Pentecost 7A2023
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Today, the only thing Jesus commands the crowds to do is LISTEN. He tells a parable about a sower who accidentally drops seeds on the path, on rocky soil, and among thorns—all seeds that never produce fruit. Then, the sower intentionally sows seeds in good soil—that yield abundance. But Jesus never says: Now, friends, be good soil. Jesus never asks: What kind of soil are you? Jesus never says: Haven’t seen soil this thorny since Pharaoh refused to let my people go. No. What he says is: LISTEN. He literally begins the parable saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow.” He concludes the parable saying: “Let anyone with ears listen!” Later when Jesus explains the parable to the disciples, he says: “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it,” things do not go well. But for what was sown on good soil, “this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit.”
Listening to God is what creates good soil and leads to abundant yields.
When I was in seminary, I took a class with Dr. Irizarry who is originally from Puerto Rico. But because numerous US church bodies, including the ELCA, include Puerto Rico in their territory—meaning, the 27 Lutheran churches in Puerto Rico are ELCA congregations—when it came time for the young Rev. Irizzary to serve a parish, he came to the US. When he arrived at his first call, his presence as a person from a different culture with a strong Puerto Rican accent was difficult for some of his parishioners to understand. Right away, he encountered resistence, and to his chief antagonist in the congregation, the person who complained the loudest and most vociferously, Rev. Irizzary had to prove himself. He decided that he would just love his antagonist and hang in there, and of course, gradually, things got better. Years later when Rev. Irizarry was about to leave the congregation, his chief antagonist, by now a supporter and leader in the congregation, came to him to confess something. The man said, “Even though I have always gone to church, I had never really listened to sermons before. But when you came, in order to understand you with your heavy accent, I really had to listen hard. And when I did, I started to hear God speak.”
I sometimes wish that God would speak to us like God spoke to Moses in the burning bush or the way God spoke to the people through the prophets or the way God came in the flesh in Jesus. I imagine it was so much easier to listen to God when God showed up in some sensory way that people could hear with their ears or see with their eyes. So much easier when the angels spoke the language of the people and the people could read or hear scripture in its original language. So much easier when Jesus walked the earth and people could see with their own eyes a crucified and risen savior, could travel along with Jesus to participate in his ministry and experience it for themselves.
In the 21st century, listening to God is this whole other endeavor. These days, nothing comes straight from God’s mouth to our ears. Even the Bible, the living word of God, is a translation from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Unfortunately, because listening to God is a problem of the 21st century and not a problem of the 1st century or before, the Bible doesn’t tell us much about what it means to listen to God in our context. Sure, God mentions through the prophets that the Israelites aren’t listening and that they don’t understand, but that’s only because the people ignore the prophets. In Old Testament days, the prophets heard a message from God and then shared it directly with the people—an ease in listening to God we can only imagine.
These days, if we seek to listen to God, to whom exactly do we listen? What do we do?
Scripture is where listening to God begins. As Lutherans, we look especially to the stories of Jesus to discover the heart of the gospel. So often I hear myself and others asking: How should we respond to evil and injustice in the world? What is God doing? What is God calling us to do? If we are not actually listening to scripture read on Sunday morning or reading it on our own, I’ll tell you straight up: we’re not going to be able to answer those questions. Understanding God’s action in the world requires us, first and foremost, to read God’s inspired word.
Listening to other people is how listening to God continues. I remember how in my internship congregation, my supervisor, the pastor, taught me how to listen to God through people in the congregation. When I stopped by the congregation prior to my year of internship beginning, I got to meet the internship committee. I sat in the fellowship hall and introduced myself to the internship committee members for the first time. And something I said, I think it involved me using the word “feminist” to describe myself, led the committee chairperson, Sy, to gently comment that I might want to be careful in using that word while serving that congregation. I chalked up her comment to silliness, left church, and forgot Sy’s warning, but in my first meeting with my supervisor at the start of internship, he recalled Sy’s comment. “There are some people you learn to listen to in a congregation,” he said, “because God speaks through them, and Sy is one of them.” Those who are open to the spirit of God, like Sy was, are able to share God’s message, much like the Old Testament prophets.
Finally, silence is what grounds us as we seek to listen to God. We’ve probably all been in a meeting where people talk over each other, where everyone is simply waiting to speak, where we might respect someone and not interrupt them but are occupied with how we will present our far superior comments instead of truly listening to others. In those meetings, there are a lot of people taking deep breaths on the verge of speaking and then sadly turning their heads to give their attention to the person who jumped in before they could. I sometimes wonder if God feels like that person—the one who is waiting for silence but silence never comes. In those meetings, quite often in my experience, if I don’t ask the person directly: Did you want to say something? the person leaves the meeting never having spoken It’s not because the person had nothing to say. It’s because the group didn’t make space for silence.
This morning, I give thanks to God because Jesus’ message is clear, and it is: Listen! Like the seed scattered by the sower, God’s word falls on the path, on rocky soil, among thorns, and in nice, straight garden beds. God’s word falls everywhere, wherever God’s people are, in whatever condition we find ourselves. Jesus’ message is not: Be good soil. Jesus’ question is not: What kind of soil are you? Jesus’ sarcastic comment is not: Haven’t seen soil this thorny since Pharaoh. No. Rather, Jesus tells a story about a sower careless with seed, letting seeds drop everywhere! God is speaking. Let anyone with ears listen! Amen.