Blessing of the Seed and Soil (3 May 2020)

+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.

Text: John 20:20-26
Theme: Jesus, the Single Grain


Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created.”1 Everything good is from above. The first of these gifts is the Son of God Himself. He condescended to us in pure grace and incarnate love. With and through Him comes every other blessing of body and soul, physical and spiritual. Included in these blessings are those foundational things needed to sustain life; the sun, the rain, the fertility of the soil, the virility of the seed. Local farmers now turn their focus to these things and the wider community depends on them.

Without the Life-giver acting through these means no creature on earth could be nourished. You are inextricably connected to the soil. Everyone is. There are no exceptions. It’s not surprising Jesus used agricultural references to teach spiritual truths. He says, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain- first the stalk, then the head…”2 Of course, the soil doesn’t do it all by itself. No created thing does anything by itself, especially us sinful mortals. The earth is part of creation. It doesn’t have the power of life. But God works so winsomely and imperceptibly most of the time that we don’t discern His power, His presence, and His purpose in the daily activities of life as we should.

That truth is a double-edged sword. God keeps the world ticking over even when we’re ignorant, apathetic, or incapacitated. Our lack of observation or comprehension doesn’t prevent God from working towards our good. Think of how many blessings we receive before we’re even conscious of them? Conversely, to take something for granted, means, by definition, that we don’t recognize it as a gift. Ingratitude is not only a culpable offence before God, it is a particularly powerful poison in human relationship. No one likes to be unceasingly unappreciated.

Mercifully, God is able to handle the insult of ingratitude much more affably than we are. The Spirit is grieved by ungratefulness- it is a fruit of unbelief- but it doesn’t put Him off His goal of reconciling sinners. In recognition of both our limitations and our needs we look to God. We have prayed for rain and look how the Lord has provided! We pray for a favourable growing season and entrust that to His care. Farming is a vocation of faith. May God give us the faith to see that in seasons of drought or seasons of plenty, His blessings are generous far beyond what we deserve. We pray “Give us today our daily bread.”3 What does this mean? “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.”4 God “sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous.”5

Jesus compares Himself to a grain of wheat that falls into the soil and dies6. Unless it dies, unless it ‘sacrifices’ itself, it remains only a single seed. To provide life for others, its own life must be consumed. Of course, it was no figure of speech when Jesus was hung upon the cross. His life was sacrificed to atone for the sins of the world. All of our fretting and praying, our seeding and reaping, our grumbling and rejoicing, our fears and our hopes mean nothing if we’ve lost sight of Him who both created and redeems.

Dear friends, Jesus is risen! He is living! Life will prevail not because we’ll be able to save the world from collapse through human ingenuity; not because we’ve developed better farming practices or have more competent industries and governance. Life will prevail because all existence is reliant on Christ and His life is incorruptible. The Scripture says, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest…will never cease.”7 And when that happens, when the sowing and the reaping are done, a fuller enjoyment of His blessing will have just begun. Amen.

+ In nomine Jesu +

Fourth Sunday of Easter
3 May 2020
Reverend Darrin L. Kohrt
1 James 1:17-18
2 Mark 4:26-28
3 Matthew 6:11
4 Luther’s Small Catechism
5 Matthew 5:45
6 See John 12:23-24
7 Genesis 8:22