Prepare the Soil

Glory to God the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

The Lord Jesus Christ gives us the parable of the sower and the seed this morning, and he explains that he is talking about four different ways of responding to the Word of God.

Now, the Word of God is the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Word before the ages. But we can also talk about a word of God as in the message about  Christ – the thing that the Lord has said.

And there are four ways of responding to the word of God – four ways of responding to the Lord Jesus Christ. Interestingly enough, three of them involve belief. That is, three of them involve a right understanding and confession of who Jesus is. But only one of these ways leads to eternal life. We can believe the right things about Christ and not be saved by the right belief; it is faithfulness that participates in the grace of God.

The seed falls by the side of the road, and the birds of the air come and eat it up. This is a hard heart, a heart that is so hardened by sin that it is not going to receive the word, and so the devil comes along and steals the word out of the heart. This person might know all the truth but if he doesn’t do it, then it profits him nothing (James 1:22-25).

Then there is the seed that fell on stony ground and sprouted quickly, but it had no deep root. So when the heat came, it withered away. This is a person who hears the word of God and accepts it joyfully ­– but this person is not changed by it. And because this person’s life has not been changed by the word they heard, when difficulties come along, they fall away.

Then there’s the seed that fell among the weeds and thorns and grew up – but it was choked among the weeds, so that it brought no fruit to perfection. These are those who hear the word of God, accept it and believe it, and choose to live this radical life of discipleship – but they also want to live their best lives now. They’re concerned about a good time. They’re concerned about money, about their job, about advancing in their career. They have travel plans. They have goals, and these goals don’t involve the Kingdom of Heaven. These people fall away and bring no fruit to perfection.

And then there is the seed which fell on good soil, and bore fruit in various quantities: thirty-fold, a hundred-fold. These are those who receive the word of God with an uncomplicated heart, who with love and fear of God bring virtues to fruition. These are those who bring about virtues, who do good works, who are transformed by Christ. The way they use their finances, and the way they vote, the things they devote themselves to, are visibly out of step with their generation. And because their roots are going deep in the Gospel, these bear the fruit of the Spirit, and are conformed to the image of Christ.

 And notice that they don’t all do the same. They bring about different quantities of fruit, their lives all differ, but all these are the fruitful ones.

This parable is not meant to teach us that there are four kinds of people in the world. It is saying there are four ways of responding to the Gospel. And in fact it is possible for one person at different times to be all four kinds of soil.

Are you one of those who has heard the gospel of the Kingdom, but you’ve gotten consumed by pleasures, consumed by money, consumed by your other goals for life in this world? It doesn’t mean that you are condemned to be that. It does mean that you can repent! It does mean that today you can prepare the soil of your heart. That can be done, whatever you have been until today.

Even if you and I are rocky, unfruitful soil, the prophets call us to “Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till He comes and rains righteousness on you.” The Lord gives us that word twice in scripture, in Jeremiah (4:3) and again in Hosea (10:12).

A farmer does not always plow and plant and harvest from every acre of farmland he owns. He may let the land rest and recover for a season. That land, fallow land, gets rained on and is baked by the sun, and that means next year that land may be too hard to plant anything in it. Speaking to the Hebrew people, the Lord tells them to “break up your fallow ground.” Plow it, soften it, prepare it for seed.

The hard, stony, weed-choked soil of the heart is not incurable: By grace we can break the hard heart, soften the soil, and “prepare ye the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3).

So this morning, I want to tell you how to be the good soil, so that the word of Christ may dwell in you richly and bear fruit.

Number one: repent of the sin in your life. Saint James writes, “Therefore put away all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).  “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11).

The sin that you commit over and over and over again: You need to choose today to be done with it. Do not make peace with it. Do not assume that this is just the way that you are and that’s how you will stay. If that’s the way that you are, that’s not a place to remain. It’s place from which Christ intends to save you! Bring it to confession, come to the sacrament of repentance regularly, even eagerly, and receive spiritual medicine which will help you to be rid of this sickness which afflicts your soul and your body.

Don’t stop after making that decision. Your strong desire to be free today does not always last, even until Monday. Simply deciding to sin no more puts our trust in our will, which has already proven itself to be unreliable. Resisting sin through willpower is a guaranteed recipe for failure. How many times does an alcoholic regret his drunkenness and say “Never again”? How many times have we fallen down at the same temptation, and wondered how we can ever be different?

But the Church has the experience to offer specific spiritual medicines, therapies and disciplines. Spiritual medicines that have been proven for centuries to prepare and equip the Christian for victory in the spiritual warfare.

The way of discipleship “has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried” (G.K. Chesterton, in “What’s Wrong with the World”).

“Discipline is the channel in which our acts run strong and deep, Where there is no direction, the deeds of men run shallow and wander and are wasted.” (Ursula LeGuin, in “The Farthest Shore”).

