But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit (Matthew 13:23)

I don’t eat tomatoes. I spend my life looking for tomato substitutes, and a few years ago I found a really good one. They’re called tomatillos - they have the same kind of acid sweetness as tomatoes, but they come from a completely different plant family. The only trouble is that they grow in Mexico and you just don’t get them in Tesco. For most of the year if I want tomatillos I have to order exorbitantly priced tins of them from specialist Mexican groceries. At this time of year, though, I can grow them. I’ve got about 30 tomatillo plants growing in our greenhouse. They’re just about filling it, in fact, but they’ve reached that stage where the fruits are growing.

You’ve got to get the growing conditions right though. You have to sow the seeds in shallow seed trays, then transplant the seedlings on to those individual little pot things. Finally they need good deep pots to grow in, with plenty of good compost to set down deep roots to let the plants grow tall, with plenty of flowers. And you need to grow them in warm conditions - I’ve got a couple growing outside, but they are stunted. And you have to give them plenty of water. They are very thirsty plants.

Still, with the right growing conditions they yield good fruit and they do so in abundance. And so to our text this morning. The parable of the sower is such a well-known parable that I wonder if I can get anything out of it that hasn’t been preached in a thousand sermons. The usual emphasis for this parable is on the individual - on the man or woman in whom the seed of faith is planted. And that could be you or it could be me - could be anyone.

We are, each of us, individual, and this parable might be taken to suggest that it is only in certain people that faith can flourish. There are those who will accept religious belief only at a kind of superficial level - and that’s not uncommon these days. There are those who “buy into” spirituality on a kind of pick and mix basis - so they’ll buy their Native American dream catchers, or their meditative chant CDs, but don’t get involved with the systems of belief and thought that create these things. People can be like that about Christianity too. Part of the thing about faith is that it’s meant to be something that you live - that you think about and reflect on; that you pray about. It’s something that is meant to have roots in the values that matter to you and the principles you live by. At its best it yields fruit in the choices you make, in the things that you say, in the way that you act.

And there, for all of us, sometimes, things that can throttle faith. There are temptations in the world - things that can come to seem more important, more pressing, than our relationship with God. We live in a world filled with shiny trinkets and flashy toys. We live in a world where paying for those shiny trinkets and flashy toys means working - and then there’s that whole thing about competition; about climbing the greasy pole and the temptation to tread on others as you do so. That was a horribly mixed metaphor, but you know what I mean. And then there are all the other temptations of greed and desire that humanity has known since we lived in caves. Letting these things dominate our lives, rather than the things that we know, deep down, give life its meaning can limit our ability to yield good fruit.

Then there are things that can chip away at belief and gnaw at faith. If we cleave to particular ideas about the way that God works in the world, then sometimes the insights of science scan seem to undermine our belief. Sometimes rotten things happen in the world - sometimes to the people we love - and you can wonder where God is in all the suffering that goes on. Sometimes there are things in the Bible that we find hard to understand in the ought of our ideas about a loving God. And when our dogmas and our doctrines are so stiff and inflexible in the face of these challenges they can sometimes just snap. At any rate we can find we do not have the confidence to produce the kind of fruit God wants us to produce.

Which brings me to another way of looking at this parable. We tend to view this parable in terms of the individual in whom “the seed of faith” is sown. The society Jesus lived in, though, was much less individualistic than ours. There were concepts of corporate guilt and responsibility that we don’t have. See, the fruit of a plant is not just the result of the seed or the plant - it’s also a product of its growing conditions; of its surroundings. What if we are not only the seedlings - what if we are also the soil?

See, I believe that God is still sowing seeds of faith in the hearts of human beings. Yes we live in a secular “post-religious” world, but that doesn’t mean that God has stopped whispering in the hearts of human beings. It doesn’t mean that people’s should don’t still yearn for that something other that calls to humanity and which we call God. But they need the right growing conditions.

I was struck recently. I was talking to someone with two colleagues at her work. Both professed to be Christian. One had behaved very selfishly and had shafted the other at work. The victim of this shafting had said that he could not wish the guy ill because he was a Christian. Now, if the seed of faith had been sown in the person I was talking to, whose behaviour would have provided the growing conditions in which that faith could grow? If our faith - if our beliefs mean anything to us they need to be deep enough to affect the choices we make and the way we behave. And when we do act in accordance with what we say we believe - with forgiveness, with compassion, with a concern for the dignity and the welfare of those around us; then we can nurture faith in others who in turn may yield good fruit.

In a world where shiny trinkets and flashy toys can seem to be all that matters, and that the “economic growth” that enables some of us to buy them should be all we are concerned with, we have a different perspective. The needs of those left out of that rush for wealth, or those crushed underfoot, matter. If our faith - if our beliefs mean anything to us they need to affect the values we live by and the principles we stand by. When we stand up for the poor and the hungry; when we do not allow those around us to forget that there are folk in this country without food for their stomachs, without a roof over their heads, then we nurture faith in those around us who may in turn go on to yield good fruit.

And what do people think of when they think of the Church? Do they think of fundamentalists who can’t accept that the world is more than 6000 years old. Do they think of people who are hidebound and judgemental? Whatever the traditions we have, whatever the dogmas and the doctrines that have informed our thinking in times past, we live here and now, in the 21st Century. If our faith - if our beliefs mean anything to us, then we need to face the challenges of the times we live in with boldness and confidence, open and welcoming to all who come through our doors, or who encounter us in our everyday lives, ready to show them what the love of God is all about. Then they, in turn, may yield good fruit.

Lord may we nurture faith in those around us. Where you have sowed may we be good soil, sunlight and water. May we bear good fruit, directly or indirectly

Preached at Langholm parish church and at Eskdalemuir parish church