Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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! Law and Gospel~/Universal Church \\ Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23
/Reclaiming “The Parable of the Sower”/
*/Vicar Brian Henderson/*
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen.
INRODUCTION: As you no doubt have realized through our liturgy this morning, our theme for worship and in fact my message has quite a bit to do with planting or sowing of seeds.
I thought it would be appropriate to begin our message this morning with a “Gardner’s Prayer:”
“Lord of the compost heap.
you take garbage and turn it into soil; good soil
for seeds to root and grow with wildest increase and flowers to bloom
with brilliant beauty.
Take all the garbage of my life oh Lord of the compost heap
and turn it into soil; good soil, and then plant seeds to bring forth fruit and beauty
in abundance.”
—Joseph Bayly in /Psalms of My Life/.
/Christianity Today/, Vol.
32, no. 1.
*The parable of the Sower has been misused by well meaning Christians, maybe even you?*
So let us address this concern immediately.
What have you learned about God through His Word?
What do you expect to find when you read and hear His Holy Word?
What do you expect to receive when you come to His Holy House of Worship and freely confess that you are sinner separated from God’s love, with no hope of salvation outside of His eternal grace?
If you can answer that it is through His Word that you find peace and that through His gift of faith you gladly hear the “Good News” of forgiveness for Christ’s sake, then you have answered well, but if we were to read only this parable, we might be left with the impression that God is a clumsy Gardner who carelessly throws His seeds of salvation in places where nothing could ever grow.
Or, you might believe that God is an absent minded Gardner who plants the seeds of His Word, only to abandon them to thorns, weeds and birds.
That might be what you would believe if you didn’t read the next 7 parables that come next!
You see without these other parables you loose the entire context and indeed our Lord’s message of comfort and peace!
Have you ever read one page of someone else’s letter?
It is hard to really understand what is written without the context of the entire letter.
For example, what if you were to find page 2 of a 4 page love letter that a young lady wrote to her love, and in it you read the following: “I hate you.
I do not know if I can continue to live with what you have done.
I have given you my entire heart, and this is how you respond!
How could you do this to me?”  How could you know that Page 1 said something like this:  “My darling soldier.
How I miss your love and your company.
I worry about you constantly since you left to fight this war.
If something should happen to you I do not know if I could live without you.”
And then pages 3 and 4 relate that although she is angry with the decision her soldier husband made to join the Army reserves, she is nonetheless proud of his service and that she anxiously awaits his return from war so that he can be present for the birth of their first child.”
You see without pages 1, 3 and 4 to give context to page 2 you would never really understand the intent or the meaning of the letter, and so it is with our parable this morning.
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*I.
The parable of the Sower within the context of the other parables, is a look at two churches, the physical church, and the true “Universal or Catholic” Church.
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*A.
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