Sexagesima

Today’s Gospel reading is a parable, and the parable is explained to us by Jesus. Jesus does this – not so the people in his day would understand, but so the disciples would understand the parable. And so that they would have a basis for interpreting all the parables of Jesus. And so that we would also understand what he would teach us this day, and every day as we consider his words.

Jesus tells the parable, and then, at the end says “he who has ears to hear, let him hear!” And yet, to the disciples he says “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.” If you are alive and have ears, you need to use them to attend to the things of God. And yet, he knows that few will do so. He tells parables so they do not understand, as he explains to the disciples.

These words are from the prophet Isaiah. Well, from the Lord speaking to Isaiah. When Isaiah sees the heavenly vision of angels ascending and descending on the throne of God, and singing the words of the Sanctus, “Holy Holy Holy Lord God of hosts.” Isaiah despairs because he knows he is a sinner, and he is looking at things mortal man should not see. We’ve heard in recent weeks about the sinners daring to approach the holiness of God. It’s dangerous for us. Isaiah says “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” But God is merciful and he desires to be gracious to us. And so an angel responds by flying to the altar, taking a coal with tongs and touching Isaiah’s lips. He says, Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” The Lord does not desire the death of the sinner, but that he turn from his evil and live. Isaiah’s response is a godly one – fear of the Lord and repentance for sin. Isaiah is then commissioned to speak for the Lord to the people. To call them to repentance so that they may have eternal life. But the Lord warns him – the people will not hear, they will not understand, they do not want to be healed of their sin, they do not want to return to the Lord. Isaiah will speak to them words of grace and mercy from the Lord – calling them lovingly back from their sin. But they will not hear, they will not believe, they will not turn away from sin and return to the Lord. And so a great judgment will come on them. Not because God hasn’t given them chances to repent. But because they rejected each chance to repent. They steadfastly refused the gracious invitation of the Lord.

And so Jesus uses this word of the Lord to Isaiah to describe the people in his own day as well – and it could be used to describe any age, including our own. People do not want to repent, to turn away from their sin, and turn toward the Lord. They do not want to worship him in fear and holiness. As CS Lewis has said, “All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

In our own day there are many who refuse to hear the Word of the Lord, who wander off from his word and will, and then wonder why they struggle so greatly in this world with their own desires and sins, why their life seems empty and meaningless.

And we could speak eloquently for many hours about the fallenness of the world, all the bad stuff out there, and never reflect on this – that Jesus parable is a warning - not to the world, but to the church. The word of God is not proclaimed by and through the world. In the world you might see great beauty – stunning views, wonderful, almost miraculous things. But the Word of God, forgiveness of sins - is proclaimed only in and through Christ’s church. This is where the seed of the Word of God is found. And so the entire parable is a warning to us about life in the church, and the dangers we face.

We are preparing for Lent. We are getting our hearts ready for the journey. If we are going to increase our devotion to the Word of God this season, we need to know what it takes to profitably hear that Word – how it is we must be if we are to bear fruit with patience. It is possible to fruitlessly hear the Word of God. This is the warning of the parable, and so let us turn our hearts to Jesus warning, so that we might be strengthened and better prepared as we enter the season of Holy Lent.

A sower goes out to sow. As he sows it falls on four different kind of soils. Today seeds aren’t scattered by hand, they are drilled by machines. You set depth, distance apart, how many, how often, you plan and you protect the seed – it is valuable, it is support for your family. The sower we are told scatters seed – and much of it falls in an unfruitful way. But that does not mean the sower is careless. He doesn’t seem to worry overmuch about where it falls. But there is no indication that he is just randomly flinging seed. Even with our ultra-tech seed dispensing systems, not every seed falls on good ground. There may be some rocky sections. In much of the nation – where they suffer the opposite problem we have, there is too much water. Some seed will be lost by rain that washes it away or drowns it in a flooded field. But seeds will always fall in ways that can not be entirely controlled. So the sower is not reckless with his seed. You can not fully control where the seed will land.

And – moving to the explanation – the sower sows the seed which is the Word of God. That is, the sower is the pastor or teacher who proclaims God’s Word in the church. And most of the proclamation of the Word occurs in the church. We don’t go to work to hear sermons. Work is one of the ways we show love to our neighbor. The sower goes to the field before he begins his work. He doesn’t buy the seed and scatter it along the road on the way home. He doesn’t just fling it into a pond. The sower – the preacher – preaches to the church. To those who will hear. And the seed of God’s Word falls in different places and different types of soil – that is different hearts, that do not all receive the Word the same way.

