9^th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 15) “The Tasks of Preaching”

Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23

7/13/08

Last Sunday morning found Lois and me in Beijing, worshiping at the Church of the Good Shepherd, an international English language congregation in China’s capital. It is sort of a generic Protestant church whose members are from many different nations and denominations. After the service we got into a taxi, looked at each other and said, “That was one of the most boring church services we’ve ever attended.”

There were several reasons we found it boring, of course, but the biggest thing was the sermon. There was a guest pastor that day, and while he had some good things to say, he was one of these preachers who, as they say, missed a lot of good stopping places. Of course I felt duly guilty for feeling this way, and it has provoked a little meditation on the task of preaching and also the task of listening to sermons. Today’s gospel lesson seems to be perfectly intended for shaping some reflection on this topic—and it is timely, too, because you will soon be asked to extend a call to a new associate pastor, and if you do so, you’ll be having the opportunity to hear someone else proclaiming the Word of God on a regular basis. So it will be helpful to think a bit about preaching this morning.

I have always thought of preaching as my primary responsibility as a pastor. Pastors do many other things, of course, but I always reflect back on the words that were spoken by my bishop when I was first ordained—words that sound a bit archaic now, perhaps, but they have shaped my entire ministry: “Take thou authority to read the Holy Scriptures in the Church of God, and to preach the word.” But there would be no preaching without hearers, and the hearers, too, have some responsibility in this enterprise.

But let’s think first about the preacher. In the parable from Matthew’s gospel, the preacher is described as a sower. He or she sows the seed which is the word of God. The preachers’ first responsibility, seems to me, is to be sure that seed I sow is the Word of God. The Scripture always needs to be front and center, and I think it usually is in a Lutheran congregation.

This, of course, is largely due to Luther himself, whose great Reformation cry was sola Scriptura—Scripture alone! Today our problem is not so much an autocratic and dictatorial church which obscures the Scripture, but a society that searches for meaning in so many places other than God’s Word. The Bible is so often viewed as an antiquarian classic—good to keep on a shelf, but not really relevant to ordinary life. Perhaps you’ve been reading in The Lutheran about the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s new “book of faith” initiative—a program that recognizes that many modern Americans, and many Lutherans, have become woefully ignorant of the Bible, and thus unable to see its importance to our faith and daily life. I pray that this new effort to teach us more about God’s Word will be successful; but in the end, it is not denominational programs but faithful preaching that is most important in bringing the Word of God to bear on our twenty-first century lives.

A second responsibility that I have as a preacher is to take the task of preaching with utter seriousness, and full understanding of its importance. I had an experience many years ago which convinced me of the power of preaching. It was my last semester of seminary; a classmate stopped by to return a book he had borrowed, and we began to chat. He was not a close friend, and we hadn’t ever had a serious discussion about anything. As we talked, he told me that he had just finally made the decision to go to graduate school and prepare for a teaching career, rather than become a parish pastor. He had finally realized, he said, that God just didn’t want him to be a pastor, and that his real calling in the church was as a teacher rather than a preacher.

I asked him how he had come to this realization. He paused for a moment, and then said, “Well, to tell you the truth, one major factor was a sermon you preached in the seminary chapel last fall. It was what started me thinking about how I was going to serve God.” His words shocked me. He was saying that a sermon I had preached several months before had had such an impact on his own thinking that he was changing his vocational plans. Yet if it hadn’t been for this chance conversation, I would never have known the importance of that sermon in this individual’s life.

Well, if I thought every sermon has that kind of effect, I wouldn’t have the courage to stand up here every week. But that experience taught me that the Spirit of God can work in some very unexpected ways, and a preacher never knows when or how God is going to use a sermon to speak particularly clearly to some member of a congregation. That possibility is always in my thinking as I prepare to preach; it is a heavy responsibility.

But if the preacher’s responsibilities are heavy, the responsibilities of the hearers are no less important. Think again about the parable of the sower. The story talks about the response of different people who have heard God’s Word. God’s Word is the seed, the preacher is the sower, and those who hear are the different soils into which the seed falls. What really seems to matter most, in other words, is the condition of the soil where the seed falls—whether it is on the path, or among rocks, or thorns, or whether the soil is good.

