July 13, 2008 Message

Romans 8: 10-11; Matthew 13: 18-23 (Contemporary English Version)
Dirt Poor

Q: What's the difference between soil and dirt?
A: Location, Location. Location

Paul says, “Christ lives in you.” (God is that close.) “You are alive because God has accepted you.” (God is that forgiving.) “You will be raised to life by God’s Spirit that lives in you.” (God is that loving.) [Romans 8: 10-11] There’s a lot God has done and IS doing in our lives, isn’t there? Once again we hear the message: God’s presence, God’s kingdom, is very close, even now.

It was the message Jesus shared all the time. He also told a story about a farmer who scattered a bunch of seeds on his land. He told this story so the people would better understand God and God’s kingdom. And, in the story, he told about the different places the seeds were scattered and what happened to them there. Later, Matthew tells us, Jesus’ disciples asked him why he told stories all the time rather than just saying what he meant. So Jesus told them what the story meant.

He said when it comes to God’s message and people hearing it, it isn’t always the same, just like for the farmer sowing seeds, the results can be different.
1. Some people hear the message about the kingdom, but don't understand it. Then the evil one comes and snatches the message from their hearts. It’s as if it were never there at all. This is the hard ground.
2. Some people gladly hear the message and accept it right away. But they don't have deep roots, and they don't last very long. As soon as life gets hard or the message gets them in trouble, they give up. This is the rocky ground.
3. Some people hear the message but they start worrying about the needs of this life and are fooled by the desire to get rich. So the message gets choked out, and they never produce anything. This is the weedy ground.
4. Some people hear the message and understand it. They produce as much as a hundred or sixty or thirty times what was planted. This is the good ground.

It’s pretty clear the person we want to be, right? All of the people in Jesus’ story heard the message, but we want to understand it. We want to be that kind of person, to be “good soil” – close to God – that is fruitful and will produce a hundred fold. We don’t want to like those who are “hard” or “rocky” or “weedy.” But is it different kinds of people Jesus is talking about in his story, or rather four different responses to his teaching a person might make? If so, we might keep mind hearing,

Bradley Schmeling (pastor at St. Johns Lutheran in Atlanta, GA) suggests we should consider whether, in our lives, we might actually move from one place to another - that there are perhaps different soils inside each of us. He asks in this month’s Christian Century, “Isn’t life more a patchwork of various kinds of terrain and soil, going from one to the other and back again depending upon where we are at along the journey.”

Life is filled with familiar and well worn paths, like those traveled through the timber in the spring on your way home from school. The path you take is packed down to the point it’s virtually impossible for a new seed to take root and grow, and it will be as long as you always go that same way. But it’s hard to go a different way, to cut a new path, even if it means something could possibly grow where the old one was.

Along the way, on the abandoned railroad right of way, there is an occasional Sweet William or violet growing, but its only there for a short time because there isn’t enough nutrients or moisture in the cinder filled soil. The takes a right turn and meandered south toward the creek, where there is a patch of weeds that choke out and inhibited even the most promising new growth. That patch of weeds is like the distractions, serving no real purpose, which can overtake a person’s life.

The latest You Tube king is a 14 year-old named Fred who has over 45 million views. What’s this got to do with today’s lesson? Fred has no content. He’s one part funny, one part entertaining, one part sad and one part annoying. But Fred really doesn't have anything to say. There's no message. I know, I checked it out.

Some would say watching Fred is time wasted. For me, it was only a couple of minutes. But multiplied by 45 million, it becomes a huge patch of weeds, where something could have grown but didn’t. How much of our time is spent as seeds scattered on good soil?

Good soil is what we would rather be, knowing full well it is not what we always are. There are times we’re not even close. That’s when we are dirt poor. Times we’re still seeking - or looking for God - knowing something is missing from our life; times when we’re a little cynical, wondering if there’s really anything God can offer us; or times when we’re just plain sleeping – not even aware anything is missing from life, time we don’t even think about God.

We want to be good soil. We’ve heard and studied the Bible… and still we fail to understand it. We’ve been filled with joy aand the power of the word proclaimed… and still we’ve forgotten it when life called us to make a stand with those who suffer. We’ve all experienced times when Christ was in the forefront of our thoughts… and still our minds wander to the luxurious temptations of life.

But once again the lesson is not about me… or you. It is not about good dirt and poor dirt. It is not about what one kind of person does that another does not. It’s not about being swept up in cultural temptation, or about being too hard a ground for God’s grace or about being the right kind of soil. This lesson is not about our power, but about the power of God to grow the harvest.

It is about God. It is about the Good News. It is about the sower who generously scatters the seed everywhere – that it might grow.

God makes things grow even in marginal and in the most unlikely of places – adding to a full and abundant harvest. Christ of the harvest is at work within the fields of our spirit, whether it’s dirt poor or not. As Christians we are to be alive now with the reign of God, growing in the presence of Jesus. The kingdom is close, even now. And God continues to scatter the seed that there might be an abundant harvest. Thanks be to God!