Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood…” these are the opening lines from Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken. It has to do with choosing and decision making. According to some psychologists, a person makes several thousand choices or decisions a day. The reading from Old Testament story with Jacob and Esau has to do with choices, in particular the choice that Esau makes. To paraphrase from an Indiana Jones movie, “Esau, you have NOT chosen wisely!” The passage in Romans has to do with choices, our choices, whether we choose to live according to the Spirit or to the flesh. And the Gospel has choices as a theme as well.
Now some would say the parable in Matthew 13 is really not about choices, but more about simply telling what happens when God’s word is spoken. And that is true if one looks at the parable from the perspective of the one sowing the seeds. But that is not the perspective I would like to look at this parable. Instead, I want us to look at this from the perspective of the dirt. And I want us to consider what kind of dirt we are. There are four different kinds of dirt that Jesus describes. Each of us falls into one of those categories. It is interesting to note that sometimes we move from being one type of dirt to another! The four different kinds are first the soil of the path which is hard and impenetrable, the second is the rocky, the third is the thorny or weedy, and finally there is the good and fertile soil.
The basic question we need to answer today is how do we, or more to the point, how do you, how do I, respond to God’s word? Jesus points out in today’s reading that some of the seed that fell on the path is a picture of what happens when someone hears God’s word, but doesn’t understand. That happens with us sometimes doesn’t it? Sometimes we read the Bible and we just don’t get certain parts of it. Then what happens? We just kind of forget about it, don’t we? The same thing happens when we listen to sermons sometimes. We may hear what the preacher is saying, but if it doesn’t make sense, it just goes away! This phenomenon doesn’t seem so bad until we realize that our forgetting is not completely due to our getting old or being forgetful. It is a much darker situation than that. Jesus tells us that the Evil One comes and picks up the Word and takes it away! You see he certainly doesn’t want us to understand and get closer to God. So how can we have anything to do with affecting this situation? If we don’t understand something, we don’t understand it, right? Yes and no. The fact is that if I don’t understand something, if you don’t understand something, we can do something about it. We have three options, you can ask God, you can ask others, or you can try to look it up and do research. You can try to figure it out. You don’t need to let the Word of God go away. The Evil One, the enemy of your soul and my soul is against you and wants you to just let it go. Don’t do it!
The next type of soil is rocky soil. This person hears the Word and gets all excited about it. He or she gets it! Not only do they get it, but this person takes this understanding of God’s word and applies it to life. He changes how he lives. For example, this person may hear a sermon on how important reading the Bible is and so he or she decides to read it every day. Or maybe it is on serving in the church, or praying, or tithing (which is Bible language for giving 10% of your income to God) or being kind to one’s neighbor. So after hearing it, they decide to put it into practice! But it is kind of like a New Year’s resolution. Remember how we do those? We say, this year I am going to exercise regularly or diet, or stop spending frivolously, or go to bed at good time or get up at a good time or something that we have decided in a moment of inspiration that if we did whatever it is we would be a better person. So, after January 1st we start off with great intentions to being this better person. Then, what happens? If you are like 99% of the population, after a week or two or three, or maybe a month or two, then the urge to do this new thing goes away and it becomes inconvenient or even difficult. It is the same thing for the person responding to God’s word who is a rocky soil kind of person. This person starts off great guns, but then, well, things get inconvenient, or hard. Perhaps in trying to nice to his neighbor, the neighbor is not nice back, perhaps in trying to tithe somehow it stops being so important to give 10% when he could be enjoying the entire 100%, or someone sees him praying and he gets embarrassed. Whatever, so this person stops doing whatever it was he had been doing.
The next type of soil is one I know all too well perhaps you do too. It is the thorny ground soil or the soil with weeds in it. This one is similar to the rocky ground soil in that this person hears something and begins doing it. His or her life changes and things are going on, in this case it is longer than a couple of days or weeks or months. This person really changes. But what happens is slowly, slowly, things begin to get in the way. So that as time goes on, over days, weeks, and months, slowly he begins to drop this change of life. The heart doesn’t really change, exactly, but things begin to crowd out what were once priorities. Jesus references things like the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches or the lure of wealth as the types of things that choke out the good intentions and habits that are being formed in this person. The cares of the world, the stresses of life, the frustrations and anxieties that eat at us from work, or home, or from within are those things that begin to take the center stage of what we think about and what is important to us. Or the other thing Jesus mentions is about money. He refers to the deceitfulness of riches. He calls it deceitful because it seems to promise that if we had more of it, then we would be happier. It is a lure because it, like the anxieties that the world brings, it draws our attention from what is really important.
Finally we have our goal, the good dirt. This is when we hear God’s word and we respond to it. When we hear that we are supposed to be kind to others, we actually try to do it. When we hear we are supposed to pray we start praying. Whenever we hear what God wants us to do, we begin doing it and keep on doing it. This becomes part of our lives.
How do we get to be this kind of dirt? What if I am a rocky soil or a thorny soil kind of guy? How can I change? Is there an option for change? Jesus said, “He who has ears let him hear.” What did he mean by that phrase? Remember when your mother used to say, “Did you hear what I said?” What did that mean? It meant that if you really heard you would do what your mom said, right? Jesus says, “Do you hear, really hear what I am saying? If you do hear me, then change.” But the problem is that I can’t just change on my own. I need God’s help. He WILL help me change if I pray and work. God’s tells us in Philippians to work out your salvation with fear and trembling because it is God who is at work in you enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. That’s why Jesus came to earth to help and save sinners like me and like you.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood…
As I look back on my life, I see not simply one decision point that has made all the difference, but I see a number of points that have made a difference. It is not a matter of making one big decision and then the entire decision making stops. No, we have to continue to choose to do the right thing! Psychologists tell us that at the beginning of any change of behavior, it takes more energy to choose the different or new behavior. But the longer we do this new behavior, the less energy it takes to choose the behavior. In other words, in the context of this sermon, it will get easier to choose to do right. It will always be a choice, but the longer we practice doing what is right the easier it will become. We have to constantly be choosing to obey what we know God wants us to do and be. And to do that we need God’s help to persevere. May God help us to hear his word and be changed by his word!
