The Navajo Code Talkers were famously enlisted by the United States Marines during World War II. The idea was first suggested by a man named Philip Johnston, who had grown up on a Navajo reservation as the son of Christian missionaries. It was a perfect method for secret communications. There aren’t very many Navajo Indians. They all live in America. Their language is very complicated and it’s not written, so the only way to be able to decipher it is for someone to teach it to you.
This system worked far better than any other code method that was available at the time. They had machines that could send coded messages and decode them, but they were slow and there was always the risk that someone else might crack the code. The Navajo code, on the other hand, did hours worth of work in minutes and it is said that it is the only spoken code that was never cracked. “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima,” one Major said.
One word can make all the difference. In the military, communication can make the difference between victory and defeat, between life and death. In school, one misplaced word might make a right test answer wrong. In the workplace an errant word might put your job in jeopardy. A careless word might hurt the feelings of a friend or loved one. Our words have real power. How much greater, then, is the power of the word of God?
In our Gospel for today Jesus tells a parable in which he compares the preaching of the God’s Word to a farmer scattering seed. Seeds are amazing things. In such a tiny object there is great power and potential. There’s life there, and that life can grow into a plant that produces an abundance of fruit.
But how do we receive that seed? God is the one speaking to us, and not to hide in riddles and codes. He’s speaking so that in him we will have life. Jesus has sown in you his word.
This great parable of the sower and the seed appears in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus taught this by the sea of Galilee, where crowds of people from all over had come to see him and hear what he had to say. So he addressed the crowd and said,
“A sower went out to sow his seed. As he sowed, some fell along the path. It was trampled, and the birds of the sky devoured it. 6Other seed fell on rocky ground. As soon as it grew, it withered away, because it had no moisture. 7Other seed fell among thorns. The thorns grew up with it and choked it. 8Other seed fell into good soil. It grew and produced fruit—one hundred times as much as was sown.” As he said these things, he called out, “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear!”
Most of us have heard this parable many times and we’re probably pretty familiar with Jesus’ explanation. But if you imagine the setting where Jesus first told this, sitting in a boat, you wonder if this seemed to people like a pretty strange sermon. In a way, you might say that what Jesus was doing here is the opposite of what we look for in a sermon. We expect that pastors will take a portion of God’s word and then explain it to us. They will answer that great Lutheran question, “What does this mean?” Jesus, though, simply told a story about a farmer and some seeds, and he left it at that.
Jesus had a very good reason for teaching this way. And this is what he told his disciples when they came to him afterwards and asked him, “What does this parable mean?” You see, Luther didn’t invent that question. He was just following the pattern of all disciples of Jesus. But Jesus told them why he taught this way. He said,
“To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest I speak in parables so that ‘even though they see, they may not see, and even though they hear, they may not understand.’
When the Navajo Code Talkers spoke on the radio there were certain people who were meant to understand what they were saying, and for the rest, it would be completely unintelligible gibberish. In a similar way, Jesus’ parables separate people. To those who set themselves against the Gospel, they hear but they won’t understand. But to us it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.
“The seed is the Word of God,” Jesus said. Like seed scattered by a sower, that Word is spread near and far. Nowadays we have machines that do our farming and we don’t do too much by hand. If you keep a garden you’ve planted seeds by hand, but most of the time with our gardens we’re pretty careful with how we place our seed. Maybe the closest thing that many of us would be familiar with would be scattering grass seed. You want to cover the ground evenly, but you’re certainly not going to stoop down and place each of those thousands of seeds by hand one-at-a-time. So they’re going to end up going in different places. Some will fall on the sidewalk. Maybe your yard will have some dry spots or weedy spots like in Jesus’ parable.
The Word of God is not planted in a stingy manner. The parable isn’t primarily about the sower, but when we think about how the Word of God is spread we can say that Jesus himself is the chief sower, but then there are also many servants of the sower – pastors, teachers, and all Christians—who have the privilege of scattering that seed. It’s everywhere, scattered abundantly, like when I turn the dial all the way up on my grass seed spreader. This is not like in the vegetable garden, with Jesus saying, “Oh, all I have is this one small packet of peas to plant. I better be careful how I space them out.”
Isn’t that wonderful, that the Word of God is so readily available? And today we are blessed with that in some ways that previous generations would never have imagined, with Bibles on our smartphones, with sermons streamed on the internet, with our pastors just a quick text message away.
But not everyone receives that Word in the same way. In Jesus’ parable there are four different kinds of people, or four different ways that they respond to the seed of the Word.
The first is the path. These people are like the sidewalk that the grass seed lands on, or like those who tried to listen in on the code talkers without knowing any Navajo. The seed landed, but it was trampled, and the birds came and ate it. It never really had a chance. “The birds are the Devil,” Jesus says. “Do you really want to worry about things like sin and death and which church is right?,” Satan says, “You’ve got a lot on your plate. Let me help you out. Let me take that one off for ya.”
And so this person who has hardened his heart lets the Word of God go in one ear and out the other and that’s that. Of course, that person has no excuse. And on the Day of Judgment he’ll have no excuse either. He can’t blame the sower. He can’t say the Word wasn’t there. His heart was just too hard.
The second place the seed lands is on the rocky ground. Jesus explains that such a person receives the Word with joy, like a plant that springs up quickly, but he has no root. And so as soon as he faces trouble and persecution he falls away. Jesus said, “Take up your cross.” He said, “In this world you are going to have trouble.” If you trick yourself into thinking that life should be easy for Christians then you’re only going to be disappointed. You need roots. You need a faith that’s deeply anchored so that it can weather storms and droughts and the hot, scorching sun.
The third place the seed lands is among the thorny weeds. Here the seed grows, but not well. Jesus says these are “the ones who hear the word, but as they go on their way they are choked by the worries, riches, and pleasures of life, so they do not mature.” How many things are growing in your life that might prove a threat to your faith? Do you keep your heart well-weeded?
Finally, there’s the seed that falls on the good ground and there produces a harvest. And of course we all know what that is. It’s the thing we all want, the Word of God sprouting into faith that grows to eternal life and produces all kinds of good fruit.
So how can I make sure that’s me? The interesting thing about this parable is that it’s not really a guide or an instruction manual. It’s just a description of how things are. We read it and say, “Who am I? I certainly don’t want to be the hard path. Sometimes I feel pretty weak in trouble, like I have shallow roots. I have a lot of thorny weeds that grow unchecked in my life. I want to be the good ground, but what can I do to make myself good ground? How can I ensure that I will grow and produce fruit?”
But in a great and wonderful mystery, Jesus answers us and says, “I myself will accomplish this in you.”
There are a lot of ways that the soil can cause trouble for the seed and for the plant that sprouts from it. But the life comes from the seed. The sower is the one who plants it. He’s also the one who tends it and makes it grow. He rejoices over its growth and over the fruit it produces. What does the soil do? It’s just soil.
Yes, we must take the warnings of this parable to heart. Do not despise the Word. Do not become calloused, or despair in trouble, or choke out the Word with the worries of this world. “And Lord, forgive me for those times I have. Take my sins by the power of your cross. Make my heart a fertile garden for your word.”
And Jesus will answer your prayer in his grace. Was it not for your sins that he died on the cross? Has he not declared you to be his own in Holy Baptism? His promises aren’t in hidden codes and languages you can’t ever understand. They’re beautiful pictures that you know and understand in faith, as the Holy Spirit works in you.
Rejoice and give thanks that “to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.” Jesus has sown in you his word. He will cause it to grow and produce fruit for eternal life. Amen.