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When the Seed Won't Grow

            So what do you do when the seed doesn’t grow? If you think that’s a silly question, talk to a mom with a five-year-old. Some of you know how this works. The kid comes home from school on the Friday before Mother’s Day with big fat smile on his face. He’s carrying a little pot with dirt in it, and inside the dirt, he tells you with eyes as wide as saucers, inside the dirt is a seed! He put the seed there himself, and now this seed is going to grow into a flower and be your Mother’s Day present. And the kid is jumping off the furniture, he’s so excited. “But we have to water it every day, my teacher says.” And so the regimen is set: every day he pours water on the dirt, and every day he watches for a little sprout of green to pop through the dirt. Nothing happens. A week passes; two weeks pass. Mom knows what’s going on here—this seed isn’t going to grow. And now she has to teach a life lesson about what happens when the seed doesn’t grow.

             Well, sonny boy, get ready for life. Grown-ups know that sometimes the seed doesn’t grow. We start something with great expectations: a new relationship, a new job, a new car. And then the relationship fizzles, the job turns out to have no future, and the car is a lemon. We learn to live with this, we laugh about it, we shake it off, and we chalk it up to experience. But deep down it still hurts and it still disappoints. When we plant a seed with high hopes and the seed doesn’t grow, it makes you wonder about yourself or your friends. Maybe it even makes you wonder who’s running things upstairs.

             So you spend hours, maybe days and weeks talking to a friend about his relationship with God, and he just won’t buy into Jesus. You used to belong to a church where people seemed to be working hard, but the church never grew. You raise all your children the same way, but one of them drifts away from church and doesn’t come back. We Lutherans have known since we were in confirmation class that the Word of God has power, that it penetrates our hearts, that it overcomes our fears and dries our tears, and we believe this because we’ve seen this in our own lives. But what happens when the Word of God doesn’t work?

             In the Gospel for today, Jesus told a parable most of us know pretty well: the parable of the Sower. Jesus is the sower, and the seed is the Word of God. The good news in this parable is that the seed produces a crop a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown. The not-so-good news is that some of the seed never grows at all, or it grows for awhile and then shrivels and dies. There’s a lesson in this Gospel that we need to review. Jesus went to heaven when his work on earth was done, and now we’re the sowers. We sow the seed of the Word when we talk about Jesus to our friends and our children and our neighbors. We sow the seed when we use our money to support missionaries who sow the seed all over our country and even around the world. Sometimes we see the seed grow into strong, vigorous plants as people come to believe in Jesus and live as Christians. But that doesn’t always happen that way. What are we supposed to think about those times when the seed doesn’t grow?

             We know something about the apostle named Paul. He’s the main character in the second lesson for today from the book of Acts. His birth name was Saul, and for a long time he was a pretty fanatical Pharisee who figured the only good Christian was a dead Christian. But Jesus met up with Saul on the side of a road one day and changed his life forever. Jesus gave him a new name and a new job, and Paul became the greatest missionary who ever lived.

             When we run into Paul in Acts chapter 18, he has a lot of experience under his belt, and he knows all about the ups and downs and highs and lows of being a missionary. Paul had just arrived in the city of Corinth and right away we get introduced to a Christian couple, Aquila and his wife, Priscilla. They were part of the highs in Paul’s life. Aquila was a tent-maker like Paul was, and Paul went to work in Aquila’s shop to support himself while he was in Corinth. Aquila and Priscilla turned out to be great missionaries in their own right, and Paul counted them among his most reliable friends.

             There were other highs, of course. There was the government official on the island of Cyprus who believed and was amazed at the teaching of the Lord. There were faithful Jews and converts to Judaism who encouraged Paul to speak boldly. There were new congregations made up of people who accepted Paul’s teaching. There were associates like Barnabas, Timothy, and Silas who were as eager to be missionaries as Paul was. There were opportunities to witness in places Paul never expected to go.

