Sermon Text: Mark 4:1-20
Sermon Excerpt
This morning things are different than usual. For you, maybe that difference started well before you got in a vehicle and made your way to church . . . Or maybe it started moments ago when you saw something unfamiliar happen as Pastor Ron moved a screen onto the chancel . . . Or maybe it will begin the moment I hit play . . .
<Show World’s Toughest Job Video>
While not a religious holiday, many Christian worship services in our country today will include something special to recognize Mother’s Day. People will give thanks for mothers and for those who have provided motherly guidance.
Hopefully through your participation in the pastoral prayer, and your engagement with this video you are thinking positively about the holiday and more specifically about individuals who have mothered you all along your life journey.
My reasons for including the video in this morning’s message go beyond Mother’s Day. It isn’t just a cute video; it is a viral video.
To be considered viral, a video must reach the masses. While experts disagree just how many views it takes to count as viral, 1 million views is a good place to start.
That is now, but let me return to then – to the time of our parable and to the story itself. Jesus told the Parable of the Sower, and he provided an allegorical interpretation of it. The Sower sows the Word of God, and what happens next depends on the kind of soil.
Only one soil type is capable of achieving the desired results. The translation I read – the one in your pew Bibles – explains that best soil yielded an incredible increase ranging between 30-fold and 100-fold. A contemporary paraphrase says it “produces a harvest beyond their wildest dreams.”
Jesus was explaining the growth with visual images and numeric specifications designed to make a point to his agrarian audience. If he were telling the same parable today, I am sure he would have selected different imagery. I can imagine him ending a modern day version of this parable by suggesting that the message has the potential to “go viral.”
You and I get that companies spend money to create advertising, and to ensure that their creative ads get seen by many people. Some here even understand how companies leverage their resources to increase the odds that content they create will go viral.
That is good for them, but not so helpful for us. Smaller congregations don’t have those kinds of resources at their disposal. But, thankfully they are not needed. The beauty of social media is that anything that people value or find interesting has the potential to go viral . . . (read full manuscript)
So What?
People who follow the Way of Jesus should sow wherever they go. This isn’t an attempt to beat others over the head with the Bible nor an attempt to convert; it is an openness to an authentic encounter that that includes sharing of one’s self – including one’s journey of faith.
Do you immediately deem certain soil (types of people or types of social settings) as ill suited for sowing/sharing your own experiences and understanding of the Way of Jesus or are you open to doing so at any time, with any one, and in any social setting? Explain.