Stay in the Field: Parable of the Sower Sermon (Matthew 13)

Introduction

Life can surprise you at any moment.

It's not like anyone wakes up, stretches, looks in the mirror, and says, "You know what I'm feeling today? I'm feeling like losing one of my wheels in the parking lot."

But I watched that very thing happen, just a few weeks ago. I had an appointment down the street. I pulled into the parking lot, and just ahead of me, a man in a nice minivan rolled over the speed bump, and his back wheel came clean off.

The tire came off, and it was just metal sitting on the asphalt with a 2-foot screech mark.

The driver was there just waiting, waiting for the tow service to show up (which took over an hour). Meanwhile, everyone drives around him and tries not to stare, but stares anyway.

That's how life happens. You are minding your own business. You think you are entering your regularly scheduled day, and the wheels shoot right off.

Or, the phone rings. The call comes: "Ma'am, this is the school nurse. Samantha just threw up. It was probably the meatloaf. You need to come get her."

Or the text: "Dad fell again." Okay, I'm on my way.

Or: "My device won't charge. Now I've got to go to the store and get it fixed." Of all the things I wanted to do and of all the things I wanted to think about, this was not on the list.

And you're not doing anything wrong. You're just living. You're just trying to be responsible, trying to love people, trying to literally keep the wheels from shooting off.

It sometimes seems impossible to have an uncomplicated seven days in a row. Something is going to happen, and by the time you rise above the smoke, days or weeks go by.

The Parable

Jesus knew about days like that. He knew how life can get away from you. And he took that experience, and he packaged it into a story.

A farmer goes out to sow. Not in a neat little garden. Not in a perfect row. He is in the field, and he's casting the seeds like you throw salt on your sidewalk — nice, strong, and wide, and the seeds just fly out. And the seed lands everywhere.

One of my favorite childhood memories is my dad teaching me how to cast grass seed. "No, son, you gotta let it fly like this. This is not the time to be stingy."

So the farmer is out in the field, casting generously. Some falls on the path, hard-packed, beaten down, and before it has any chance, the birds come and take it. Some seed falls on rocky ground. It comes up fast, but there's no depth, no root, and when the sun hits it, it dries up. Some seed falls among thorns, and the plant starts to grow, but it gets crowded out and choked by everything else growing in the same soil. Some seed falls on good soil — and it grows, and it yields more than anyone could have predicted.

Jesus tells that story, and there's no finger wagging in it. There's a clear-eyed honesty about what happens to the word of God once it lands in a real human life.

Not bad people. These are your family members. These are your friends. These are my family members and my friends. This is me. This is you. This is how we respond.

The Four Soils

When the ground is hard

Sometimes the ground is hard. Not because someone is "bad," but because life has been heavy. Because disappointment has compacted the soil. Because grief has pressed everything down. Because someone has walked the same path of worry or cynicism or self-protection so long, the seed can't seem to get in. It's not that God isn't speaking. It's that the heart won't open. Sometimes the ground is just too hard-packed.

When the birds come

Sometimes it is not rebellion against God. Sometimes it's much worse than rebellion — it's inattention. It's a distraction. It's a mind so full of everything that the seed never even gets a chance to settle.

You hear something holy and good in the church service, but you're already thinking about the next thing, the next appointment, the next interruption.

You have a memory of something good or moving from the Bible, or prayer, or something that stuck to you at church — but instead of living with that, calling it to mind, and rolling it over patiently to squeeze meaning out of it, you get busy doing instead of being with that grace.

The seed hits the surface, and it's gone. Birds of distraction.

When the soil is shallow

A person can have a real moment, a real spark, a real desire, and it is sincere. But there's no space for roots. No margin. No depth. And then the first stretch of hot days comes — the first conflict, the shine wears off of the gospel, the first stretch where worship feels boring or when it seems like someone moved the church building thirty miles away and getting here just feels so much more difficult than it used to.

And the tender growth, once so promising, shrivels — not because the seed was weak, but because there was no fertile depth.

When the thorns come

Not evil things. Normal things. Work. Kids. Sports. Family. Responsibility. Recreation. The endless to-do list that, if we were honest, if we cloned ourselves, we still could not get through. Yet we add more and more to it.

Thorns have a life of their own. Thorns are often the stuff we would defend as reasonable. Money-making opportunities. Worries that show up after the sun goes down. Good weather. Yes, thorns are often the stuff we would defend as reasonable — and that is what makes them both effective and dangerous.

