A Sermon for Sexagesima

Inspired by Pastor Bill’s saga of his war against the churchmice, I will now confess my sins to you all in the matter of my backyard, with apologies to Isaiah the prophet. In 2021, we bought a house in Port Alberni. It met all my criteria: lots of room inside, an attractive appearance, a good view of the valley, and the tiniest yard of any house on the block. Because I am not a gardener. But when I moved in, I discovered that it has five fruit trees at the top of a very sloping yard. But did I dig around them or make a wall or a winepress or a tower, like the song of the Vineyard in Isaiah chapter 5? No, I neglected them and let a huge mass of Himalayan blackberry brambles grow up around them. And I let the pear tree get so heavy with fruit that one of its main branches snapped off in the wind. And I didn’t do a good job of picking the fruit, so that many apples and pears and plums fell down among the blackberries to become attractants for raccoons and bears. And what did I do instead? I bought solar panels for my house, and tile and hardwood floors, and a light-up number sign that doesn’t even work properly. Judge now, between me and my fruit trees. What more could have been done for them that I have not done? Well, quite a lot, actually, and Lord willing, this will be the year to eliminate the blackberries. I have sinned against heaven and against my fruit trees.

Our gospel lesson this morning is the parable of the soils. The term parable is from the Greek παραβάλλω, to put side by side for comparison, to make an analogy. It is one of about forty that Jesus tells in his public ministry, and indeed, the telling of parables seems to have been Jesus’ signature or hallmark device. It is a form of speech that has its origins in situations where the teller needs to speak carefully because he faces danger from someone powerful. Aesop’s fables were originally devised as a way for a slave to speak to his master: “No, sir, I wasn’t talking about you and your slave. It was just a story about a lion and a fox.” Telling parables is therefore a valuable tool in Jesus’ toolbox as he is leading a kingdom movement that is an affront to the authorities. He has a fine line to walk: how to attract followers of his movement while not bringing the authorities down on him until his hour has come. Doing miracles is always somewhat risky for this reason: indeed, his first miracle at the wedding of Cana is wrung out of him by his mother, and he rebukes her with the words, “τι εμοι και σοι” — which is best translated, “What do you have against me?” Why are you trying to get me in trouble by making me reveal myself by doing a miracle. In order to launch his kingdom movement and win followers before laying down his life in Jerusalem, Jesus has to be careful and speak in such a way that he doesn’t give any rope to the spies that might hand him over to Herod and the Romans.

So Telling parables is a way to do that. Notice that after he tells his parable of the sower, Jesus’ final words to the crowd are, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” – a challenge to the listeners, implying that if you do not have understanding, it is because you are lacking “ears”, i.e. the ability to understand. It punctuates the parable with a finality and a challenge. It is rather similar to the challenge in the book of Daniel “Let the reader understand” – the astute reader, the gleg reader, the reader who can read between the lines.

Now, to the parable. It is a parable about plants. Ever since the last chapter of the book of Jonah, plants have been a treasured object lesson for the people of God. There are many features that makes them an attractive metaphor: their slow growth, their dependence on their environment, the patient work with which they must be reared and cultivated, their greenness as a manifest index of their health, their relation to water and to soil, their ability to suffer cutting and burning, and above all, the fruit they bear. For plants are in many ways like human beings: both have the ability to flourish and to be productive, and that is the goal, the well-being, the health and salvation of both plant and human.

In the Bible’s stories about fruit and crops, it is always God who figures as the farmer or gardener or landowner. He is the one who plants the vineyard, sows the seed, grafts wild branches, and prunes to encourage more fruit. And it is always Israel that is his “pleasant plant”, his field of wheat, his fig tree, his vine which he brought out of Egypt and planted, his trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord. In nearly every God-and-Israel plant image, there is a focus on the necessary and vital connection between Israel and her Lord. The righteous Israelite is like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf does not wither. You do not support the root, but the root supports you, says Paul in Romans 11. There is a theme in the Bible that runs from the garden of Eden with its four rivers and its tree of life, to the trees planted by the rivers in the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. The plant near the river - in Eden, in the New Jerusalem, in Psalm 1, in Jeremiah 17 - is Israel connected to her God, nourished on his kindness and hesed as a plant sucks up life-giving water with its roots.

