[Propertalk] Sermon ideas for Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 - Part 1

[Joe Parrish]

The general consensus among these scholars is that if you study the parable, it is not about us, not about what kind of soil we are, but about Jesus, about God, about why his kingdom is not fully realized and does not bear fruit, but that when the kingdom is realized it will happen suddenly and without warning, just as much of the work of the sower seems useless, the interpretation of the parable with which most of us grew up was a later addition of the church in order to determine what has happening in its daily life, the different levels of membership commitment.1 Do you get the point? We have been missing the boat with this parable for centuries. It's all about God, not about you and me!

http://www.sermonsuite.com/free.php?i=788031178&key=nqspywes08OkegmI

Mark Ellingsen
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It’s not at all surprising that most of the seed didn’t grow. What’s surprising is that the farmer chose to sow it there. This isn’t a rich man we’re talking about here: this is a poor farmer, a tenant farmer who can only eke out a living for himself and his family if he not only makes wise choices about where to sow, but also is blessed with good weather and a great deal of luck. Good seed is hard to come by; the wise farmer makes sure to entrust the precious grain he has to the best of soil. But this one tosses seed about while standing in the closest thing he can find to the parking lot at Wal-Mart, where the pigeons will eat it if thousands of feet and truck tires don’t grind it into the pavement first. In short, this farmer behaves as though that which were most precious was available in unlimited supply. What on earth is he thinking?
But here’s the real corker: God blesses a farmer like this beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Normally, the farmer who reaps a twofold harvest would be considered fortunate. A fivefold harvest would be a cause for celebration throughout the village, a bounty attributable only to God’s particular and rich blessing. But this foolish farmer who, in a world of scarcity, casts his seed on soil everyone knows is worthless is blessed by God in shocking abundance: a harvest of thirty, sixty, and a hundred times what he sowed.


http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2005/07/proper_10_year_.html


Sarah Dylan Breuer
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Some of it will fall in places where it gets a good start but doesn't last. Some of it will fall in places where it gets choked out by competing interests. That's just how it is with ministry. Jesus himself could have told you that. But he could have also told you this-that sometimes the scattered seed of the Word finds good soil and grows and produces a bumper crop. And since you can't predict just how or where the seed is going to fall, or when or if it is going to produce, you just scatter it wherever you can and hope for the best. Fred Craddock tells a story about the time he got a phone call from a woman whose father had died. She had been a teenager in one of the churches he had served as pastor twenty years before, and he would have sworn that if there was ever a person who never heard a word he said, that teenage girl was it. She was always giggling with her friends in the balcony, passing notes to boys, drawing pictures on the bulletin. But when her father died, she looked up her old pastor, the Rev. Fred Craddock, and gave him a call. "I don't know if you remember me," she started. Oh, yes, he remembered. "When my daddy died, I thought I was going to come apart," she continued. "I cried and cried and cried. I didn't know what to do. But then I remembered something you said in one of your sermons . . ."  And Fred Craddock was stunned. 

http://day1.org/947-the_reckless_sower

Jim Somerville
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