Our pastor's sermon today -- like, I'm sure, many other sermons across Lutherland and elsewhere -- was about God as the madcap, spendthrift sower tossing seeds anywhere and everywhere; about the freewheeling generosity of God's love and grace.We also celebrated a baptism today. And as the kiddo was being marked with the cross of Christ forever, I couldn't help but think that, in what seems to be our neverending struggle as sacramental Christians to explain infant baptism to skeptical/hostile Christians of other traditions, one of the best metaphors for our understanding of Holy Baptism is that of God lovingly scattering the seeds of grace everywhere -- including the souls of those too little to be cognizant to know what's happening. That comes later. It's not about our being "just right" for God to come down and claim us as God's own; it's about God taking the loving risk to plant that seed wherever, whenever.
3 comments:
I like your metaphor. Our pastor used a different description. She said that instead of us judging which people are the bad soil, the rocky soil, etc. we all have all the types of soil and God plants the seeds freely and we are to plant the seeds freely as we go on in life. Of course there was more than that as well.
Our pastor pointed out that the different soils of the parable correspond to different times in our lives -- in other words, we've all found ourselves spiritually "on the rocks" or choked by thorns or lying vulnerable upon the cement of life.
Mine pointed out a conclusion I'd never even considered: that "the harvest was abundant." Even though we all have times when we feel like we are producing nothing --that we have let the seeds given us be choked by weeds -- despite all our griefs and failures, in the end God's grace produces a hundredfold.
Best sermon I've heard in ages.
Glad church was such a good experience for the Kid!
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