Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10 (July 12, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and further edited for readability.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please be seated.
Some of you might remember that about four years ago, when I first came here, in my very first service I had a terrible case of poison ivy. Who remembers that?
And no one wanted to take communion. You were all very polite to me, and probably no one wanted to take communion because you weren't sure if your new priest had leprosy or something.
But this is to say that I like to garden. I try to make time to spend time in the garden, and it's been a project of mine over the four years to spend time in the rectory gardens. Christopher as well has been growing vegetables and trying to bring beauty around the home.
One of the things that I love to do is go to Adams, and you know how, in the Adams greenhouse section, they have all those beautiful seed packets? I especially love the ones that have the hand-drawn pictures of the beautiful flowers that are going to grow. So I go there and I buy all these little seed packets, and I'm picturing how beautiful the garden is going to be.
I've done this for a few years, and then it's time for planting. So I rip open my seed packets and I put them in my hand, and there's about, like, five of them. You know, there's like five seeds.
Then I get in the garden and I try to get it all ready, which is already a little overwhelming for me. You know, all the weeds I've got to dig, and loosen the soil, and prepare it. Then I'm very carefully and parsimoniously planting each of my cosmos seeds.
And then I'm always very disappointed with the results.
So this year I went online to AmericanMeadows.com, and for $39.95 I purchased five pounds of American perennial wildflower mix. I went out to the garden and I was like—
laughter
—and Christopher took it and planted it around the inside of the fence in the backyard of the rectory. Just about now there's what's about to be an explosion. I can see the zinnias are about to bloom, and the cosmos are about to bloom, and there's clover. I had to pull out a lot of that stiltgrass that's everywhere. But there's little sweet alyssum flowers, and it is so abundant.
And it was so easy. You know, I just tossed it wherever.
When you hear the parable of the sower, we're talking about the difference between a sower who is very careful because they have just enough, right?
When I have just a handful of precious seeds—and, of course, the farmers in Jesus' time were carefully saving their seeds for the coming crop—so they knew that part of what they had to do was exercise great care to ensure that the seeds were planted on good soil and not wasted in places where they wouldn't bear fruit.
So here comes Jesus, and he's telling this story about a farmer who has so much seed that he just throws it wherever, right? And he doesn't care if the chickens eat it. And he doesn't care if it lands on the dry, crummy ground. He just throws it without thinking about what the results will be.
When I was a kid, I heard this story, this parable, a lot. This is the first parable in Matthew's Gospel. In many ways, it's the parable of parables, trying to tell us through a story what God is like and what God's kingdom is like.
And I was always asked after this parable was taught, "Meredith, what kind of soil are you going to be for God?"
Did you also get asked that when you heard this parable?
Many, many people had that asked or implied: What kind of soil are you going to be? Well, I was like the thorny one.
And whether you were like me, and just being asked that question made you feel rebellious, or others who felt shame that maybe they weren't good enough soil, maybe they were kind of dry and we should try harder...
Most of us who grew up hearing this parable probably didn't think of ourselves as that rich and flourishing soil, but felt that in some way we were not measuring up to God's expectation.
And so we all totally miss the point of the parable, because the point is not the soil.
And the point is not, "What kind of soil am I?" But as Paul very accurately points out, the point is the Spirit. The point is the sower.
What we are supposed to be paying attention to in this parable is the behavior of the sower, which is to generously and prolifically spread, share, the seed—which is the good news, which is God's love, God's mercy, God's kindness.
And the point is not where it lands, but that the sower has an unending supply.
That's why Paul says, "Don't pay attention to what he calls the flesh or the body, but pay attention to the Spirit that dwells within you."
Most of us are accustomed to kind of efforting, trying to be better soil. If I wake up earlier and I do stretches, and I do this and I do that, then I'll be ready. I'll be prepared for the day, and I'll be able to do God's will. We're used to efforting.
And St. Paul is saying to us, please, please pay attention to God, who is generously throwing grace and mercy and power at you, regardless of how you have prepared yourself—or not. Please pay attention to God.
God says in this prophecy from Isaiah, "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven... and return not there, but water the earth, giving forth bread for eating and seed for sowing, so shall my word be which goes forth from my mouth. It does not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I have purposed."
Which means that God has so much of God's love and God's mercy, God's grace, and God's power that God is sowing those riches unendingly in our lives. Unendingly.
I asked our Bible study group, "Do you think that the sower in this story comes through just once?"
And we all, by instinct, by intuition, said, "No. Can't possibly be." Right? A sower this generous, with so much to share, is passing through over and over, season by season.
So I want you to imagine that the arc of the arm of God, the sower of love and justice and mercy, extends from the beginning to the end of your life, sowing seed in every season of your life, right? The times that are dry, and the times that are thorny, and the times that feel joyful and fruitful and free.
But the arm of God is spreading those seeds from birth to death and even beyond.
One of the burial prayers in our prayer book prays for the dead that they would "go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in thy heavenly kingdom."
Which means from birth to death and beyond, God's mercy endures forever. God's love is at work sowing seeds in your life.
The prayer that we prayed at the beginning is so smart, asking God, "Grant that we may know and understand the things we ought to do, and may have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish them."
The writers of this prayer know that it's a two-parter, right? First, to have the blessing of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to know what it is we ought to do—which we all know doesn't always come easy and isn't always clear.
And then, that we would have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish what it is that we know God would have us do.
And the trick is that if we think that we've got to do that all by our own power and our own effort, that we've got to prepare the soil so that when that one little seed gets planted very carefully by one who has very little to spare, that we will be ready...
But it's not like that.
It's like this: over and over, all through your life.
The process of sanctification, of knowing what is the will of God and doing it, of becoming holy—or, as the bishop says, of our souls growing—it is God's business to give us the guidance, the mercy, the power, and the grace.
And it's done season in, season out, from birth to death.
So this week, what if you were sharing that good news, right?
What if, not only in your own life but out in the world, you looked at the people around you as though God were pouring grace and power and wisdom and guidance upon them, and that God is doing that generously?
And what if you treated them as though that grace were being shed on them?
And what if you paid more attention to what God is up to than to the quality of the soil in yourself and in others?
What if you paid attention to the generosity, the goodness, the grace, and the power of the sower, who has more than enough?
Amen.