Sunday, July 16, 2017

ROI

Watch Here


Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 
The Holy Gospel according to ______. Glory to you, O Lord.
1 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2 Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. 6 But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 Let anyone with ears listen!" 

18 "Hear then the parable of the sower. 19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. 20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21 yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. 22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. 23 But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."  
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ.

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
In our Sacred Story for today, Jesus tells a parable.  A parable is, literally, a story that puts two things side by side, similar to a metaphor or simile, except bigger – parables are stories that paint a picture, using familiar scenarios in ways that teach a spiritual lesson.  Often, Jesus uses parables to teach about what the Kingdom of God is like, and he will get there… Here, however, Jesus uses this first parable in Matthew to paint a picture of how the good news about the kingdom will get out to people.  How it is that the Word of God will be spread. Spread like a sower tosses out seed. 
I thought it might be helpful to think of this parable as Jesus explaining God’s Business Plan.  God is going about God’s business – that is, to spread the good news of the kingdom. So let’s take a look at it.  [God’s Business Model ppt]
First we have our raw materials: soil and seeds.  The seeds are God’s Word, so God has an infinite supply of that.  The question is: where will he invest it? Let’s talk about God’s investment opportunities here.  We have rocky soil, hard-packed path, thorny patches and good soil. [soil] Well, that sounds like the whole earth!
God invests the Word into the soil… and do you remember, if you took catechism, what is the Word?   Scripture is always the first thing we think of, but scripture only cradles the Word, not every jot and tittle of scripture is necessarily God’s Word….who is the Word?  Jesus! [investing God’s Word – seeds]
And what is God looking for here?  What will be the Return on Investment, the ROI, of God’s enterprise?  Fruit! The Fruit of the Spirit, even, that Paul talks about in the latter verses of chapter 8 of Romans that we read today. [Return on investment is Fruit]
First we learn that God scatters seeds everywhere, we are going to assume an equal distribution – because it is random distribution. [pie chart]
25% will produce ALL of the ROI, not most of the ROI or the biggest percentage… ALL.
Why is it still important to do the 75%?  Because we have no idea which seeds will get rooted deeply enough to produce ROI.  
Now back to the types of soil we are investing in again.  Imagine who is whom. We won’t share this out loud. Think about a person that you know that you would guess is rocky soil… hard packed earth?  Thornbrush? And Good soil…It wasn’t too hard to come up with someone for each category was it? We think we know people, we think we can tell which is which.  Who is worth our time, our sharing with them the transformative power of the gospel…
No one has developed this technology, and no one ever will.  No matter how precise we get at farming, with our puff-air planting technology and our soil chemistry…we will never be able to tell the precise chemical equation of the growth of the Word in the human Spirit.  The Spirit of God that lives in each of us, planted there by the hearing of the Word, by the gift of baptism, nourished by the ongoing Word and feast on Christ’s body…we usually want to know how to have the most “success”  how to be sure that the efforts we put in will produce more believers…how to pick the most likely candidates… 
Maybe we think that young families will be most likely to produce fruit, or maybe we think it is the elders of society, or maybe we think it is those who already know the church culture, like those who grew up in it, or maybe we think it is those who have the most visible gifts already…
But The truth is, no matter how we judge others, only God knows what the Word will produce in them.  
This whole parable gets misunderstood when we seek out the “right” people to bring into our church… because we think we are the planters, the farmers, the agent of change, the ones who take action.  But that’s not what God says. It is not our job to make the church grow, or to convert everyone to our beliefs. This is the key point of our faith: God does the planting. All we get to do is receive the gift, like soil receives the seed. 
God is investing in Cali Bella today as the Word is proclaimed in baptism and as she is washed into the family of God.  God is investing in each one of you. You are God’s investment opportunity. And God has invested in you. Today, and each time you hear the Word of God – through the Scriptures, through a word of grace and forgiveness, through a retelling of the sacred story in your own life, anytime you encounter Jesus in your neighbor… and notice that God has come to dwell among us, has fully taken on human flesh and has died on a cross to take away the brokenness of the world.
And you… you are good soil. You are growing good fruit.  You are the first fruits of the harvest, groaning as we await God’s good work in us, and as we see it come to life: the fruit of love for the world. 

Amen.