We can complain that the world will not hear the Word. But the truth is, even in the church there are those who will not hear the Word of the Lord, who’s hearts have been hardened and so when the word comes to them, Satan immediately distracts them with worldly cares. There is not even a sprouting of the word. It is lost. It is plucked away, they do not let the Word even penetrate the soil of their hearts. The most obvious class here is the heretics, who twist God’s Word for their own ends, and their own worldly gain. The Word does not change them, and they are tools of Satan to try and tear down the church. But beyond that, Luther comments on these verses in his sermon for today and says, “I never would have dared to presume that the hearts of those who hear the Word and yet pay it no heed, and give it no further thought, were possessed by the devil. We would like to think there is no particular danger involved in heedless hearing and not retaining the Word, and that those who act thus are simple, inattentive people, with a natural trait of forgetting what they heard preached.” Thus Luther.

In other words – hearing the Word and immediately going away and forgetting it, not meditating prayerfully on it – is a sign that Satan has already overcome you, and that soon you may entirely fall away. This should put fear into every heart, that we not neglect or treat lightly the Word of God, but always hold it sacred, always gladly come to hear and learn of it. That we pay attention to it in the Divine Service, that we meditate on it and take it with us throughout the week as we go about our daily tasks. That we look into that word each day of the week, that we continue in our prayers, for ourselves, for Christ’s church in the world, and for all according to their needs. The greatest need is the need for forgiveness given through God’s Holy Word. And so the first petition is that God’s name would be kept holy among us – that is that it would be taught in its truth and purity. The second petition, that God’s kingdom would come, is that we would believe his holy word. And so each time we pray the Lord’s prayer, we are asking for God to bring us his Word, and that he not let the devil snatch it from our hearts, but that it would grow and bear fruit, fruit that will last. This is our first and most urgent prayer, because it is our greatest need.

Jesus talks about the second kind of soil – rocky. The seed grows up quickly when the ground is wet and the weather is cool. But because the roots are in rock, not soil, there is nowhere for them to go, they can not get deep enough to survive the tough times, when the water fails and the sun is hot. Such plants wither and burn up in the heat of summer, and do not come to fruition. And yet it is this very hot sun that is required to make the fruit mature. Grain that never gets heat does not mature. Hot, dry, sunny days are required for mature fruitful plants. The dog days of summer are difficult to endure. We all complain about the heat – hard to believe right now when we are still reeling from the cold – but work is difficult on those hot days, we want to just sort of lie there and wait for it to end. But this is the very thing needed for fruit to come. And it is the very thing Jesus warns us about – those hot days will come. Without roots sufficient to endure, you will dry up, wither, and blow away. And so we must tend the soil of our hearts. How do we do this? We must return to the font, the spring from which we are fed and watered and kept alive in Jesus. This makes deep roots, and when the burning times come, we do not lose hope, but probe ever deeper to be refreshed with the waters of God’s word, and his holy sacraments. He hold ever tighter to the Word and promise of God, and so come through the tough times stronger than ever.

The third kind of unfruitful soil is the weed-choked bits. Good soil in itself, the plant comes up – but it is surrounded by too many cares and pleasures of this world. Notice, Jesus doesn’t say cares and troubles – he says cares, riches, pleasures of this world.

It’s always kind of cliché to say we live in the most mostest time in history – whatever it may be we think is most about now. But there has never been a time when humanity has been so able to overschedule itself without time to break for God’s Word, when we could be constantly on the go, constantly distracted by screens and notifications and all the things to do around us as we now are.

The Church provides a blessed relief from that – a time when (even if the occasional stray cell phone rings) we don’t answer it. A time when we aren’t looking at screens, but when we can stop and hear God’s promise, we can meditate on it for a time without the madness of our daily life intruding. But it’s harder and harder to carve out that time. It feels like it used to be carving butter, and then carving wood and now carving rock to find the time. How can we? And yet, if we would profitably hear and learn the word, we need to claw back that time from the world. We need to say, “World, you get 167 hours. But hour 168 is the Lord’s.” And then perhaps a few minutes each day. World, you get 1435 minutes. But 5 minutes each day is devoted to prayer.” Lent is a good time to take up that challenge. To move from 0 to 5 minutes each day to hear and learn the word. Or from 5 to 10. To sacrifice that last round of video game, or social media crawl each day to instead hear the Word of God and respond in prayer. To devote ourselves to what God would say to us, to speak the Lord’s prayer, for ourselves and our neighbors. To add other prayers as time allows and as needs arise. To think on the passion and death of our Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins so that we are not overcome with cares and pleasures of this world. So that we fight back against the weeds against all that would slowly choke our faith. We know how sneaky they are at stealing our attention and trying to starve our faith. We know how much effort it takes to fight back against them. This we must do, if we wish to be fruitful plants, if we wish the Word of God to be fruitful in our lives.

Jesus tells this parable because of his great love for us, because he wants us to hear the Word and be saved. We are the fruit he would harvest, if only we got out of the way of the Word, and shut down Satan’s lies, kept the world from distracting us, and instead with honest and humble hearts, received the Word with patience, with gratitude received the forgiveness of sins from Jesus. This is his word to you this day, and it is his prayer for you, it’s what he teaches us to pray for in the prayer he taught us.

May God grant to each of us such patient and fruitful lives in Jesus Christ, for his sake and in his name.

Amen.