Please Note That Most Messages Follow
The Revised Common Lectionary

I ain’t no farmer but many years ago my family lived on a farm way up in the mountains of North Carolina. I often tell people we were so far up in the mountains that we had one hour of sunshine and the rest we had to pipe in! There were basically two crops that farmers grew in those mountains - tobacco and Christmas trees. My family grew both.

I will never forget my first experience at planting tobacco. If you’ve never planted tobacco you probably have never seen a tobacco setter. A tobacco setter is a contraption that in a way resembles a - well - Come to think of it - it doesn’t resemble anything! It hooks to the back of a tractor. It has two seats on it which face the direction you just came from. It front of those two seats are two trays where you lay the tobacco plants that you are going to set. There is a wheel in the center that has little prongs on it and as that wheel comes around you and the person on the other seat place tobacco plants in the prongs which carries it to the ground as it turns and pushes the dirt up around it along with giving it a shot of Redimill for extra growth.

My Dad drove the tractor while Mom and I were the two who were blessed with the task of riding and inserting the plants. I can still remember thinking "man this is a dream job!"

When Dad got to the end of the row I looked around and there was a disturbing look on his face. "Who started the plants??!!" I could tell he was upset. "ummmm I did Sir." "Well get off and go back and reset them!" "But Dad why?" "You stuck them in the planter upside down!!! The roots are sticking straight up out of the ground!!"

Well let me tell you - by the time I had gotten down on my knees, took a trowel, and replanted that entire row in a very long field, I was an expert on how to plant tobacco either by hand or with a setter and I truly knew what a root looked like!

Today’s Gospel lesson speaks to the activity of planting and harvesting.

Modern agriculture is a sophisticated technology, certainly different from the description of the sower’s method in this parable. He seems to throw the seed anywhere and everywhere. Despite the advances in technology, however, the principle of sowing and harvesting has remained the same over the years: you put the seed in the ground, and you hope for a big harvest.

In this parable, the sower is in a land where there isn’t much fertile soil for growing things. They tell me that even today in the Holy Land, every inch of usable soil is tilled and planted. The sower sows his seed wherever he can and hopes that the seed will sprout and yield a harvest.

If we were simply to play a numbers game with this parable, the sower wouldn’t appear to be a very good farmer. On average, only 1 in 4 seeds that he sows bears any fruit. The rest is burned up, eaten by the birds, or choked out by the thorns.

According to the best estimates, a Palestinian farmer would have been extremely happy with a return of 10 bushels of fruit for every bushel of seed sown. He probably hoped for an average harvest of 7 ½ bushels of fruit.

Who would expect a harvest yield of a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or even thirtyfold? This is a superabundant harvest that leaves only one explanation—we sow the seed, but God gives the growth.

I know that we have a lot of very knowledgeable farmers here this morning. I also know we got some city-slickers, or people like myself who have been off the farm so long we’ve forgotten everything we ever learned about farming. The Good News is that we don't have to know one iota about farming to plant the kind of seeds which we need to plant this week and every day of our lives.

There is another place in the Gospels where Jesus looks down upon a city filled with people. His heart aches for them. He mourns for them. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

It was in this frame work that we hear Jesus say: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."

Beginning tonight we launch into a venture of planting seeds. Vacation Bible School is one of the most exciting, most daring, most challenging, most evangelistic tools that we have for planting seeds into the lives of little boys, little girls, youth, and adults who desperately need Jesus. Those of you who will be commissioned this morning in this special service, no matter in what capacity you will serve, director, assistant director, teacher, assistant teacher, crafts, guides, food, transportation, or participant.- whatEVER your task may be, your first and primary task is that of sowing seed. Whatever you do, let others see and experience Jesus in and through you.

