I’ve
been interested in evangelism ever since I was a young teenager, when I was
evangelized myself by my dad. Yes, I’d been brought up in a Christian family,
and yes, I’d been taken to church every week, and yes, I believed in God and
I’d never really rebelled against my church upbringing. But to tell the truth,
I wasn’t really that interested in it, and God certainly wasn’t personal to me.
I never thought of myself as being in a relationship with God, and there were
many things in my life that were more important to me than Jesus Christ.
As
I said, I was evangelized by my Dad. He knew I liked to read, so he lent me
Christian books, and one of them was very influential for me. It was called Nine O’clock in the Morning, by Dennis
Bennett, a story of an ordinary Anglican priest in the late 50’s and early 60’s
who experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in a remarkable way in his life
and ministry, including miracles and healings. It got my attention, because it
told of a real living God who did real things in people’s lives. So I got
curious, and went into a process of searching that I won’t describe in great
detail right now, except to say that it led to an evening in March 1972 when my
dad said to me, “You’ve never given your life to Jesus, have you?” And he was
right, and that question was the tool that the Holy Spirit used to help me
begin a conscious walk with God. I remember going to my room that night,
sitting on my bed, and praying a simple prayer giving my life to Jesus. Not
long after that, my dad gave me a little booklet that taught me how to have a
daily time of praying and reading the Bible, and so I got started on a habit
that’s been with me now for over forty years.
That’s
how I was evangelized, and it was a wonderful thing for me. I found a real
relationship with God that changed my life, and I was keen to pass this on to
others as well. I was quite open with my friends about what had happened to me,
even though I was a shy young teenager, and a couple of years later my best
friend began to get curious. We were both guitarists and I had invited him to
play guitar in the worship band at our church. He had never been a churchgoer,
but some of his other friends went to our church too, and so it wasn’t hard for
him to slip into the community. Eventually the time came when he decided he
wanted to be a Christian too, and since he’d never been baptized, I got to
stand beside him on the day when, at the age of sixteen, he gave his life to
Jesus in baptism.
So
I’ve been on both sides of this process. I’ve been the soil that the Word of
God is planted in, and I continue to be that soil today, as I read the Bible and
think about it and try to put Jesus’ message into practice. And I’ve also been a
sower of the seed, sharing the good news with others and hoping for a harvest.
All farmers hope for a harvest, of course. Stan Rogers had a great line in a
song he wrote about farming: ‘Watch the field behind the plough turn to straight
dark rows, put another season’s promise in the ground’. That’s what we
Christians are called to do: put another season’s promise in the ground – in
other words, plant seeds of the Word of God wherever we can, in the hope that
some of them will come up and we’ll have a good harvest.
But
of course, that doesn’t always happen. I have talked about the good news of
Jesus with many, many people over the years. Some have not been interested at
all, and some have been interested, but not ready for a commitment. Some have
just been too busy to add one more thing to their lives, and some have
responded and turned to Christ in faith. That’s the way it goes: the seeds are
scattered, some of them bear fruit, and others don’t.
This
was Jesus’ experience too. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is describing his
own ministry; he’s been travelling around Galilee and Judea, scattering the
seed of the Word of God – that is, sharing the message of the Kingdom and calling
people to put their faith in him and to follow him. Huge crowds have been
attracted by his healing miracles, and have stayed to listen to his teaching.
But, contrary to what people often think, the response to his preaching isn’t always
a stunning success story.
Some
people hear the message and can’t make sense of it; Jesus says that it’s as if
the devil comes and snatches it away from their hearts, and so they don’t
believe.
Some
people are wildly enthusiastic about the message when they first hear it; they
seem to be thoroughly converted and follow Jesus enthusiastically. But after a
while they start to run into opposition, and perhaps even persecution, because
of their newfound faith in Jesus. They hadn’t bargained for this; they thought
it was going to be plain sailing all the way, and so they get discouraged and
give up.
Some
people hear the message and believe it, but they’ve got too much else going on
in their lives, and their love for their material wealth is like a chain around
their hearts. So the word of God doesn’t produce a harvest in their lives;
there are too many weeds growing up along with it, and the weeds drain the life
out of the soil.
But
some people hear the word and understand it, and put it into practice in their
lives. The word bears fruit in them; their lives are transformed and they are
able to share the message with others also.
Let’s
think of this parable from two points of view. First, let’s see ourselves as
the recipients of the seed of the
Word; how do we make sure that we are like the good soil that bears a rich
harvest? Second, let’s see ourselves as joining Jesus in the business of scattering the seed of the Word. What
might we learn about that work from this story?
How
do we produce a rich harvest in our own lives? Jesus tells us that we do this
by paying attention, by listening carefully to what he has to say, thinking it
through and working out what it means for us to practice it.
In
verse 9 Jesus says, ‘Let anyone with ears listen!’ As you know, not all listening
is attentive listening. A runner says
“I was listening to my mp3 player while I was jogging’; a mother says, “My
three-year old just won’t listen to me!” They aren’t describing exactly the
same kind of listening, are they? Jesus calls us to a careful and attentive
listening to him. He says, “But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the
one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a
hundredfold, in another sixty, in another thirty” (v.23). This is not just
hearing the words of Jesus as background noise; this is pondering them,
thinking through how we might actually obey them in our daily lives, and then
putting them into practice. If we do this, Jesus says, we will produce a
wonderful harvest.
