Snow on Snow...

The Rev. Kathi Johnson

16 July 2017

Texts: Isaiah 55:10-13 and Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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I’m going to begin this morning by asking you to stretch your imaginations. The current heat index is ___ and so this is really going to tax your brain – but I’d like you to imagine that you’re standing somewhere, looking over an expanse of snow.

Everywhere you look, you see the white snow. It covers tree branches and roadways, it sits on top of mailboxes and cars, the snow makes flower beds and grass turn into one, big, white expanse.

You take a step out into the snow, and realize it’s deeper than you thought. A crust of ice has formed on the top, so your steps are marked with a loud CRUNCH sound as your foot makes its way through that crust of ice and onto the snow beneath. CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH, you walk.

It’s hard to imagine this scene now, but it happens, every year, if not here, than in other places I have lived and visited – Colorado, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine. The cool rains of Fall turn into the cold snows of winter – snow on snow, snow on snow, as one Christmas hymn puts it.

The prophet Isaiah writes about snow in today’s first reading, reminding us that it is not only rain that waters the earth, but also the snow, coming down from heaven. This part of the book of Isaiah was written to a people who were living in exile from their homeland – people who were forced to leave behind everything familiar, everything precious, and then live in a far away land.

And so Isaiah offers them the image of rain and snow watering the earth to remind them that even rain and snow offer us hope. They offer us hope because they water the earth, the same earth that nourishes the seed, the same seed that grows into wheat, to be turned into bread, the same bread which feeds us daily. The rain and snow may not look like much – they cause our shoes to get muddy and our feet to get wet – but they have a job to do, helping things to grow.

Right before today’s passage, Isaiah reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, so we can’t just look at the surface. Our hope comes in what God is growing underneath the surface – beneath the surface of what we can see with our own vision.

And Isaiah’s word of hope for God’s people doesn’t end there, for we also hear that God’s word doesn’t return to God empty. So if we return to the first image I shared at the beginning – think again about that crusty snow, but this time, think of what’s underneath that snow. Think about the branches and roads and mailboxes and cars, but then think even lower than that – think about the hard earth underneath the snow. And think about the seeds that have been cast onto the paths, into the rocks, among the thorns, and onto the good soil. The rain and snow nourish them all – and growth can happen anywhere, even in places we don’t see it.

Now, in Jesus’ parable of the sower that I just read – admittedly, Jesus says that some seeds do better under certain circumstances than other seeds in other circumstances. But the miracle of this story is not found in the fact that a seed can sprout among the rocks or among the thorns, or feed a bird that is eating on a pathway.

The miracle of this story is that the sower casts the seed into these places to begin with.

In Jesus’ day, seed was expensive. A true sower wouldn’t have wasted seed on paths or rocky soil or thorny places. That would make about as much sense as us casting those wildflower seeds in the middle of our parking lot, instead of out in the field, like we did a couple of years ago.

But the sower in Jesus’ parable has a different vision for the world. The sower wants the seed to go everywhere, realizing that sometimes, growth happens anywhere, even in the places we don’t see it. The sower isn’t concerned with efficient farming; the sower is more concerned with returning the seed to the earth, where it belongs. There is an abundance in his method – an abundance in the way he casts the seeds, not too worried about exactly where they land.

If we look around at the people assembled in any Christian gathering, there will be those who seem to be living the “good Christian life,” and those who are struggling. There will be people we like, people we dislike, people who make us feel comfortable, and people who we just don’t understand, no matter how hard we try.

To use an example from our own context: it’s Day Camp week, and there might be kids here that week who we may look at and think, “What work is God possibly doing in them?” There might be a family who seems – on the surface – to be completely unmoved by the love of God.

Even in our daily lives, we may look at someone, and wonder - what is God doing beneath the surface of that relative for whom I’ve been praying, or in the life of that noisy kid in the grocery store, or in the heart of the person who seems so unfriendly? We may think: there’s nothing that God could be doing in them.

Or inside our own hearts, we may feel that we’re beyond God’s reach. That seed of God’s love couldn’t possibly be thrown far enough to reach into the rockiest place of my own heart, could it?

But the parable of the sower reminds us what Isaiah also reminds us: that God’s ways are not our ways. God is the sower who casts love out there with abandon. God’s love falls into the hearts of the people in whom we would least suspect it, and growth can happen anywhere, even in places we don’t see it. The rain and the snow come down from heaven and water even the tiniest of seeds - seeds that sprout and grow.

Amen.

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