Our world has become a very complex place to live. Our schedules are filled with the busyness of life. It seems that you have to be a specialist in one field or another to succeed. But I am so glad that's not so when it comes to sowing the seed of the Word of God. I'm so glad that you don't have to hold a theological degree to tell someone that Jesus loves them. It is to a broken family that we can say "Jesus will put your family back together." It's to a broken heart that Jesus says "I have come to bind up the broken hearted." It is to the oppressed that Jesus says "I have been sent to let the oppressed go free." It is to that broken life that Jesus says "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives!"

God is calling you and I to sow the seed into every life we meet. Be it at Vacation Bible School or on the streets of Stanfield North Carolina, or throughout the world.

When she was a teenager, Gladys Aylward read a magazine article about China and began thinking about the millions of people there who had never heard about Jesus Christ. She determined that she would become a missionary to China. After many years of frustrating attempts to get to China, Gladys arrived in the early 1930s under difficult circumstances. China and Japan were at war and conditions were harsh. Gladys began sharing the gospel in neighboring villages as she worked at an inn. She also cared for war orphans, eventually establishing an orphanage housing 100 children. She had to flee with her children from the Japanese on a 100 day trip by foot. When she had recovered her strength, she resumed her ministry.

At the end of her life, Gladys wrote, "My heart is full of praise that one so insignificant, uneducated, and ordinary in every way could be used to His glory for the blessing of His people in poor persecuted China."

Christian missionaries were forced to leave China because of the Communist Revolution. People wondered if the church would survive. It is estimated that between 1949 and the mid-1980s, the Chinese church grew from 800,000 members to as many as 50 million!

Everyone of us gathered here this morning are to be sowers of Truth. Sowers of the Word of God. As the children, youth, and adults come through our doors each evening it must be our goal not to simply entertain them, give them some cookies and kool aid, and then send them home. Our mission ought to be for every man, woman, boy, and girl to experience Jesus.

I am convinced that this year will be one of the greatest years our church has ever seen for Vacation Bible School. Perhaps not the largest - but the greatest. How are we going to measure greatness? By number? No! We will measure the greatness of this Vacation Bible School by the number of lives that are touched and transformed through having a real and genuine encounter with Jesus the Son of God!

Look at the text with me again and notice what It does not say... It does not say: "A farmer did not go out to sow any seed because he was afraid that he did not have enough" -- or -- "A farmer did not go out to sow because he thought it was going to be a bad season or that there might be a drought or any number of things might be against him." Or perhaps the story might have read ... "A farmer did not go out to plant any seed because he was the smallest and poorest farmer and figured his little farm and his little bit of seed wouldn't matter all that much."

Not at all... the secret to success is this... "A farmer went out to plant seed!"

He simply took what he had and he put that Into action and with some hope and trust that the seed would germinate and produce, he believed in the process of life and he planted his seed.

In effect, the farmer formed a partnership with the one who holds the power of life and growth. He could give the seed to the ground.. weed his garden... care for and water the young plants... but he could not supply the POWER for the harvest... that only God could do.

And that’s what you and I have to do this week beginning at this very moment - Partner with God. Sow the seed and leave it in God’s hand to reap the harvest.

This parable calls for a response: that we examine ourselves and our lives to see if the seeds of faith are being nurtured and the Word understood. The parable gives us a responsibility: to hear/to listen/to understand/to bear fruit/to sow the Word in the lives of other people. Most important, we must trust that God will give the growth. William Carey, the British missionary to India, said, "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God."

Are you willing to plant a seed in someone's life? To present to them the greatest gift the World has ever known? To restore hope in the midst of their hopelessness? To show them victory in the midst of their defeat?

The theme of our Bible School this year is "Mt. Extreme: Climbing new heights for Jesus." Are you willing to climb to new heights for Jesus? To climb to new heights for a World so desperately in need? Are YOU willing to allow God to use you in transforming lives?

There is a mysterious and yet revealing writing known as Saint Patrick's Breastplate the words of which are:

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me;
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me;
Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me;
Christ in my lying, Christ in my sitting, Christ in my rising;
Christ in the heart of all who think of me;
Christ on the tongue of all who speak of me;
Christ in the eye of all who see me;
Christ in the ear of all who hear me.

Amen.

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