Actually, I kind of like this seed-slinging technique.  It doesn’t require a green thumb, because to Jesus what matters most is that the seed gets into the soil; that the soil is receptive to the seed.  When the seed enters the soil everything has been done that a sower can do. (Jesus is trying to keep it simple, here).  The blossoming then becomes the miracle of God’s ground.  It is the secret of the plant taking root in the soil that bears the surprise of fruits and flowers as beauty takes root in the world.

Just when I thought my planting work had gone to pot, I woke up yesterday, walked out onto the porch and much to my surprise, there they were; Hawaiian blue eyes they’re called that had taken a whole month to blossom overnight.  (The dead plants of my bachelor days are over!).  Rachael and I picked out these low maintenance hanging plants that love the heat and thrive in summer!  Perfect for this Texas climate.  I can’t explain exactly how they grew, and I certainly can’t take credit for how beautiful they are.  It wasn’t because I have a green thumb, but with Rachael watering them a few times a day, the seed and the soil proved to be a perfect match.  

Jesus says the beauty and power of the kingdom of God lies in good seeds matching up with good soils.  Jesus used images from everyday life to tell stories about the kingdom of God.  But you don’t have to be a farmer or a gardener or have a green thumb to get a handle on Jesus open-air sermon, here.  You just have to be a good listener; teachable; open and receptive to putting down roots with his way of life.

Taking up his image, he says some of the seeds fell on the sidewalk and blackbirds came and gobbled it up.  Some seeds fell over rocky soil of bricks and Austin stone; some fell into the thorn bushes but some fell onto good, rich topsoil. 

These four soils (the path, the rocky ground, the thorns, and the good soil) are really a description of the people’s mixed responses to Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God (life as God intends).  As you can tell, most of these seeds do not fall into favorable conditions      

Take the rocky soil, which could describe those who come to Jesus in a fever.  They are those spiritual seedlings that begin with an emotional flourish and deep excitement; but when the zeal wears away, there are no roots that help them cultivate a spiritual life.  They become the stone hearts that reject Jesus way of life when the going gets tough in the heat of doubt and the hotbed of death.   Voices haunting that Palestinian landscape:  If you are the Son of God…show us a sign.  Are you the One or should we look for another?”  Signs of discouragement; the growing sense that the Gospel was going in one ear and out the other.  Jesus knew that building a critical mass of perennial followers would be a thorny problem. 

You might think the sower in the story knew the same.  Though he appears disorganized and wasteful, he trusts the miraculous and mysterious process of growth. Just as sure as the good soil bears the good fruit, so will the kingdom of God come by God’s power alone.  What freedom then to sow seeds with reckless abandon, believing that God will grow a beautiful harvest; tangled roots and all. 

No doubt you too have planted seeds too many to count; seeds of care and compassion; hope.  You sow seeds of love even as you drive your children to baseball practice and piano lessons.  You sow seeds of love and care when you send a card to a homebound member; when you volunteer at Wilkinson Center; when you teach Sunday school; when you attend church committee meetings!  We plant seeds that one day will grow.  We water seeds already planted.  Like the sower, you scatter the seeds and then wait in hope.  You go to bed at night, wake up in the morning, and carry on with your work.  Until one morning you wake up, and much to your surprise, the seed sprouts then grows; first the blade, then the leaf, then the flower.  Good soil.

The good soil is people who hear and do the Gospel; those who put there hands to the Gospel plough knowing that the crop of the kingdom of God is always more than what meets the eye.  The nutrients necessary for growth are working underground even when what we see is fragile and failing. 

The question for us sowers just might be:  Can we lose ourselves in the pure joy of the planting without becoming too obsessed with the results? 

Putting down roots in Jesus’ way of life, after all, takes a lifetime of growing; rooted down in the deeper soil of God’s Spirit over time to bear the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

When it comes to sowing, there will always be a special mystery to gardening work; mainly because whether the seeds wither or flourish is mostly beyond our control.  We can sling the seed, but we cannot force it to take root in the soil.  All the while we wait for new life to blossom; for the life of God’s Spirit to wash over the ground.

You can help prepare good soil, but it is ultimately up to the soil to help the seed sprout and take root.  It is a miracle of God’s earth just as who we become is a miracle of God’s grace. 

In some seasons of our lives we may be the sowers.  In other seasons, we may be the soil. 

Some of you have read Wendell Berry, a philosopher of the land and a Kentucky farmer.  Hear his words describing good topsoil.  "Good topsoil is very Christ-like in its benevolence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its tranquility. It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness. It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it. It keeps the past, not as history or as memory but as richness." (from essay A Native Hill, 1968)

The rich compost of our lives includes dreams that have died, dead-end relationships; wasted days of life being choked out of us by mortgages we can barely pay; the pressure to produce more and more at work; feeling inferior to the people around us. 

But what if something new and beautiful could grow out of these dark places?  What if you could put down roots in good soil again? 

Truth be told, most of us want to be rooted in something; a career, a social cause; a relationship; a church group; something that will anchor us down to what is lasting and meaningful.

Some of us know what it’s like to pull up roots, too; relocating for a job; leaving for school; retiring.  Yet even as we leave one place the richness of those times and relationships remain with us.  We may grow into the gifts of our lives, but our growth is enriched by the gifts we receive from others.

We begin to find that the sum total of who we are as human beings is not due just to our own abilities and ambitions; it is rather due to the profound grace of a mysterious God who carries us toward people, events, and places. 

Think of all the people who have sown seeds in the soil of your life; those who have been patient with you; giving you room to mature and develop and deepen as a person; those who planted good seeds inside of you as if to say there is something in you yet to be.

We are all more than we seem.  More is going on beneath our skin than we could ever imagine.  Thomas Merton, a 20th century Trappist monk once asked his readers what kind of soil they will choose to be given the seeds of prayer God has sown in them.  Merton said:

Every moment and every event of every person’s life on earth plants something in the soul.  For just as the wind carries thousands of invisible and visible seeds, so the stream of time brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest in the minds and wills of people.  Most of these seeds perish and are lost, because people are not prepared to receive them:  for such seeds as these can not spring up anywhere except in the good soil of liberty and desire. (from New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 14)

Good soil by itself cannot will a watermelon; a hydrangea, or my proven winner Hawaiian Blue Eyes.  The miracle of fruit and flowers growing from the ground of our lives is only after the good soil of openness and desire receives the seeds of promise and possibility.  What promises and possibilities are springing up inside of you?

Human beings come from clay soil scooped out of the earth by God:  “from dust you come and to dust you shall return.”  Even human beings come from the rich topsoil in the Garden of Eden, tilled by the very hands of God the gardener. 

In ways we do not know and in places we cannot see, the Gospel is falling on rich topsoil; in the seasons when we are sowing and in the seasons when we are being soil.  At all times the seed is the beginning of God’s dreams for the kind of life Christ came to give.

If the life of God is to take deep root in the soil of our hearts, it will be as we listen to the wisdom God longs to get through to us.  When we are open and receptive to God’s Spirit, we are letting God tend to our souls.  It’s a much slower pace than some of us are used to, but such is the nature of growing a garden.  Planting a garden or putting down roots invites us to slow down and stop. 

The seed is in the ground.  We don’t know how it will grow; we just know that it will.  Having done all we can do, can we trust the rest to God?  Amen.