“In the Rough”
Luke 8: 4-15
4 And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: 5 "A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. 6 And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. 8 And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold." As he said these things, he called out, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." 9 And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, 10 he said, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that 'seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.'
11 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 12 The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. 13 And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. 14 And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. 15 As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.
Roughing It Golf
Golf—the very word conjures one of a multiple pictures—either golden hours spent in verdant pastures relaxedly savoring God’s good creation, or a completely hellish eternity of weeds, sand, and water as you hack up hunk after hunk of turf trying move that stupid, dimpled, Dodo egg toward an impossibly small goal. Golf is no game for perfectionists.
I tend to play in the rough. Being a big guy, I’m a big hitter. My drives—and often third or fourth shots—tend to veer out where the weeds and tall grasses grow. Yeah, leave the low grasses to the sissies, I say—anyone can hit a ball off pleasant green carpeting—but it takes real golfers to swing a wedge repeatedly through patches of foxtail, nettles, and rock-hard dirt-clods.
Where’s the challenge in hitting a ball straight down the fairway, wide as a football field? Might as well just go play football. No, give me the the kind of shot where you have to hit a half buried ball between two trees so close you couldn’t drive a skateboard between them, with thick branches thick arcing overhead like a low-beamed ceiling—there’s real sportsmanship for you! I, for one, think golf ought to provide players a good workout with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears—so I prefer to play in the rough—at least, that’s the story I’m sticking to.
The Sower in Jesus’ parable doesn’t hit straight up the fairway, either. Maybe he swings too hard, or fails to keep his head down on follow-through, or yanks his backswing—whatever, he tends to hit a lot of extreme hooks and slices. Onto the cart path, into the rocks, and out into the deep rough where the big nettles grow as high as your armpits—all reveal a Sower who is truly a big hitter.
Jesus says some of the Sower’s seed lands among the thorns, where, among the nettles, the new plants just don’t stand a chance. He says the thorns represent the choking factors for true faith: cares, riches, and pleasures. We’re going to look briefly at all three as we prepare our hearts to receive God’s good gift of the Lord’s Supper this morning.
Looking for Trouble
Cares—fears, troubles, debts, pains, afflictions, sickness, oppression, politics, economics, the environment—the cares of the world seem endless—certainly enough to occupy us so completely that we miss out on what this life is truly about. Money’s short this month, the doctor wants me to come back in tomorrow, my hip is acting up again, my boss is such a jerk, we’ll never get an even break, it’s Trump’s fault I tell ya, it’s the fat cats taking from the working class, it’s irreversible climate change—we’re in for it now!
We live in a world with multiple sources of endless information. We have bad news pumped in 24/7 from every angle. Taken together it seems nothing less than a calculated strategy to turn us all into constant hand-wringers and Chicken Littles. “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
Hypochondria—both individual and worldwide (What? Did you think that climate change awareness was something else?)—has become the chief export of pharmaceutical ads. Not worried? What’s wrong with you? You ought to be more paranoid.
To be choked by the cares of this world is to be blinded and consumed by issues. That is what our cares are: our issues. Do you have issues—cares, causes, and cherished hobby horses? The problem with of these things is that they can choke us—they so fill our eyes, throats, and hearts that we have no remaining way of taking in God’s good news and the feeding nourishment of the gospel. The biblical paradigm is found in Matthew 14, in the episode where Peter steps out of the boat and begins to walk on the water just as Jesus does.
But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, "Lord, save me.”
—Matthew 14:30
Peter was doing well, but once he made the wind his central focus, he began to sink. So do we. The cares of this world—our issues—are not the central issues of the world (even though we feel like they are). The antidote to our cares and issues comes from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says:
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. — Matthew 6:25a
That is a command: Don’t be anxious. To those with cares and issues Jesus reminds us that our anxieties are good for nothing. Verse 27:
And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? —Matthew 6:27
There is clearly a difference between caring for others and being consumed by cares. We want the former, not the latter.
We abandon care in one way only: trusting in the care of the Father. He loves us and values us more than we can imagine. If we seek to live our lives trusting in his love, we will outgrow the weeds, and once the weeds die off, we’ll only have begun to flourish.
“If I Were A Rich Man”
Riches. In “Fiddler on a Roof,” Tevya, the main character, sings, “If I were a rich man,” a song celebrating how money rescues us from all our cares and empowers us beyond reason. “Wouldn’t have to work hard, wife would be happy, and everyone would come to him for advice. It’s the dream of riches—the fantasy of winning the Powerball and what it might bring—escape from the cares which plague us.