And the parable of the sower is another of these agricultural metaphors. But it is best understood in connection with three other parables — two others by Jesus (the Wheat and the tares and the parable of the Wicked Vinedressers), and one from the Old Testament, Isaiah 5’s song of the vineyard. To help you see the repreated pattern here, I’d like to show you some diagrams that express the plot of these stories.

First, the parable of the soils from today’s gospel reading:

farmer —->   fruit ——> himself

                       |

fertility —> seed <— various problems

Next, the song of the vineyard from Isaiah 5:

farmer —->   fruit ——> himself

                       |

tower, etc —> vineyard <— ???

In the parable of the wicked vinedressers, it is:

farmer ——->    fruit ——> himself

                                |

messengers —> tenants <— wickedness

In the wheat and the tares, it is:

farmer ——->    fruit (grain) ——> himself

                                |

planting —> harvest <— weeds/tares

Now, each of these stories has a different bottom row because there are various problems: enemies who sabotage the field by planting weeds, wicked tenants who try to keep the field and its harvest for themselves, vines that unaccountably bring forth wild grapes, or, in today’s reading, three different sets of problems – rocks, birds, shallow soil, thorns. And these different sets of problems change the meaning of the various stories, to make them reflect the different situations of God’s people that they are devised to illustrate. But I want you to notice that in all of these stories, the top line is identical: God desires to receive the fruit of His field or vineyard. That’s the goal: fruit.

God wants a crop of holy people bearing fruit for him. Remember John the Baptist’s command? “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” Remember the fig tree that Jesus withered? He first went up to it and looked for fruit. The tree was Jerusalem, the fruit was what God always looks for: loyalty and obedience. That’s why he called Abraham in the first place; that’s why he planted the vineyard and cultivates it. That’s why the sower sows seed.

What is preventing that in our parable? What’s the opponent? All kinds of things: the fact that many people never believe the gospel in the first place, and so never become members of God’s people and never grow in His grace and bear fruit for him. Or they believe, but not with the sort of faith that lasts to the end, and so they become Christians but when persecution or trouble comes into their life, they fall away.

Gardening is a work of patience. He bears with us, tends us, prunes us, labouring that we may become mature and bear fruit, no matter how long it takes. He isn’t deterred by our wildness, our perversity, our sinful lives. He grafts us into His tree anyway, feeds us with the sap of the root of the covenant He made with the patriarchs, and which has been fulfilled in Christ. And he waits. Oh, he waits, years, decades, striving with us by His spirit to produce the fruit he desires.

God also wants us to have patience, or endurance. And his tool for producing this quality in us is the trouble that comes our way in life. Not that he is the author of trouble, or that our troubles are from him, but that he uses them to produce patience. James 1:2 says: “count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.” Testing produces patience when mixed with faith. Reliance on the gardener, trust in Him, unswerving allegiance even in the face of trouble — that is what is shown by those “who having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.” that is what Job showed, and God rewarded him for it.

Let’s focus for a minute on verse 14, with the verse that touches us most nearly in modern North America, especially here in BC. These plants are choked — the Greek word means “strangled” by cares, riches, and pleasures of life. These are the Himalayan blackberries of North America. These are things that can interfere with our allegiance to God. It is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 6,

“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

And he goes on:

“Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. 18 Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, 19 storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.”

Pleasure can interfere with our allegiance to God. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 5 about women who were widows, and advises Timothy to test them and make sure of their character before enrolling them to be supported by the charity of the Church: “Now she who is really a widow, and left alone, trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. 6 But she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.” We live in an age where technology has given us more capacity for leisured pleasure than at any time in history. It is not that pleasure is in itself bad; C.S. Lewis has his devil Screwtape say that

“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. “All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden.”

