Isaiah 55:10-13

Matthew 13:1-23

It had rained all through the night, letting up just before dawn. As soon as the sun peaked over the mountain and into his window, Roy was up to go see the garden. As he fumbled to get his old jeans on and a T-shirt, he was imagining that warm sun on his plants, so carefully tended.

He had already had some luck with chard, cucumbers and turnips… and the broccoli was especially good. But, he was really waiting for the tomatoes. Round, red, yummy goodness. He had seen some little fruits coming out and he couldn’t wait to see how they would come along with this perfect combination of a deep watering through the night and the warm sun on its way.

He was still up on the back porch when he noticed something wasn’t right. When he got to the garden he saw the marks that so many people had described to him. The tomato plants were bit right off at the stalks... deer! Dang it!

He had barely taken the scene in, when he heard a voice holler to him from the next yard over, “I told you they’d get you!” If the lost tomatoes weren’t bad enough, he was going to have to hear his neighbor, Sal, gloat about it. “Shoulda built a fence like I told ya,” Sal said walking over to Roy’s yard, a big grin on his face.

Gardening was one of Roy’s two new hobbies, having just retired last fall. “There’s no way in hell I’m gonna build a fence like his,” Roy had told his wife, Betty. Sal had this godawful fortress around the garden... chicken wire going two feet straight down and then coming inward, from the fence, another two feet. “To stop the ground hogs,” Sal said. The fence itself was at least eight feet tall, supported by old railroad ties, to keep the deer out. “Just let those bastards try to get in,” he bragged.

Truth is, Sal had amazing tomatoes, but the last thing Roy wanted was to make gardening some big project... some big problem to be solved. It was supposed to be a relaxing retirement hobby... dig in the dirt, scatter the seeds, water them, and watch them grow.

But it wasn’t turning out that way.

Roy was bracing himself for more of Sal’s lip as he walked over, but he noticed the smile leave Sal’s face. “Sorry, buddy,” he said.

“Stupid deer,” Roy said.

“Not the deer,” Sal said. “That’s you’re own fault. No, I heard about your cousin, Cheryl. I know you two are close.”

Of course, Sal was talking about Cheryl’s son, Robby. Everyone in town knew, by now, that he had left home last week. The week before - it was the night of the fireworks - she had waited up all night for him and he never came home. That boy had done all kinds of things, but never just up and left like this.

“She must be a wreck,” Sal continued, “It was hard enough on her when Tim died.”

“She’s hanging in there,” Roy responded. “Thanks for the concern.”

Roy spoke with his cousin every day on the phone and they usually got together with the family for dinner and cards on Saturday night. Cheryl really was doing as good as could be expected with the whole thing. It’s not like she hasn’t known grief before, Roy thought.

“That Robby’s always been a handful,” Sal said.

“Yeah,” said Roy.

But, Roy knew he wasn’t always so bad. He was a good kid. His parents loved him, and after his dad died, Roy and a lot of others had tried to take him under their wings. So many people tried with that boy.

“Well, gotta head inside,” said Roy. “Thanks again for the concern.”

“Oh, right. Time to crack open the Good Book!” taunted Sal. “Doesn’t it say something in there about the wise man building a fence around his garden? I think it’s in Gilippians,” Sal laughed.

Why did I tell him?!? lamented Roy.

Roy’s other new hobby was reading the bible in the mornings. Like the gardening, this whole bible study wasn’t turning out to be anything like he had expected.

Actually, he started both of the hobbies looking for some meaning, some purpose. He just wasn’t himself after he retired. He felt lost. He felt like an exile in his own home.

He had always been a church-goer, but he never really paid much attention to the bible after Sunday School. He thought it was about time... and he hoped that, maybe reading scripture would help him make sense of his new station in life.

Truth be told, since he started reading, he was more confused than ever.

He actually enjoyed Genesis at the beginning, though there was a lot more murder and rape than he realized. Exodus started out with stories he remembered from Sunday School about Moses and Pharaoh and the Red Sea and the wilderness wandering. But, God sure did get mad at them in the wilderness! And, then there were all the laws and rules that started in Exodus and kept going in Leviticus.

The winter was so long and hard that by the time he got to all the so-and-so was the father of so-and-so in Chronicles, he just couldn’t keep going. Pastor Lisa told him to try the Psalms, which were usually good, simple chunks to bite off each day. And, he appreciated the way whoever wrote those Psalms - was it King David? - could speak so frankly to God. All the pain and mess was right out there in the open. Roy didn’t know exactly what wormwood was, but that seemed to be how he was feeling more and more these days.

He started working on the prophets, but there was so much “Woe to you Edomites,” going on that he almost gave up.

But, he found the prophet Isaiah, and - at last - there was some hope... and it was beautiful:

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;” God says through the prophet. “And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

That’s what he was waiting for. Pastor Lisa told him that Isaiah was actually three books in one. In the first part, the prophet is warning the people about the consequences if they keep exploiting people and chasing after false gods. The second was written after they had received their punishment and had been taken into exile in Babylon. The third was written to keep them on track after they returned to the homeland.

It was the middle part of the book of Isaiah that Roy loved the best. It was filled with words of comfort and hope to a people who had lost their place... a people looking for home and a purpose. He could relate to the whole exile thing... trying to figure out who you are in new circumstances.

“You shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace;” the prophet promised of a return to the homeland. “The mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

Roy loved the thought of the trees clapping their hands, of good things growing, as God’s sign of love for God’s people. It’s what got him through the winter.

After Isaiah, the other prophets got a little rough, and he was glad to finally make it to the New Testament. He started off with the familiar story of the baby Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.

But, last week, Roy read a story in Matthew that just didn’t sit right with him. Come to think about it, it was right about the time Cheryl’s boy Robby took off.

At first, he was excited about the story of a sower... of someone spreading seeds, a gardener, like him.

But, when he got to part where Jesus explained the parable, he couldn’t help but wonder, which one was Robby? Had the devil come and snatched him? Were Robby’s roots not deep enough... was he withering under his troubles? Or was he being lured and choked by the cares of the world... like so many noxious weeds?

The question that really haunted him was why? Why couldn’t Robby have landed on the good soil? If God was so powerful and so loving, why couldn’t it all be good soil? If the good soil was really the word of God, why was it so hard to understand?

Why was it all so hard to understand?

After an awkward smile and a wave - he really didn’t know how to respond to Sal sometimes - Roy headed back to the house. He passed the compost pile and noticed the fruit flies hovering over fresh scraps of cantaloupe that had been tossed on the pile the day before.

He stopped and sniffed the air. Not bad.

Every once in a while, it got a little funky smelling. Betty would complain, but it never really bothered him. It was a small price to pay for all those soil nutrients cooking in there.

He started the compost pile last fall when he retired... just about the time he started reading the bible. He raked up a pile of leaves and threw in some leftover night-crawlers he’d kept in the basement for fishing that summer. Every day, he brought the kitchen scraps and threw them on the pile... even through the winter. Every month, he turned the compost over with a pitchfork.

By the time he dug the garden bed in April, all those lawn clippings and raked leaves and table scraps and worm poop... all that gritty, nasty stuff... had settled in and become rich, black soil. In just the right amount of time, that mess had become exactly what his garden needed. Good soil for his seed sowing.

When he got inside, Betty was still asleep. She would be up in about fifteen minutes. He opened his bible at the bookmark. Matthew. He had been stuck on the story of the sower all week.

Instead of spinning his wheels more, he decided to turn back to Isaiah, to one of his favorites verses...

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

Well, Roy thought, I guess after breakfast it’s back to the garden. I’ve got more seeds in the shed. Back to work.