Tixover Rogation Service Sermon. Sowing & Faith

Isaiah 55

6Seek the Lord while he may be found,call upon him while he is near;7let the wicked forsake their way,and the unrighteous their thoughts;let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.8For my thoughts are not your thoughts,nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.9For as the heavens are higher than the earth,so are my ways higher than your waysand my thoughts than your thoughts.

10For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,and do not return there until they have watered the earth,making it bring forth and sprout,giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,11so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;it shall not return to me empty,but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Matthew 13

1 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake.

2 Such large crowds gathered round him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore.

3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: A farmer went out to sow his seed.

4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.

6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.

8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop— a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

9 He who has ears, let him hear.

18 Listen then to what the parable of the sower means:

19 When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path.

20 The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy.

21 But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away.

22 The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.

23 But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Sowing takes a lot of faith.

What do I mean by that?

The farmer does his best to ensure the right conditions for the seed to grow, and keeps an eye on how it's growing, but there's a lot that's out of his control. Once the seed has fallen from his open hand, or if we are up to date, once the seed has fallen from the hopper, then he has to hope all will be well, or at least – well enough.

Many things can make or break the sower's hopes. As Jesus says, some could be eaten by the birds, some could fall on rocky ground, some could be choked by weeds, or if we are up to date, the farmer's profits could be eaten up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or fall on the stony ground of fluctuating international markets, or be choked by the ever growing weeds of Regulation, and in any age there is always the unpredictable weather, and the risk of varied crop blights.

Sowing seed is crazy if you think about, the seed has a great value, and you just abandon it to the ground, why would anyone do that? It's like throwing away money! You really have to believe it's worth it. Perhaps it might feel safer to hold on to the seed?

So why does the sower let go of the seed in his hand?

One reason, I would guess, is experience. Enough of the years past have yielded a crop to make it reasonable to assume a crop will grow again. Then there is logic, that is if you have prepared the ground, and have serviceable tools, and are planting good seed, then there is reason to think the crop will flourish. I suppose also necessity might compel sowing, the seed may have value in the store, but the only way to add to that value is to take the risk of planting it, and trust your experience and hard work is sufficient. But there remains the unknown, that gap between what we can know, and what we can hope for, the gap that is bridged by faith. The swirling birds of fear, the stony ground of the unknown, the creeping weeds of doubt, all these can only be countered by faith.

Without faith the seed would remain in the barn, because after the risks have been calculated, and the hard work done, it could still all go wrong, and the hard work have been for nothing, and the value of the seed be wasted. When all that can humanly be said and done has been accomplished, only faith can convince the sower to let the seed fall to the ground.

Fear could keeps the sower's hand clasped around the seed, faith may open his grip.

The benefit of hindsight might be a fine thing, but the benefit of foresight would be a finer thing still, to know for sure if the enterprise was worthwhile, to have a God's eye view on time and toil. From His vantage point in eternity God can see all time, past, present, and future, as we may see an entire landscape if we ascend a high mountain. For this reason God does not need faith, God knows for sure, we mortals, however, need faith because of our limited viewpoint in the landscape of time.

In our first reading we heard,

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Faith is a quality that all humans need, not just religious people.

Not everybody thinks this is so, listen to this quote from Richard Dawkins, the famous and zealous atheist, he said,

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”

The idea of 'faith' has became firmly attached to religious belief, and so people who are not religious will often say that they do not have a faith, or even have need for faith.

It doesn't help that we use the word 'Faith' to describe a religion, so for instance the 'Christian faith', or the 'Muslim faith.' Likewise, we use the word 'faith' to define a specific community – 'a faith community,' meaning Hindus, or Christians, or Muslims, or whoever is bound together by a set of religious beliefs.

It also doesn't help that religious authorities have in the past, and sometimes still do, insisted that we must accept what they are saying without question. So, 'to have faith' comes to mean, 'believe what I tell you, no matter how unlikely it seems.'

Let me be absolutely clear, you should always question those in authority, including those in religious authority, the only exception to that rule being the present Rector of Tixover – if he tells you something, it surely must surely be good and true.

So who is right? Is faith to believe in a set of religious dogmas? Is faith to believe without questioning? Is faith a community defined by religious beliefs? Is faith a 'great cop-out'? Or is faith just a basic human need?

Let's see what the bible says, Hebrews 11:1 says this,

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

So note first of all, the bible is not saying that faith is a list of beliefs, neither is it primarily about defining a community, and it is not about passively accepting what you are told by religious authority figures. In fact Hebrews 11:1 does not mention religion, but it does mention evidence. This chapter in Hebrews then goes on to list characters from the bible who have acted on the evidence available to them, even though they could not see the full picture, and that faith in action has brought about change for the better. We all seek assurance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen, and the only way to find that is to act in faith.

Have you heard of Tony Robbins, the American motivational speaker? He wrote this on faith and fear (you'll have to imagine the enthusiastic American accent)

“Look, every day we drive down a highway with nothing but a painted yellow line dividing you from cars that are hurling head first towards you at 70 miles per hour. You know that every single day people cross that line.... And you also know that a certain percentage of those drivers are drunk. You also know some are texting. Some are falling asleep.... In fact, 1.4 million people will die in car accidents each year around the world. That's more than 3,200 a day. And yet we still get in our cars and drive. Why? Because of another “f” word that is 100 times more powerful than fear. FAITH.”

I think that's an instructive example because it makes clear that faith is not necessarily religious, but is rather an everyday human need. Faith is not a 'cop-out,' it is a way of finding out about the world, and also a way of changing the world.

The New Testament Greek word that we translate as faith, is 'pistis,' which is from "peitho", meaning to be persuaded. To be 'persuaded' means you have listened to a point of view and decided to accept it, and certainly does not mean, as Dawkins claims, to accept without evaluating the evidence. I like the idea that, 'reason is my right hand, faith is my left, and I need both hands to engage with the world.' Except, reason is not our only right hand, we have artistic endeavour, intuition, emotion, imagination, all ways of understanding our world, and all ways that work with active faith to plant good seed, and bring growth.

We are all Sowers, acting as we think best, not certain of the outcome. The only way we we can find out if our faith is justified is to act on it. To let go of the seed, let it fall to the ground, and see what grows. As Jesus said, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”

Jesus is both he sower of the Word, and the seed that is sown, he is the seed that fell to the earth, and was buried in the cold dark tomb, but death could not hold the generative power of God, so Jesus stepped out of the tomb and ascended into heaven, and a harvest of faithful souls was gathered by his disciples as they told of the good news. That's the ultimate power of faith, it builds the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.

Amen.