Pleasure at times, or in ways that God has forbidden: that is when pleasure becomes a distraction from following God; when it chokes our faith and makes us unfruitful.

Does this mean that this plant grew up and survived, but just didn’t bear any fruit — so maybe we can be carnal Christians and we’ll squeak by, alive, but fruitless? I don’t think that’s a possible interpretation. Jesus has another parable about plants like that, in Luke 13:

“6 He also spoke this parable: “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’ 8 But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. 9 And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that[a] you can cut it down.’”

So there is no room for unfruitful plants in God’s vineyard or field.

This is one of the few parables that Jesus explains in private to His disciples. Why? Because they are the core of the new Israel that he is planting by sowing the seed of the Word in their hearts. They are not the crowd; they have been given the knowledge of the mysteries — the hidden things being revealed — of the kingdom of God. See, Jesus is working a division in Israel, a gigantic pruning operation: he had been sent for the rising and falling of many in Israel; he did not come to bring peace, but a sword; he is chopping off the fig tree every unfruitful branch, and choosing out for himself fruitful branches that will survive to bear fruit. That is why he uses parables: they are a means of concealing the truth from those who are rejected: “so that” – that’s the purpose! – “So that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand.” They are culpable; the problem is with their ears, not with Jesus or His words. But Jesus’ inner group of disciples get the fuller explanation because He loves them and has welcomed them into intimate fellowship with Himself and thereby with God.

We are in the position of these disciples: we have received the word; the mysteries have been explained to us; we have knowledge of the kingdom. But we are not to pat ourselves on the back and assume that “I’m elect, I can’t fall away.” For the parable of the soils is not a parable of different types of seeds. Nor is there a difference between the green shoots of the plant the springs up in the shallow, rocky soil, and that which sprouts in the good soil. And the parable does not say that you are the soil; it is not a parable about different types of people who hear the Word, or about how some of them have unregenerate hearts and others are elect; how some people can have faith, and others can’t, so don’t preach to them. No, throughout the Bible, God’s people are the plants, or the branches on the fig tree, or the shoots on the vine — they are supposed to bear fruit. The differences are circumstances, not ontology. It is not a parable about predestination, but about the preaching of the Word in history.

We must have respect for the process. God is working on us, digging around us, watering us (perhaps through his ministers — remember Paul saying, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gives the increase). At the end, we are to be harvested. And then there will be a separation of the wheat from the tares, as in Jesus’ other parable. Then, it will be apparent who are members of the church in the resurrection, and who has fallen away in history — only after the pruning, watering, tending activity has taken place and had its effects. But in Luke 8, none of those later steps of caring for plants is depicted. Instead, the focus is only on the first step: sowing the seed. It is the most haphazard process: fire and forget, flinging seed indiscriminately on all sorts of ground. But to understand the meaning of sowing, we must attend to the OT.

The seed, Jesus says, is the Word of God; that is what the sower sows. This is a detail that connects the parable of the sower to Isaiah 55:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heave

and do not return there but water the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

11  so shall my word be 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.

What is this thing for which God sends forth His word? Isaiah continues:

12  “For you shall go out in joy

and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you

shall break forth into singing,

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

13  Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall make a name for the Lord,

an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”  (Isaiah 55:10–13, ESV)

Israel will be restored, brought back from exile, made to dwell with her God once again. In Jeremiah 16:16, God had promised to send forth many fishers who would fish disobedient Israel “out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them” — Jesus had called them from their boats on the Sea of Galilee to make them “fishers of men.” The scattering of the seed is the preaching of the Word that serves to divide Israel into those who hear the Word of God and obey it (Jesus’ disciples), and those who disobey and are cut off. God knows those who are his. For that reason, the sowing is to all. “Every branch that does not bear fruit, my Father removes, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in me will bear much fruit.” Let us, then, understand ourselves as God’s planting, to bear fruit for Him. Let us remember that He is the gardener, and a lot better one than I am; at the end of the day, God will not be content with a back yard full of invasive Himalayan blackberries. Quite the contrary: “Christ will have the prize for which He died: an inheritance of nations.”