The Sower and the Seeds | July 12, 2026

This Sunday, Living Hope and Christ the King gathered together for a joint outdoor worship service in the park. This weekend was also my 10th anniversary of ordination, so I touched on that during the sermon. In addition to cake after the service, I was gifted a cross and a nice wall-hanging with the text of Luther’s sacristy prayer.

Grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus our Savior and Redeemer. Amen

Listen again to the very first verse of our Gospel reading: “That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.”

Very appropriate for a day when we’ve left our buildings to gather outside, right? Also, the “sea” here is the Sea of Galilee, which is actually a freshwater lake, although it’s quite a bit smaller than Lake Michigan over there.

Anyway, Jesus sat beside the sea, but then a whole crowd of people gathered around him, so he gets into a boat, goes a little off shore, and teaches from there. He tells the crowd this familiar parable, this story about a farmer who scatters seeds.

Some of it lands in good soil where it grows and bears fruit, but some of the seed falls on the path, the rocky ground, or in the thorns, and nothing much comes of it.

It’s one of Jesus’ more straightforward parables, especially because he explains to his disciples what everything in the story represents.

There’s really two perspectives in this story, two angles I want to look at. If you look at Matthew 13 in a Bible, there’s probably a heading that says, “The Parable of the Sower.” That’s one angle—we’ll come back to that.

But the story could also be titled, “The Parable of the Soil” as we think about how we receive God’s word.

When you hear the Gospel, are you more like the rocky soil, the hard path, the thorn bush, or the good soil? What’s the condition of your heart?

Now, I personally don’t think about soil much. A few weeks ago in Tennessee, our Lighthouse Youth group was serving on a farm that grows vegetables for local food pantries. When the farmer there heard we were from Wisconsin, he said, “Oh, I visited Wisconsin once, up near Madison. The soil was really rich there.” That was his enduring impression of our state: We have good soil. Farmers notice these things.

I’m not a farmer, so I can’t tell you what exactly that means, but I do know that for crops to grow well, for seeds to flourish, the soil needs to be good. There need to be the right nutrients, the right moisture levels, the right balance of shade and sun and water. Not clay, not sand, but rich soil.

And Jesus’ analogy makes sense, right? We all know people who hear the good news of Jesus, who hear the Gospel message, but it doesn’t do anything in their lives. Maybe—as Jesus says about the rocky soil—they get excited about the gospel, excited about church, but the excitement wears off. It doesn’t last.

I think about how in my 10 years as a pastor, I’ve done 58 baptisms. Every single one of those families has looked forward to it; every single one has seemed excited about being welcomed into a community of faith, joined into the Body of Christ.

And for a fair number, the last time I saw them was when we took a picture together after the service. They’re still beloved children of God, claimed by Christ forever, and maybe the seeds will sprout sometime later, but sometimes it looks pretty shallow.

When we leave church after worship on a Sunday morning, do we let God’s Word take root and grow in our lives? Does our faith grow fruit?

We want to be good soil. We want the gospel to take root in us, so our lives will bear fruit.

We’re not singing it this morning, but every time I hear this parable, I think of the hymn by Handt Hanson that goes like this.

It’s a prayer: “Lord, let my heart be good soil, open to the seed of your word. Lord, let my heart be good soil, where love can grow and peace is understood. When my heart is hard, break the stone away. When my heart is cold, warm it with the day. When my heart is lost, lead me on your way. Lord, let my heart, Lord, let my heart, Lord, let my heart be good soil.”

We could stop there, but the thing with Jesus’ parables is that they generally go beyond a simple explanation. And sure enough, when Jesus unpacks the story with his disciples beginning in verse 18, he calls it “the parable of the sower.”

The story is not just about the seed or the soil; it’s about the One who scatters the seed.

What’s fascinating about the sower in the story is that the sower sows the seed everywhere. Not just on the good soil, but indiscriminately. Seed gets scattered on rocky soil, hard paths, places where there’s already something else growing. That tells us something about the character of the God we worship.

God doesn’t wait for us to get our act together before inviting us to follow; God calls us as we are. God calls sinners like us to grow and bear fruit, to receive the gospel and let it grow and flourish in our lives, in good times and in hard times.

And the sower is an example for us to follow. Our job, our call, our mission as followers of Jesus is to scatter seeds.

Some of you know I spent most of the week at the ELCA’s Rostered Ministers Gathering in Indianapolis with around 500 other pastors and deacons. I heard a story at one of the workshops about a FedEx driver who lived out his faith by praying for the people on his route. When he pulled up to loading docks, there were people who would come out of the office to talk to him and share their concerns, because they knew he would pray for them. Everywhere he went, he was praying. He was witnessing to the gospel, sharing the love of Jesus, planting seeds.

As a pastor, I get to scatter seeds in a particularly public way. Hopefully not only in the pulpit or in formal worship services, but it is part of my professional duty. But evangelism is not just up to the pastor. All of us get to follow the sower’s example.

This week marks ten years since my ordination, and I’ve preached at least 500 sermons and led well over a thousand worship services (at least a dozen of them outdoors). I’ve prayed beside hospital beds, celebrated a few weddings, and done 86 funerals.

But I cannot make people believe. I can’t make the seeds of faith grow. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit.

When we share our faith, the hope we have in Jesus, some people will listen to us, others won’t. Some people are curious why we volunteer, why we make food to give away, why we lift up the vulnerable, and others just don’t care about our motivation. But our words and our actions in Jesus’ name scatter seeds, and then we trust the Holy Spirit. All we can do is be faithful; whatever sticks is Jesus’ fault.

At the gathering this week, I got to introduce some of my friends and colleagues to each other, people I knew in Iowa to my Wisconsin colleagues. Mingling is not my forte, so it was fun this time to be the connecting link between people who ended up sharing some meals and getting along really well, but it’s also an example of planting seeds.

A phrase that stuck with me from an evangelism workshop on Thursday is, “Haaaave you met my friend?” We have two churches here today, you don’t all know each other—try it out. “Haaaave you met my friend?” That’s how we connect people to church community. More importantly, how we connect people to Jesus. We make the introduction.

And I mean more than just “a little Jesus” in a parade. It’s always good to remind our neighbors we’re here and that we care about our community. I appreciate the people who are going to be out in the parade, or hanging up door hangers before Easter, or any of that. But the real seeds are planted through relationships, through conversation, through the ways we love and serve our neighbors.

We don’t know where those conversations will lead, how those relationships will develop. But you’re here because someone shared the good news of Jesus with you.

You’re here today because someone planted a seed and the Holy Spirit made it grow. When those seeds grow, it’s Jesus’ fault.

And very briefly, what is the good news we share? What is the Gospel in the seeds we scatter?

It’s the reading we heard from Romans: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The Spirit of God brings life. The Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you and gives you life. God cares for you. God loves you. God calls you.

Do you believe that? Do you believe the same God who raised Jesus from the dead is at work in you, raising you from death to life?

If you let that message of God’s love and grace and care for you sink in and transform your life, if you let the Holy Spirit break up the hard ground, pull out some weeds, then your life will bear good fruit.

And again, it’s Jesus’ fault. We heard about the fruit last week: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Fruits of the spirit. Love for neighbor. Faith lived out in justice. Community.

And of course, what does fruit do? Why do strawberries and apples and plums exist? They are there as a vessel for seeds, so that seeds are scattered and life spreads.

May you know the love of Jesus. May the Holy Spirit form your heart into good soil. May you grow fruit that will last, fruit that will multiply. And may God bless the seeds that will grow from your witness, in Jesus’ name. Amen