In the dirt [Sexagesima]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 55:10-13

• 2 Corinthians 11:19-12:9

• St. Luke 8:4-15

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Eph 1)

 

Who speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:

“As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.”

 

In His Word, today, God puts these four soils. He wants us to hear about them, because, once again, He wants to show and prove His power over darkness, sin, and weakness. This points us to cry out with St. Paul, have mercy on my weakness, and He does. Therefore we should live our lives in hope, not doubting that God is with us and not even our lives can be against us.

 

So last week we discovered that the devil is struggling in his defeat, during Lent. Now what? We have been saved by grace alone, what do we do now? In other words, “what is life”? Especially when we must face struggle after struggle and yet believe in a God of lovingkindness and mercy. 

 

The big questions in life, right? Why are we here? What’s the meaning of life? If we take Jesus’s parable today at surface value, then we must conclude that we are dirt. Which makes sense, since God formed man from the dirt, in the beginning and its something we will confess on Ash Wednesday, “thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.”

 

But the dirt doesn’t fare well in today’s parable. There seems to be four choices, if we get to choose, and only one right choice. The odds are not in your favor on picking the right one, if only because Jesus never tells you how to pick the right one. There is the belief that Jesus mentions, and holding the Word in your heart, but how does that work? Any heart surgeon will tell you that there are no words in any heart that they’ve ever seen.

 

So we could be dirt or we could be those who “see but do not see, and hear but do not hear”. That seems far more likely, because whatever Jesus is talking about in this parable, I just cannot seem to hear it.

 

And here we return to our questions about life. We never understand the decisions we are confronted with. Sometimes they are easy, but most of the time we are just winging it. We are never really “ready” to grow up and become married, parents, or employees. We just do what we think is best. “Seeing we do not see”

 

Most of the time we feel like dirt. And even though dirt has potential to produce good things, the first thing that always crops up are weeds. Weeds and bugs and verm’nts. We don’t make the right decisions. Everything always goes wrong. I wish I wouldn’t have done that. Why can’t anything work out? When’s my turn?

 

Repent. Whatever role you wish to see yourself in, whether in Christ’s parable or even in your own life, not only does God have other plans, but in your sin, you completely miss God’s mark. When you hear Jesus speaking to you, your sinful nature cannot help but rise to the surface and rebel.

 

On the outside you present yourself as a God-fearing, Christ-is-Lord, I-love-Jesus believer. You go to church, you give your offering, and you say the right things. You are a nice guy, who would ever doubt you? 

 

That is, you are a nice guy until the going gets tough. Then it comes out. But that’s just natural, you’ll say. Nobody’s perfect. We’re just human. And you’re right but not right. You are just human, but life under God, means humans are to confess and seek absolution, or forgiveness for their sins, not excuses.

 

This is what God means, when He says, “bear fruit with patience”. Yes we should seek to be more patient and pray for it, but we should also realize and believe that when God comes near, sin in us causes turmoil with His presence, because when God draws near, He brings His kingdom, His Law, and His Will with Him.

 

And those things always accuse us of never doing the right thing. “For the heart, truly feeling that God is angry, cannot love God”, “in agony of conscience and in conflicts [with Satan] conscience experiences the emptiness of these philosophical speculations. Paul says, Rom. 4:15: The Law works wrath. He does not say that by the Law men merit the remission of sins. For the Law always accuses and terrifies consciences” (AP IV(II):36-38).

 

God demands patience in the dirt. Patience in life, in the dirt. Because it is in every moment, every decision that the holiness of God comes near. Not just every once in a while, but every turn we face. No matter what it is or how small it is, God says it is good for you to be here. 

 

God is in the dirt. One of my favorite paintings is named the Circle of Giorgio. It is a painting of the Holy Family, resting for a bit on the way to Egypt with the infant Jesus. Sts. Joseph and Mary are kneeling in the grass and baby Jesus is in a circle of dirt, by Himself. For He was not born in a palace, but in a feeding trough, in weakness.

 

Today, Jesus is the Sower, Who is not walking around heaven’s Gardens or Eden’s paradise. He is seeding, spreading His own Word from His lips, in places where there is no life. Before Jesus gets to the path, there is nothing there, not even birds. He plants the Word and life takes place. 

 

Before Jesus gets to the rocks and the thorns, there is nothing to choke out, nothing to wither up. Jesus throws His life into these places and life happens. Before Jesus gets to the good soil, nobody knows its good until the seed falls into it and dies, in order to produce its fruit.

 

Dear Christians, Christ has risen from the dead to produce in you the life that He seeks from you. And now that Jesus has finished His work, you are living that life today. How can that be true, when life is such a train wreck? It is true, because life in the dirt is life under the cross.

 

It is the cross of Christ that forms every part of our lives today, though we may not be able to see it. Sure we see the suffering part, but the blessing and goodness is for the eyes of faith to discover. Jesus was not much to look at, says Isaiah 53:2, and yet His life proved His identity. His perfect life towards God and His perfect sacrifice for you.

 

And in His God-made-man-perfection, He comes to play, to work in the dirt, in order to make the dirt rise up and sit with Him on His throne. Rejoice, dirty Christian, for your Lord comes to you, where you are in your weakness. 

 

Our Epistle has taught us this morning, that we ought to boast in our weakness and, as we have seen, our weakness is our whole life. That weakness God shares with us, in His Son. That weakness God embraces to Himself, in Jesus. That weakness, God crucifies and buries in the dirt, in order that a new man arise, daily, to live before Him in righteousness.

 

In our weakness, the power of Christ rests upon us. Not the “I can sin however I want” weakness, but the weakness of a terrified conscience that knows, no matter how hard it tries, sin continues to come back, threatening eternal condemnation. 

 

The potential of dirt, of the sinner, is in Christ alone. By His Word and Sacrament, He regenerates the sinner, causing him to produce the same life that God does. We must bear our weakness still, we must bear our cross, but those lead to forgiveness, in Jesus. Faith shows that in the midst of dirt, the Savior rises, changing us into His excellent fruit, pleasing to God. 

 

This happens, no matter what our lives look like, because our faith is not in ourselves, but in the God Who suffered, died, and rose again for us. So live your life like you trust your baptism and let Him do the washing. For it is only in His Word of Life that any life can be had. And any life in His Life is a washed life, a holy life, unto the Lord.