“Sown with Christ to Make Him Known”

Today is called Sexagesima Sunday, which means we’re roughly only 60 days away from Easter. It also means that we’re in the middle of this odd time of year called Pre-Lent.

As I said last week, it was way back in the 6^th century that this tradition of Pre-Lent began. In the Church of Rome these three Sundays were specially set apart to be days of prayer for God’s protection against the almost constant triple threat of war, pestilence and famine. And again as I said last week, we can sill hear these ancient prayers reflected in our collects for the season. Today we prayed, “O Lord God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do; Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

This prayer was originally penned most likely by St. Gregory the Great, the famous bishop of Rome. As a boy, Gregory lived through the horror of the Gothic siege of Rome in 540 which continued for almost a year. And he later recalls that because the Goths had cut off all supplies from entering the city, he and his family and the rest of the people of the city were reduced to eating grass and nettles. That was, as he says, because there were no more rats or dogs left. The story is told of one father of five children who could no longer bear to hear them cry for food. So he wrapped his head in a mantle and jumped into the Tiber and drowned himself while the children looked on. So severe was the famine that, according to the ancient Roman historian Procopius, out of all the thousands of people that had occupied the greatest city on earth, only five-hundred of them were found alive by the end of the siege.

Famine was one of the three great threats the church of the 6^th century prayed for deliverance from. But here in the 21^st century we’re again threatened by famine. There’s a famine in our nation that threatens the very existence of our nation, and worse yet, of the Church in our nation. I’m not speaking about a lack of food for our physical bodies. We’re glutted with that kind of food. I’m speaking about a famine of the Word of God.

The prophet Amos wrote to the nation of Israel, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.”

That’s the kind of famine we’re suffering from here in our own nation. But you say, “How could that be; there’s more preaching going on today, there are more churches, there are more Christian radio stations putting out the word of God than there ever has been in the whole history of the church.” That’s true. But I’m not talking about a famine of preaching; I’m talking about a famine of hearing, of receiving, of being sown by the word of God. That’s the kind of famine we’re faced with in our nation, and we’re dying spiritually as the result.

And so we must ask, Why is this so? How has this famine come upon us? I’d suggest to you today that the answer is given to us in our Lord’s parable that we read this morning in our Gospel lesson: the Parable of the Sower, which would probably be better titled, the Parable of the Four Soils.

This is an easy parable for us to understand, and for me to explain, because Christ himself gave the interpretation. He said the seed in the parable is the Word of God – the Gospel. And, of course, the sower in the parable is Jesus Christ Himself. And so in the parable, Jesus is explaining Himself. He’s explaining why He and His preaching of the gospel are not always effective in producing spiritual fruit in the lives of His hearers; why some people never really hear Him at all, while others hear Him, but never grow to spiritual maturity. Because what are the four soils? The four soils are four different types of people that anyone wishing to sow the word of God – even Jesus Christ Himself – will have to encounter along the way.

First, there are those people whose hearts are like a well-beaten path. Their hearts are hard. They’re indifferent to the word of God. It means absolutely nothing to them. They don’t care to have it explained to them. So preaching the gospel to them is like trying to plant a tree in concrete. Their hard hearts just won’t let the gospel take root.

Then there are those whose hearts are like shallow ground that covers hidden rocks. They hear the gospel and have a wonderful emotional reaction to it – a quick burst of new spiritual life. They seem excited and zealous for the things of God. They volunteer to do anything and everything in the church. They go out and tell others about their experience with God. They seem so full of the Spirit. But then the initial spiritual high wears off, and suddenly they’re faced with some kind of crisis in their lives, and before you know it they’ve left the church; they’ve disavowed their experience with God, and they’re busy looking for some new experience to satisfy their “spiritual” cravings. They have no real rooting in the gospel, and so they soon fall away.

Then third, there are those, whose hearts are like ground that has gone untended for years, and so has become infested with weeds. These are the people who hear the gospel and accept it, and make a beginning in faith, and really seem to be growing in the Lord. There reaction to the gospel isn’t just a burst of emotion. They’re faithful in their attendance at worship. They tithe. They’re involved in the business of the church. But they never reach the level of spiritual maturity, because the care and worries and riches and pleasures of this world consume them, and choke the spiritual life out of them. They’re worldly-minded. Their hearts are not set on the riches and pleasures of the kingdom of God. Their treasure is on earth and is earthy. And so it’s like they’re chained to the ground. They’re like the people in Dante’s Purgatorio, who have their heads chained to their legs in such a way that they can only look downwards toward the earth. They can’t break free to reach for their heavenly home.

Now each one of these types of people do not truly hear the word of God. It bounces right off the one, and it’s only temporarily entertained by the others. But if the Word of God is truly heard - if it is truly received into a heart that is not hard against it, or too shallow for it to take root, or too crowed out by worldly cares – then it is powerful to produce in us mature spiritual fruit. Sin will truly be hated and resisted. Christ will truly be loved and trusted and followed. And the greatest desire of the one who has had the word of God sown in his heart will be to become a sower himself. That will become one of the signs that Word of God has been sown in his heart.

But as I said, there is a famine in the land. Now the famine may indeed be largely due to the fact that the average American’s heart has become hardened to the point of active hostility to the word of God, or is too shallow or distracted to take it seriously. Jesus said that not even His preaching would be effective with these kinds of people without a miracle of the Holy Spirit, turning hearts of stone into hearts of flesh.

But before we find ourselves content to point the finger at all those others out there with the bad hearts, we’ve got to ask ourselves, as part of our Pre-Lenten self-reflection, how well have we heard Christ? And if we have heard Christ and His word is in our hearts, are we making Him heard? Have we become sowers of the word? Yes, God must work a miracle of regeneration in the hearts of people for the word to take root, but the Scripture says that that regeneration doesn’t happen willy-nilly, but by the means of preaching. St. Peter says that we ourselves were born again through the word of God, which lives and abides forever. No, not all of those we preach the word to will be given new hearts to hear it and receive it. But they will certainly not be given new hearts if we don’t. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word.” “But how will they hear without a preacher?”

Perhaps the reason why there is a famine in the land – a famine of hearing the word of God – perhaps the reason why the Word of God is not being sown in the hearts of men, is that so many in the Church have ceased to really hear Christ. Maybe it’s because, even by His own people, Christ is so little known, and therefore so little sown. Perhaps we’ve heard it all so many times before that we ourselves have become hardened to it. Or perhaps the cares and worries and riches and pleasures of the world have got our heads chained to the ground so that we’re not able to look up

If that’s true of you today, you’ve got to pray with King David, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me…Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then shall I teach thy ways unto the wicked, and sinners shall be converted unto thee.” We ought to make that prayer from Psalm 51 a daily part of our Lenten renewal so that it becomes the true desire of our hearts.

Let us take heed how we hear the word of God. For it is written, “Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden you hearts as in the rebellion, when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works.” Today, while it is still called “Today,” hear the Word of the Lord. +