When The Time is Right
Matthew 13:1-9[1]
There are times in our lives when we need to
make changes, and there are other times when we need to stay the course. That’s
as true for churches as it is for anybody else. These days, everybody seems to
be talking about the changes that need to be made for the church in this
culture to thrive. And I would agree that we always need to be evaluating what
we do, asking ourselves why we’re doing it, and looking for new ways of serving
the Kingdom of God that might be more effective. But I don’t hear a lot these
days about what the church needs to keep on doing. I think that’s at least as
important as what we may need to change.
I think one reason why it’s more attractive to
talk about change is because the Christian life can be incredibly discouraging.
Most of us embrace the faith in some sense or another out of a feeling of
“ought-ness” or a vision to make a difference in the way the world works. And you identify with a congregation and a
denomination and find your way onto the session, only to find out that the
leaders may spend more time fighting about décor and money than attempting any
kind of mission to save the world. It
can be incredibly discouraging. But you
find your niche in mission and you stay the course month after month and year
after year, until you wake up one day so incredibly discouraged from a lack of
results that you wonder if God has forgotten you!
To some extent, the parable of the sower addresses this aspect
of the Christian faith. When we seek to
go out and make a difference in the world, we’re very much like the sower,
planting seeds as we go. Now, planting
seeds these days is quite different from planting seeds in Jesus’ day. These days we have it down to a science when
and how and what kind of seeds to plant.
In Jesus’ day, planting seeds was much more like life. You scatter seeds all over the place, hoping
some of them will take root and grow and bear fruit. In spite of that difference, most farmers
still know what Jesus was talking about—the quality of the soil makes all the
difference in the quantity of the harvest.
These days we can even get crops to grow on bad soil; In Jesus’ day, you
had to just make do with what you got.
Of course, Jesus wasn’t really talking about agriculture. Among other things, he was trying to warn
those who followed him out of a sense of personal commitment to the vision of a
world of justice and peace and freedom that he inspired in them that not all
the seeds they planted would bear fruit.
There are lots of times when sowing does not lead to reaping.[2] Instead of rejoicing while “bringing in the
sheaves,” we find ourselves just sowing and weeping and sowing some more. Despite some of the lofty sounding promises
in the Bible, you just can’t always count on results, no matter how hard you
try. Obedience doesn’t always mean
rewards. Faithfulness doesn’t guarantee
results. Sometimes we find ourselves
sowing and not reaping.
We like to think that if we do what we’re
supposed to, if we live like we’re supposed to, then we should see some results. But this kind of thinking often leads to
discouragement and even bitterness. As
Henri Nouwen put it, the very expectation that our faithful sowing of seeds
ought to lead to reaping a harvest can lead to the resentment of bitterness
when the results fail to appear.[3] That’s why he said that we must sow our seeds
in the hope that can enable us to look past our results or lack of results to
the ultimate fulfillment of God’s purpose.[4] That means that, even though we find
ourselves sowing without reaping, we keep right on sowing gospel seeds, seeds
of mercy and kindness, seeds of love and justice, seeds of peace and
freedom. We do it because one day some
of those seeds are going to bear fruit.
There
is a time for change, and there is a time for staying the course. In a very
real sense, I think the church is always in both at the same time. Our world is
changing so fast around us that we always have to be thinking about how we can
do things differently. But while we’re doing that, I think we’re called to stay
the course when it comes to the fundamentals: prayer, scripture, worship,
service, compassion. These facets of our life together as Christian brothers
and sisters have always been essential to the vitality of the church. While
we’re changing the way we do things, we must stay the course laid out for us by
Jesus and the Apostles. As the Apostle Paul says it, when we do so, “At the
right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up” (Gal. 6:9, The Message).
[1]
©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/23/2017 at
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2]
M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” New Interpreter’s Bible VIII:306.
[3]
Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer,
76. He says that laboring on the basis
of “expectations of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a
house on sand instead of solid rock.”
[4]
Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 76: “Hope
makes it possible to look beyond the fulfillment of urgent wishes and pressing
desires and offers a vision beyond human suffering and even death.”
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