So
we have to think carefully about Jesus’ teaching and what it might mean for us
to live by it. For instance, what would it mean for us to be so habitually
truthful that no one would ever think of asking us to swear an oath; they’d
just know that we never lie? What would have to change for us to obey Jesus’
teaching about turning away from anger and loving our enemies? What would our
lives look like if we truly did not store up for ourselves treasures on earth,
but concentrated instead on the kingdom of God and his righteousness? When
Jesus tells us to sell our possessions and give to the poor, how do we put that
into practice in a world where we need to provide for our families in a cold northern
climate?
There
are legitimate questions and disagreements about the meaning of Jesus’
teaching, and so we need to think hard and pray honestly about what obedience
might look like in our daily lives. What is not
an option for us, if we’re Christians, is to say, “I just never think about
obeying Jesus in that area of my life”. Remember what happened to the foolish
man who built his house on the sand? And Jesus says that the foolish man
represents the one “who hears these words of mine and does not act on them” (Matthew 7:26).
So
much for our responsibilities as the recipients
of the seed of the Word. Now, what about when we take our place on the other end of that process – when we join
Jesus in the family farming business, so to speak, helping him to spread the
good seed of the Word of God? In the parable, of course, Jesus was talking
about his own ministry, but at the end of the gospels he tells his church to
join him in this work; he calls all of his followers to go out and spread the
good news, to make new disciples for him, and to teach them to obey his
commandments. To him, this is part of the normal Christian life.
There
are many different ways to be a witness for Christ. Thankfully, God doesn’t
call everyone to go up to total strangers on the street and ask them if they’re
saved! We’ve been created with different temperaments, and there are ways of
being witnesses that ‘fit’ for us.
Perhaps
you put a church calendar or a Christian poster up on the wall of your office.
Maybe one day someone makes a comment or asks a question about it, and you
share briefly about what it means to you.
Or
perhaps a fellow-worker finds out that you are a Christian and goes out of her
way to tell you that she thinks Christianity is an emotional crutch for
weaklings. You listen and you say that you have known others who shared that
opinion. Then you go out of your way to care for that person, not because
you’re trying to prove her wrong, but because you have a hunch she needs some extra
love in her life.
Or
perhaps, in conversation with a friend, both of you are talking about difficult
times you have gone through. You don’t try to pretend that Jesus took all your
pain away, but you do say a bit about the help you found in your faith and your
church.
Or
maybe a friend shares with you that her daughter’s new baby has some serious
health issues. You reply, “Would it be okay for me to pray for them?” By the
way: if you’ve never done this, you will be totally
amazed at how appreciative most people are when you make this offer! This
is perhaps one of the easiest ways for most Christians to start sharing their
faith with others, and over time it can lead to all sorts of opportunities for
conversations about God.
Or
perhaps a friend who knows you are a Christian asks you about Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and other books like
that by well-known atheists; don’t those books prove that the Christian faith
isn’t true? You tell your friend that you don’t know much about it, but you’ll
try to find out. So you ask your trusty parish priest to recommend a couple of
good books on the subject, and then you get together with your friend again and
talk about what you’ve learned.
You
see, these are all examples of ways in which we can help to scatter the seed of
the word. We aren’t responsible for results; as Paul says in one of his
letters, “I planted the seed, someone else watered it, but God is the one who
made it grow”. And believe me, if you start being more intentional about
scattering the seed of the word, you are going to see some of those seeds
growing!
Of
course, not all of them are going to come up, and not all of the ones that come
up are going to last. Every gardener knows that. We plant peas or beans, but
not every seed produces fruit, and not every pea or bean plant survives to
produce a harvest. In the same way, not every conversation we have with a
friend leads to a new disciple for Jesus, and not every new disciple of Jesus
sticks with him forever. But some do, and for them the result is tremendous
blessing.
Let’s
go round this one last time. Jesus is in the farming business, sowing the seed
of God’s word in people’s lives. The purpose of the seed is to produce the
blessing of a good harvest – the transformation of lives by the love of God,
and the sharing of that love with others so that they too can experience God’s
transforming power.
So
let’s receive the good seed of the Word of God, and let it produce a harvest in
our own lives. Paul says, ‘the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control’
(Galatians 5:22-23). Those are good things, aren’t they? Those are wonderful
things; I’d love to be that kind of person, and to live in a world full of that
kind of people. And Jesus tells us that the way to do that is to listen
carefully, to try to understand his message, and to learn to live by it. Let’s
resolve to bring forth that kind of good fruit in our own lives, with the help
of the Holy Spirit.
But
the other side of this is that we, too, need to be scattering the seeds of the
Word of God. In our daily lives we have all sorts of opportunities to speak a
word for Christ, and I’ve given some examples of ways we might do this. There
are many other ways as well. One of the most wonderful experiences a Christian
can have is to speak the right word at the right time to the right person, and
see that word starting to bear fruit in people’s lives. I’ve had that
experience, and if you haven’t had it, then let me encourage you to start
looking out for opportunities to spread some seed around. Believe me, the Holy
Spirit will use the words you speak in the most unexpected ways, and the
harvest will be wonderful! So, as Stan Rogers would say,
‘Watch
the field behind the plough turn to straight dark rows,
Put
another season’s promise in the ground’.