So today, together, “let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1,2).

First and foremost, repentance, expressed in action and accountability, will start making the soil of your heart able to receive the implanted word and come to life.

Secondly: Adjust your priorities. Now, by this I do not mean that in the list of priorities in your life, you need to somehow move the Lord Jesus Christ to the number one spot. I’m not saying that at all.

I’m saying you need to get rid of the list and make the priority of your life the Lord Jesus Christ. And understand that you have a calling on your life, a vocation. And that calling is to follow the Lord Jesus Christ into His Kingdom. “You are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and members of God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19). That’s your calling, and it is a great and a high calling and it means that every aspect of your life needs to be in service to that vocation.

You occupy many different roles. You’re a spouse, a parent, a son or daughter, a brother or sister in Christ, a friend, a worker. Don’t cut your job out of this. That’s part of it. But everything about your life must be led captive to your destiny of entering the Kingdom of Heaven and living as a son and daughter of the King here and now.

And so in each one of your roles, be the best minister of Christ that you can be. Be the best spouse that you can be in order to express Christ in your marriage, the best parent, the best laborer, the best brother and sister in Christ in order to serve and bless, as a fellow-citizen with the saints in the Kingdom of God. Every concern and goal and priority in the life of a disciple finds its place under this one holy vocation. That’s why we pray daily, “Let Thy kingdom come” here and now. “Let Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is what I mean by adjusting your priorities.

And in adjusting your priorities, prayer is the foundation of your day, of all you do, if your life is to have any foundation at all. And as the crown of your life of prayer, the worship of the Lord here in His temple needs to be the priority of your week. The worship of the Lord God is your calling now and for eternity. “For you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, to show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9-10). This is your vocation. This is your purpose.

King David writes, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, and that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life” (Psalm 26:4lxx). Now David did not physically dwell in the tabernacle of God; he had a house of his own. But day and night, as king, as a husband, as a judge of disputes, as a father to his sons, as best he could, David lived in the presence of God, in prayer without ceasing.

You and I, struggling to weed the thorns and weeds out of our lives, we hear Saint Paul’s exhortation to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) and that may seem unrealistic. We have a hard time even imagining what that would look like.

It’s like asking a little dry sunflower seed to grow six feet tall and bloom flowers the size of dinner plates. Even if we’re the best of soil, we may not yet be ready to bear that kind of fruit. But if we want here and now to lay the foundation, prepare the soil, to become the sons and daughters of the Kingdom that Christ is calling us to be, we can start now. We can’t “pray at all times” (Ephesians 6:8) unless we pray at some particular time. We can’t be a “royal priesthood” if our day doesn’t contain at least one moment set aside, consecrated to offering prayers and praise to the living God.

And then weekly on the day of the Resurrection, we come together to offer up to the Lord the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving (Hebrews 13:15). That’s a figure of speech about our songs of praise – but it is also very literally and materially what we are doing here today.

Members of this community have brought here into the temple bread and wine, oil and candles and money and food, which we bought at our own cost, to offer it up to God in thanksgiving. The food is filling the Food Drive barrel in the narthex. The checks you drop in the offering box keep these lights on and pay the rent on this space. And the bread and wine are offered up as a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a freewill offering, a mercy of peace and a sacrifice of praise to God — who will in return offer to us the living, resurrected, deified, life-giving body of His Christ, to receive into our own bodies for the remission of sins and unto life everlasting.

The worship of God in his temple is not an optional extra for when we feel like it. We need to come when we don’t want to come. You need to come when you’re feeling nothing at all. You need to come when you are beset on all sides by stress and temptations. You need to be here because worship transforms you, and it transforms the world around you. This is one of the ways we break up the fallow ground of our hearts and prepare ourselves to receive the word planted in us for the salvation of our souls.

And the last, and this is by no means an exhaustive list, but the last thing that I will say is that you must not despair. You must not despair when you sin. You must not despair that you are struggling with the same things over and over and over again. Recognize despair, discouragement, the absence of hope, as an alien temptation: It has been thrown into your thoughts like a grenade by an enemy.

You didn’t get broken in a day. You’re not going to get fixed in a day. It is going to take time. So, be patient but stay the course. Pray when you don’t want to. Come to church when you don’t feel like it. Be merciful, do acts of mercy when you’re not feeling merciful. And when you stumble and fall down, make the sign of the cross, get up, and keep walking.

This is how you prepare the soil of your heart. This is how your heart can become rich and fruitful, how you can produce virtues, and grow into that image and likeness that Christ our God intends to make you.

“The seed in good soil: These are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance” (Luke 8:15).

Now “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

I’ve said before that this list can be a tool in preparing for confession. But today I want you to look at it as a promise. This is what God wants to create in you. This is a promise, if you will receive it. This is hope.

Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy To the only wise God our Savior be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.

To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.