             But there were lows, too, plenty of them. By far the biggest disappointment to Paul was that the Jewish church didn’t want anything to do with Jesus. Whenever Paul traveled to a new city, he always went to the Jewish synagogue first; just like today there was a synagogue in just about every major city. Paul did the same thing when he arrived in Corinth. Luke wrote the book of Acts, and he reports that every Sabbath Paul reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.When Silas and Timothy arrived in Corinth, Paul even stopped working on his tents and devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. He was planting the seed, but it never grew. Like in so many other cities the Jews opposed Paul and became abusive.Paul saw the handwriting on the wall. He had tried and tried to show the Jewish people that Jesus was the Savior God had promised especially to their nation, but all they ever did was stir up trouble, issue threats, and try to kill him.

             I know a missionary named Frederick Tiefel—he was my uncle—and he was the first WELS missionary in Japan. He worked around Tokyo for 50 years, and he witnessed to thousands of Japanese. You know how many people belonged to his church when he died? About 200, and the church was literallydying. What happens when the seed doesn’t grow? I’ve already mentioned situations that may have occurred in your life with friends, family members, even spouses and children. You share the Word, you sow the seed, but it doesn’t seem to take. This is exactly why Jesus told the parable of the Sower. He wanted his disciples to understand, and he wants us to understand that proclaiming the Word of Jesus doesn’t always meet with success. Satan sees to that. The devil is always on the prowl, looking for someone to devour.He’s the one who makes your friend’s heart as hard as a sidewalk so that the story of Jesus makes no sense at all. Satan is the one who puts rocks in people’s lives so that even when they’re interested at first, the seed can’t put down any sort of root system. Satan is the one who plants the thorns in your family garden, and those thorns overgrow faith and destroy it.

             I know you have a desire to tell people about Jesus, and I know you’re willing to give your time and money to support others who tell people about Jesus. But when the seed won’t grow, it’s easy to get discouraged. We hesitate; we think twice before we speak; we wonder if we’re on the right track. We grow impatient, and then we get grumpy and we start to ask who got us into this seed business in the first place. And that’s when disappointment turns into sin.

             The first few months in Corinth were an absolute low for Paul. He knew there wouldn’t be many more chances for his own people. He knew he had to give up on them and move on to people in the wider world who needed to hear the message. But it almost broke Paul’s heart that the seed of the Word hardly ever grew in Jewish hearts. There were some highs in Corinth. When he stormed out of the synagogue, a man named Titius Justus invited him in—and Titius Justus just happened to live right next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the synagogue ruler and his entire household believed in the Lord(Paul actually baptized this family) and many of the Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized.But with the Jews on his heels and the new church just getting started, Paul must have wondered if it was time for him to get out of Dodge. Maybe his work in Corinth was over; maybe it was time at least to keep a low profile. That’s when Jesus paid him a visit in the middle of the night. Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you and no one is going to attack and harm you because I have many people in this city. Jesus had a plan for Corinth and he had a plan for Paul, and Jesus intended to use his power to make sure that plan worked. Don’t worry, Paul. Keep preaching.

             Here’s a question. If Jesus knew he had many people in Corinth—and that’s what he said—why didn’t he tell Paul who the people were? Wouldn’t that have saved everybody a lot of trouble? Jesus could have said, “First go to 431 Cyprus Street, then go to the McDonald’s on the corner of Third and Main, then go sit near the fountain in the middle of town. I’ll introduce you to all the people I have in Corinth.” But Jesus didn’t do that. He didn’t do it for Paul, and he doesn’t do it for us. Jesus knows the ones he’s chosen; he knows the other sheep which are not of this fold.When the Word touches those hearts, he’ll make the seed sprout and blossom and grow, and that seed will produce all kinds of fruit. Jesus is the sun and the water who makes the seed grow. What do we do? We’re the seed sowers. We need to get that straight. We sow the seed; Jesus grows the seed—in his own loving way, according to his own mysterious will, with his own amazing work, and with his own unique diversity.

             A long time ago Jesus came to the world to save sinners. He lived and he died and then he rose from the dead so that he might forgive the sins of all people. And now he has given us a task: to take his word of forgiveness and spread it all over the world. We believe that Jesus has forgiven our sins, don’t we. Now we must also believe that Jesus will use us to bring his Word to lead many more to faith. This is what Paul believed. How do we know? So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.There’s our task. To do our best and leave the rest to God.

So what’s our task when the seed won’t grow?

(From “Preach You the Word” by Martin H. Franzmann. Copyright © 1971 The Franzmann Family.)

 Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on August 7, 2011

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Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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