along the way as a way of getting people's attention—but what He really commissioned them to do was go out and deliver His Word: in Matthew He says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you". In Mark Jesus says, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.". In Luke He says, "Repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in [My] name to all nations". The marching orders He gives the Church and her ministers is to preach the Word, Law and Gospel, judgment and grace, repentance and the forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus, who is the Word of God made flesh.

And that brings us to our parable this morning, in which Jesus points us not to signs but to Seed. The parable of the sower is one that many of you in Elgin can relate to, since many of you have grown up around farms and gardens, as I did. The parable is very straightforward, with a sower, seed, and four types of ground. After you heard this parable, perhaps you were wondering, "What kind of soil am I?" and a lot of times preacher will focus on the dirt, but if you follow Jesus' explanation, you'll see that the starting point for Him is not dirt but Seed.

He explains, "Now the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God." That's where we must start. If there is a Word of God, then it must come from God, and if the Seed is God's Word, then God is the sower. And the seed is the Word, which is what St. John calls Jesus in his first Gospel: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth". So the Father is the sower, who sends His Son, the Seed, the Word, to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins to us. He speaks His Word in the Holy Scriptures and through His Church, through the mouths of the pastors He puts in congregations to proclaim the Word, but also whenever Christians speak the Gospel to their neighbors.

And listen to the power in that Word, the Gospel: St. Peter tells us Christians, "You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable [seed], through the living and abiding Word of God…And this Word is the good news that was preached to you". St. James urges us, "Put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls"). And in our Old Testament reading today, the Lord promised, "My Word that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it".

With such a powerful Word to proclaim, Jesus invites us to believe that the Seed, the Word, He Himself does it all, and so all we can do is scatter that seed about, indiscriminately, on every type of soil we find. And the Lord's Word is so powerful, the Lord's Seed is so fertile, that it can even break up the hard path and rocks, and make them good soil; it can take root in thorn-infested soil and choke out the weeds; it can make good soil that is already bearing fruit one hundredfold and make the yield even more. The Seed does it all because the Seed is the Word of God.

In Mark Jesus tells a somewhat different parable about sowing. He says, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come". Note that in this parable Jesus says a man scatters seed; it doesn't say the Sower, God, as our parable from Luke 8 says. Instead it says a man, not God sows; it could be a pastor or a lay Christian who scatters about the Seed, and according to the parable, the earth produces a harvest automatically, though the person does not know how it happens. That is what we in the Church must learn about the Word of God. We do not know how and when it is going to take root and grow; we do not know why some people harden themselves and reject the Seed; we do not know if our sowing will produce fruit in our lifetime. All we can do is scatter the Seed and let Him do the rest.

This past summer there was a Vacation Bible School song that the kids sang, which had an incredibly annoying tune. And the thing about annoying tunes is that they stick with you, unfortunately. At least this one had a great message attached to it. It said, "The sower does the sowing, but can't control the growing." That's something I as a pastor find great comfort in. My calling is to sow the Word all the time, but only God can bring about growth, when and where He pleases. St. Paul once said, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth". Here in Elgin you might say, "Rev. Sullivan planted, and I'm here to water what he planted (and plant some more), but only God who grants the growth deserves praise and glory."

For it is His Seed that does it all, and we have His promises about His Word that we can stake all our hopes on. We know that when the Gospel is proclaimed, it bestows life on those dead in sin. We know that when the Word of God is attached to water in Holy Baptism, the Lord promises that divine washing forgives sins and gives new birth to sinners. We know that the Holy Absolution spoken by the pastor truly forgives the sins of those who have been brought to repentance by God's Word. We do know that when Christ's Words of Institution are spoken over bread and wine, then we Christians receive His true body and blood to eat and to drink, for the forgiveness of our sins and the strengthening of our faith. And the Seed, the Word of God, does all of this without our help!

So with God's Word as our Seed, water, and fertilizer, we rejoice to gather here at church to be given His life-giving gifts as often as we can get them in the Divine Service and in Sunday School and Bible Class. We can never get enough of God's good Word and Spirit. Jesus said, "As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the Word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience." As God's Word has its way with you, as you read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest His Word, you will bear fruit and learn patience. If you put yourself where the Word is proclaimed week in and week out, the Seed will nourish your faith, protect you from things that would invade your good soil, and will produce a bumper crop.

And we desperately need to be fed by the Word, for we know that just as soils can go from bad to good, so also can good soils can become rocky and barren by neglect and abuse. We know that the devil is constantly seeking to steal the Word away from us and kill our faith. We know that false doctrine is out there, trying to get us to believe that we are faithful Christians only if things are going well for us, and falsely teaching that something must be wrong with our faith if we are suffering trials and temptations. (Just consider what St. Paul showed us in our Epistle to see how wrong they are about suffering and weakness in the Christian life). We know that cares and riches and pleasures of life can distract us from putting God's Word and Church first in our lives. And so this morning we pray that the Seed would do it all for us, making us good soil and keeping us that way by His Word and Sacraments.

This past week I was visiting Milton Wieding, who is very ill with liver and lung cancer, and I had the privilege of delivering the Word of God and Holy Communion to that man who for many years spoke the Word to children in Sunday School here. Milton told me a delightful story about his grandfather. He said that when he was younger, he would help his grandfather plant seeds in the garden, and after they reached the end of each row, his grandfather would bow his head silently for a minute. Milton asked what he was doing, and his grandfather said, "I was giving thanks to the Lord for the land and the seed, and now that I have done all that I can do by planting the seed, I am asking that the Lord would nourish it and make it grow." After every row he did that. That is thankfulness for God's gifts.

And if a farmer can give thanks for the land and seed and rain that bring us food, how much more then should we give thanks to God for forming us from the dust, for breathing into us the breath of life, for giving us new birth unto eternal life through the implanted Word, for watering us with forgiveness in Holy Baptism, for pulling the weeds out of us in Holy Absolution, and for nourishing us in the Lord's Supper. "O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever." His Seed does it all for you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And now the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.