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Grace Lutheran Church, Champaign, Illinois – July 12, 2020 – Sermon: Let Anyone With Ears Listen! by Pr. Janet Lepp Readings: Isaiah 55:10-13, Psalm 65: (1-8) 9-13, Romans 8:1-11, Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.When farmers go about planting, and gardeners too, they are very careful about where they sow the seeds. In fact, some farmers are now using digital maps guided by satellites to plant the seeds in the right places. But in total contrast to all this careful planting was the maple tree living right outside our back door. Every spring as the leaves were budding, that maple tree would throw out seeds – EVERYWHERE! The lawn would be filled with them sticking up all over. They fell in the sandbox and bunched up along all the edges. They landed on the sidewalk and found their way into the eaves on the house. And when the wind blew, those seeds would take off and go flying like helicopter to who knows where! Year after year after year without fail that tree would persistently throw out those seeds in great abundance. Some of those seeds would sprout and begin to grow in the grass, but would be run over by the lawn mower. Some would begin to grow in the ground by the shrubs where we would pull them out like weeds. Once in a great while a seed would happen to land behind the back fence where it would actually grow, until one day that new tree would start sowing its own seeds. Although the seeds were a welcome sign of spring, they could be annoying because they got into everything. But I guess that’s the point of releasing seeds in the world in such a free for all way! Because on one Spring day as I noticed a squirrel munching on a helicopter seed, it occurred to me that in addition to growing trees those seeds are food and fertilizer and mulch for the sake of life in God’s creation. In the words of Isaiah, “they accomplish that which God purposed, of creating and supporting life.”In the passage from Matthew that I just read, we find Jesus beside the Sea of Galilee. As great crowds gathered around him he got into a boat, went out a bit from shore knowing the water would magnify his voice, sat down in the custom of a teacher, and began to tell parables. Parables are stories intended to teach without giving direct answers. Instead parables allow the listeners to think their own thoughts and determine their own responses. “Listen!” Jesus began. “A sower went out to sow.” He told how some seeds fell in the middle of the hardened path where the birds ate them up. Some fell on rocky ground where they sprouted and then withered away or were choked out by thorns. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced much grain – 30/60/ up to 100 fold. “Let anyone with ears listen!” Jesus emphatically states. The close disciples of Jesus were in the crowd that day. They had been with him as he traveled throughout Galilee. They had watched him heal the sick and troubled, and cast out demons and evils that were holding people in bondage. They had heard him as he spoke, daily telling them; about every person’s worth in the sight of God, about justice, and about care for the world around them. They had heard Jesus remind the listeners to follow God’s command of loving their neighbors as themselves and to treat people even very different from them as members of their own family of God. His words were filled with God’s hope and love, joy and peace intended for all people. Even though the disciples seem confused by the parable they had just heard, they had witnessed all the words spoken by Jesus as he taught throughout the land – sown like seeds – thrown into the world abundantly – and had seen how those words, those seeds, would be life-giving! The disciples knew that their world was filled with hate, despair, greed, and lust for power at the cost of others. Their world desperately needed for those words of Jesus to become real in the hearts and lives of the people. So when they heard this parable the disciples began to ponder: What is needed for those words of hope and love, justice and peace – to become real in their world – and to become real through them? Here we are some 2000 years later as this parable presents itself to us. Like those early disciples, we know the world needs those seeds that Jesus is sowing to grow and become real. We know those words of life proclaimed by Jesus that tell of very person’s worth in the sight of God, that tell of loving our neighbors of every race, religion, and culture with compassion and equity, that tell of working for justice, of caring for the world and for the health of all of creation. We also find ourselves pondering this parable with some confusion: So, what is needed for these seeds to grow and become real in our world?It seems to have something to do with the heart. Lately I’ve been noticing actions as reported in the news. – The woman in Champaign who has opened her heart to make masks and hangs them on a type of ‘tree’ (BTW the imagery hasn’t escaped me) for people to take for free because she wants everyone to be safe. – In contrast is the attorney from Southern Illinois who is telling parents to send their children to school without masks because the teachers by law have to teach them – and I gasp in horror to think of this heartless suggestion to use our children as political pawns. – Leaders and concerned citizens in our churches and community who have come together and are working diligently to make the changes necessary for people of color to not live in fear. – In contrast – we hear about the group who tied hate notes on to rocks and in the dark of night threw them into the yards of neighborhoods where minorities live. – And many people know all too well how easy it is to look the other way when others suffer. Has the heart grown as hard as a trodden path? Actions and attitudes don’t just stay with individuals. Moving with the speed of a contagious virus, actions and attitudes of individual people, including each of us, spread to our families and institutions and governments, churches and places of trust. Those actions and attitudes change our world either in good and healthy ways, or ways that lead to death. Now – here is the really humbling part. As much as I want to be open to God’s will and as much as I want my heart to be a place where Christ’s love grows, I know my heart sometimes becomes a hard and cranky place where it becomes difficult for those life-giving seeds that Christ has planted to grow. This morning as worship began we made a confession about the condition of our hearts. We prayed: “Most merciful God, we confess that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” And then to hear these words of absolution: “In the name of Jesus Christ – your sins are forgiven. Almighty God strengthen you with power through the Holy Spirit that Christ may live in your hearts through faith.’We trust that God in Jesus Christ, who is at work through the Holy Spirit, will keep on sowing and sowing and sowing seeds which are life-giving – so those seeds will take root where they may grow – hopefully in us too. And when we fail, God offers forgiveness and then sows and sows some more, giving us yet another chance of justice and peace and love and hope in our world growing in our hearts so we can in turn share them in abundance with the world. In Christ’s name. Amen. ................
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