Some hearts are like the path—an open road, where anyone and everyone can walk, where there is no preparation for the sowing. The path is only walked upon—not plowed, not turned over in expectation. It is just not ready for the seed. So any seed that falls there is quickly devoured by the birds, with no chance to root, no chance even to begin to grow. So it is with the Word of God, sown in such a heart. It falls, only to be devoured before it has any effect.

Some hearts are like the rocky ground—shallow earth, no room for roots. So the seed may sprout, but it cannot grow very big before it withers and dies. So it is when the Word of God is sown in such a heart; it makes a start, begins to grow, but soon withers because there is no depth.

Some hearts, too, are like thorny ground. The seed may sprout and root and grow, but it is finally choked and killed by the thorns. So can the Word of God be choked and killed by what Jesus calls the cares of the world and the delight of riches; they are like weeds, growing along with God’s Word, but finally crowding it out.

And then there are hearts like good soil, where the seed takes root, grows, and bears fruit; there the soil is deep, with no rocks or thorns to prevent the seed’s growth.

Now the problem with most of us is that our hearts are not just naturally good soil. We find those rocks and thorns so frequently, suddenly appearing where we least expect them and threatening the good seed planted in our hearts. But when did you let a few rocks or weeds stop you from planting a garden? When did you just throw up your hands and give up, and let the rocks and weeds take over?

The parable, you see, tells us that we must do with our hearts what we do with our gardens: we must prepare the ground before the seed is planted. If I as a preacher must struggle with the sowing of God’s Word, it is your responsibility as those who hear me preach to prepare your hearts to receive it. Your part is every bit as important as mine.

How can you do it? Let me suggest three things. First, you can prepare by wrestling with God’s Word yourself during the week. My task is to help you understand the Bible, but it takes some work on your part. Have you ever noticed that at the bottom of your bulletin, in the wee tiny print, it lists the Scripture readings for next Sunday. At least one of those texts will be the focus of the sermon next week. Try taking some time during the week to read over those passages. Do it early in the week, and do it more than once! Think about the readings until they become familiar to you. Try to understand what they mean to you, how they speak to you. Call me up or email me if you have questions about them. The truth is that you are going to get a lot more out of worship and especially out of the sermon if the lessons for the day don’t hit you for the first time that very Sunday morning! When you hear them cold, you see, you just aren’t prepared for what you might hear.

Secondly, you can prepare by your attentiveness to the sermon each week. Some years ago a teenager told me, “Pastor, I’ve really been getting a lot out of your sermons, especially since I’ve started listening to them!” Wiser words were never spoken!

As I listened to this boring preacher last week, I recalled words spoken to me by a friend, a pastor’s wife, who happened to stop by for a visit one Saturday afternoon in a little church I was serving for the summer—this was before I even went to seminary. She asked about the subject for tomorrow’s sermon, we chatted about it, and when she left, she said something that I thought was so profound I wrote it on the flyleaf of my Bible. This is what she said: “Make the matchless message interesting.” I hope you find my preaching, and the preaching of anyone who occupies this pulpit, to be interesting—but if you don’t, that’s no excuse not to listen. A high school student once explained his flunking history class by pointing out that the teacher was boring. Needless to say, that explanation did not impress his parents. A boring teacher is no reason not to learn—you may have to work a little harder yourself, but if you flunk, it’s hardly ever the teacher’s fault.

Finally, you can prepare your heart by helping me prepare my sermons. The great American missionary John R. Mott was once preaching in a big city church, and he noticed an old friend of his whose eyes were closed during the entire sermon. After church, Dr. Mott wanted an explanation: “Was I so bad that you had to sleep through the sermon?” he asked. His friend explained he hadn’t been sleeping, but praying for the preacher and for those who were listening. Mott was so struck by this that he frequently did the same thing when he listened to others preach. I ask for your prayers, during the week but especially on Sunday morning. Preaching is a difficult task, and I need your prayers in order to do it faithfully.

Perhaps we should conclude with these wonderful words from our first lesson, from Isaiah: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth . . . so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty.” God’s Word is always powerful, and always for us! May God give us grace that his Word might find its way into our hearts, and that it may not return empty but bring forth fruit in our lives.