Riches promise power—specifically, the power to overcome every challenge. Liberty to make all the choices you want, the feeling of security and ultimately the power to delay the inevitable tide of aging and going quietly into the sunset.
Riches choke. They fill our eyes and then our space with all the stuff we believe we absolutely have to have: 24/7 telephones with Netflix and HBO, Better Homes & Gardens, better automobiles with better onboard computers and sound systems, freedom from indebtedness to anyone and anything for any reason.
I’m no different. When I hear on the news that the lottery is at 300 million, I start fantasizing about what could be done. Fix up the church! Hart Hall, Preschool renovation, elevator for the second floor—sigh.
It’s universal: at some level, we all dream of riches. And yet, dreaming to much can become like boa constrictor that wraps around our necks and permanently force our gaze away from Christ toward the things of this world.
Of riches, Jesus speaks clearly in Mark 8:
And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” — Luke 12: 19-21
The lie of this world is the idea that our souls will actually be preserved and bolstered by riches, when the truth is that wealth often acts as the soul’s chief irritant and source of corruption.
Again, Jesus gives us the antidote; he tells us to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air:
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? —Matthew 6:26
Of more value—the problem with riches is that they totally mess with our value system. Jesus reorients us toward what is truly valuable. Silver and gold do not last, but the love of God our Father in Heaven is eternal.
If It Feels Good…
Pleasures—how can anyone be against pleasure? Pleasure is our body and mind’s way of saying, yes—this is good! Social commentators have suggested that America and the West are much less Christian at heart than we are Epicurean. Epicureans were materialists. They were wildly hedonistic in seeking pleasure, but they believed that the pleasant life was the best life. Live simply, all things in moderation, mind your own business, and don’t bother with superstitious thinking. Sounds like a lot of the modern world. It’s no stretch to say that many Americans and Christians are zealots for the pleasant life.
This is an easy sell: follow God and your life will be pleasant. Does Jesus say this? Ever? No. Jesus is again and again calling our focus to a world that is not of this world—a world where the Father reigns in perfect justice and righteousness.
Furthermore, we are to be warned:
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? — Mark 8:36
For another of the world’s great lies is that we have no souls—all we are is all we see, hear, touch, taste, and feel. Living for our bodies sake alone leaves us soul-sick and cheated.
Pleasures choke us—they fill us with good feeling so that our eyes never bother to look up, outward, and beyond to the horizon where our true home and true calling can be found.
There is already too much zealotry for the things of this world—too many people who advocate for the virtues of the sensuous life here and now—and too few pointing beyond this world as Christ did, as his apostles do, and as disciples of every era have done.
Paul articulately drove the wooden spike through the heart of the philosophy, which—zombie-like or vampire-like—refuses to die when he wrote to the very comfortable and pleasure-loving Corinthians:
If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. — 1 Corinthians 15:19
The purpose of this life is not that we invest our souls here. Our greatest good and highest value is held in trust for us by Christ in Heaven. When we call Jesus “Lord,” we are proclaiming that Jesus alone is of ultimate, final, absolute value. Nothing else can compare or even come close. To have faith is to know that Jesus is the pearl of great price for which we would sell all we have in order to attain.
Outgrowing Thorns
What should we do about the thorns? Cell them by name? Round them up? Pluck them all out and burn them in a pile? No. Tempting, but that’s God’s work, not ours.
Jesus tells us to let the wheat and the weeds grow up together; in time, God will do the separating. As much as we may be threatened by the thorns of this life, it is not our role to rip them out or otherwise remove them. God will judge.
“But I want justice now!”
Christ-follower, what do you need?
Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. — Matthew 6:33
You have all you need from the Father. For our cares, we have the cross, and Jesus who identifies with us and accompanies us in suffering. As for riches, ours—secured by Christ—are eternal and eternally guaranteed. As for pleasures, these are not diminished by faith but enhanced by our relationship with God, because we receive them all with knowing gratitude. The pleasures we know here and now are made all the sweeter in a cosmos filled with meaning because our loving Lord presides over all.
Who enjoys their meal more: the man on Death Row knowing it’s his final meal or the freed prisoner knowing it’s his first of many meals to come? We have been freed. An eternal feast awaits us and begins here and now. †