A Heavenly Kiss :: Matthew 13:1-9 18-23
Blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.
Parables are hard.
Of all the things I learned from my service in the Marine Corps, no principle has been as valuable to my day-to-day life as following the “KISS method.”
You’ve heard of the KISS method, haven’t you? Given that we are in a family setting, I’ll translate it this way ... Keep It Simple, Sherlock. Don’t make it hard. OK, the Marine Corps never used such kind words. But simply put, no matter what you do, now matter how you do it, you should always apply the KISS method. Keep it simple. If you want folks to understand what you’re telling them, keep it simple. We should not have to hire Sherlock to decipher what we are trying to say.
It seems strange, then, that Jesus would use parables to teach the crowd. Parables do not conform to the KISS method. Parables are hard to understand; they are confusing. Parables are puzzles; they are not simple. Parables always force us to ask the All-Knowing One what they really mean. And to think that no less than one-third of the recorded teachings of Jesus consists of parables, and that over the next three weeks, this one included, we will hear Jesus tell us five parables.
Brothers and sisters in Christ this begs the question with all of these parables ...
HOW CAN ANY OF US HEAR WITH OUR EARS, UNDERSTAND WITH OUR HEARTS, TURN AND BE HEALED?
I. It’s hard for anyone to hear the good news with the devil, our flesh, and the world deafening and blinding us to the truth of Christ.
This has been happening ever since the dawn of time.
As both Saint John and Genesis remind us ... In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were created by the Word. (John 1:1-2)
That is simple enough to understand.
That is to say, Behold, the Sower went out for the purpose of sowing his seed upon creation. The result was Magnificent, Amazing. Beautiful. Fruitful. Delicious. The Word of God landed on the good earth he created, and it blossomed and bloomed and multiplied. It was ... in God’s eyes ... very good. And we had it made in the shade.
But then the Evil One came and started devouring the seed The Sower had sowed. Some of that seed fell by the wayside, some amid rocks, some amid thorns, some on the fertile garden.
Did God really say, the Evil One asked. To which we immediately started thinking ... well now ... maybe he didn’t.
You know, I think he said I can be like God. I think he said I can figure out life on my own. I think I can understand all things ... good and evil ... Yes, I want to understand everything! Because I love ... me ... most of all.
Don’t you love me, too?
We have been in a death spiral ever since. We turned away from God and could no longer see him or hear him. We made life hard on ourselves. We became indifferent to God’s Word, allowing it to be lost in our lives, giving up on personal devotions, giving up on personal prayer, giving up on Bible study ... because well, God’s word isn’t as simple as Dr. Seuss’s delightfully silly rhymes.
This is one reason why Isaiah reminds us immediately before our Old Testament reading that his thoughts are not our thoughts; his ways are not our ways.
Life isn’t simple. As if the devil isn’t enough of a distraction, we have to wrestle with our own flesh, too.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we make life hard. We are pros at being vain, shallow, simple people. We love to love ourselves.
We are addicted to ourselves ... addicted to the pleasures of our flesh. We refuse to repudiate the sin in our lives. We don’t help and support our neighbors in every physical need. We don’t love and honor each other. We don’t help improve and protect possessions and income. We are gossips.
We ignore the lack of justice in our country ... refusing to be speak out against abortion, allowing this evil to be called good.
We are constantly seeking our next spiritual high. And then we begin trying to turn our worship into our gift to God instead of God’s gift to us. Yes, as long as everything is going well, we’re all for hearing the Word of God, until it rubs us wrong.
Most of you are here every Sunday. Nearly half of you will even show up for special services. But ask yourselves, how often do you receive the Gospel with joy only to immediately forget it as soon as you walk out the church doors, where tribulation and persecution pounce upon you, and people challenge your simple faith?
Our shallow understanding of God’s Word leaves us prone to wither under the pressure of life. We do everything we can to avoid dealing with the rocks cluttering our pastures ... preferring the easy paths that give us wide latitude in how we live.
But as if all that wasn’t enough ... Honestly, how can you hear God’s Word amid the roar of a world? The world refuses to acknowledge the simple value of God’s Word ... unless it suits its needs and desires. The world refuses to be silent and to simply hear the Good News. It prefers to sit in darkness and avoid the light ... because quite honestly ... the Word of God is blinding and deafening.
So brothers and sisters in Christ, heed the Word of God given to us by Peter, Paul, and James: Put away your hypocrisy (1 Pet 2:2); Put away your falsehood and bitterness (Eph 4:25, 31); Put away your filth (Jas 2:1).
Repent, every one of you!
You have received the Spirit.
So return to the Gospel.
II. God has blessed each of you with the simple gift of actually hearing and seeing the Gospel.
He has scattered his seed into your lives. And now you are able to hear it.
This Word was planted within you. Then, in Baptism, God began providing you with living water that nurtures you. He protects you from the scorching heat of the devil, your flesh, and the sinful world. He is making you fruitful despite all of the obstacles that the world sets in your path. And ultimately, he will rescue you from the thorns choking you out. Some of you will produce a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.
The quantity isn’t important. What is important is that it is God’s doing. He has provided you with a Word of Salvation really is quite simple.
As God declared this to you already through the word of Isaiah.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven 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, so shall my word be that does out of 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.
That purpose, brothers and sisters in Christ, is really simple: it’s your salvation. He is saving you by grace through faith on account of Christ. Now blessed are you eyes, because you see; and your ears, because you hear.
Jesus is the word who came down from heaven. He has come to sow his seed in your life. And it is producing eternal life through the proclamation of the Gospel which declares again to you today that ... God has come to you to do what you can’t do: He has actively and passively lived and died on a cross for you. He who knew no sin became sin for you, so that he could take the punishment you deserve upon himself. Now all who simply look to Christ will not die but will have eternal life.
It is such a simple truth the world chokes on.
This new life is yours because Jesus has united himself with you in your baptism and his communion with you.
The parables that so often are confusing and complex, really are quite simple when we realize that they are not about you, that they are about what God is doing for you. Parables belong to the language of revelation. They are descriptive of God’s activity rather than prescriptive or predictive for your life.
In the parable of the sower, you’re not the one who must cast the seed on the ground. God is the one doing that. You’re not the one who will produce the fruit of the harvest. God is the one doing that.
You are the soil. You are idle in this parable. It’s that simple.
And because of it you will produce the fruit of faith, giving evidence that you are saved.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, God alone does all the work in your life, pruning away the thorns ... smoothing out the rocky ground you walk on.
More than that, he alone is the one who bears the thorns for you. He alone is the one who ascended the rock soil of Golgotha for you. He alone is the one who lived and died on a cross for you.
Truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and didn’t see (that is, the tangible gifts of body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins) and to hear what you hear, and didn’t hear, that is, the absolution of Jesus himself.
So blessed are you because now you see and now you hear.
It is the power of God for salvation (Rom 1:16).
Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the sower and the seed.