"Well, I'd get to church and worship God and give God thanks for another day, but the weather was just too good to do that."

That sentence can sound funny until you realize how easily a life gets built on sentences like that. Not one decision — a thousand small ones.

Forty Years

Life gets away from you. And the scary part is that it doesn't have to happen in a dramatic way.

You just wake up one day, and you realize you've been trying to get back for a long time. I shared this before, but it bears repeating. I was pastoring a church and within the first three months of my being there, a man in his mid-sixties came up to me. He told me he had started coming right before I arrived as pastor. He said, "Jason, I've been trying to get back to church for forty years."

Forty years.

It hit me like a punch — because he wasn't saying, "I hated God for forty years." He wasn't saying, "I was on a mission to avoid faith." He was saying, "Life happened." Reasonable weeds. He focused on building a business. Busy, busy, busy. And he put so much pressure on himself that he needed a release valve. Off to the boat, off to the Carolinas, off to here and there. He did quite well. He made millions. But sometimes I wonder what the millions cost him.

Weeks turned into months. Months turned into forty years — feeling there was a hole running right through the middle of him.

And his life changed because people in his life stayed in the field and kept throwing seeds.

What Staying in the Field Looks Like

We had two Ash Wednesday services this week. You just never know with a midweek service who, if anyone, is going to walk through the door. Four of us were in here preparing for the noon service, and a little after eleven, the back door cracked open. A young woman in her mid-twenties walked in and said, "Hi. I was wondering if I could receive ashes."

We talked for a few minutes. She said, "I'm a former Catholic, and I'm looking for a new church. I'm on my way to work, so I can't stay, but I would love to receive the ashes."

Seeds planted by the church long ago, still growing. You never know.

Thirty minutes before the evening service, another woman came in, wanted ashes, and stayed. She heard Montana sing in Spanish — her mother tongue. She said, "I've been looking for a church. This was good. Everyone is friendly."

Nobody planned either of those moments. Nobody could have. The seed was already out there, and it found someone.

That is why we keep sowing. That is why we keep inviting. That is why we volunteer and show up after work and flip pancakes and roll silverware and chop fruit. That is why we have fires in the firepit and do fun things at Freedom Park and bowl together and laugh with each other. These are not just programs. These are seeds. Every one of them.

Keep throwing the seed.

The Lavishness of God

If I walked into a field, my natural instinct would be to look at the soil and make a calculation. You walk the rows, you read the ground, you decide where your best shot at a return is. That is not irresponsible. That is just human. That is how reasonable people think.

But that is not what the sower in this parable does. He throws seed on the path. He throws it on the rocks. He throws it among the thorns. He is not efficient. He is not calculating. He is lavish. And that lavishness is not carelessness — it is the character of God on display. God does not look at a human life and say, "What are my odds here?" God throws the seed. Generously. Everywhere. On everyone.

That is a direct challenge to how we size people up and quietly decide who is worth the effort.

We are called to embody the generosity of God — and we are called to hope, because this is what we know: abundant harvests do happen.

People mend relationships that everyone had written off. Someone finally says, "I'm sorry." Someone says, "How can I help?" And a thing that seemed permanently broken starts, slowly, to heal.

People right here in Dutchess County receive the seed of the love of God, and they begin to care about clean drinking water in Africa. About girls getting an education in Afghanistan. And so they give. They advocate. They support the organizations doing that work.

Who could have predicted that? Nobody. That is what the love of God does when it takes root in a human heart. It doesn't stay contained. It grows past the person, past the neighborhood, past the county, past the country. That is a hundredfold return. That is what Jesus is describing.

And every congregation is full of people who are surprises to their own families. Someone whose soil looked hard. Someone whose thorns looked permanent. And then something happened that none of us can fully explain, and here they are — giving, serving, praying, showing up.

"I never thought I'd see her in church." "I never thought he'd give up golf on Sunday morning."

But the seed found them. And look at the harvest.

Stay in the Field

So as a church, let's stay in the field. Let's keep showing up to events and throwing the seed. Let's keep making space, keep singing, keep preaching, keep extending the invitation. Let's not give up on the person we've been praying for. Let's not stop extending the invitation that hasn't been accepted yet. Someone out there is in their thirty-ninth year of trying to find their way back.

Keep sowing.

The psalmist got it right. Sometimes we sow in tears. But in God's grace, we will rejoice when it is time to harvest.

Stay in the field.