Well, I ought to tell you right up front. My planting experience is limited. It doesn’t mean people didn’t try. My maternal grandparents were on a farm much of their lives, and when they retired they still had over an acre of garden. When I went spend summers with them, they would patiently teach me. But I wanted each seed and each moment in the garden to produce incredible results. I planted carefully and cautiously. This was not a sustainable practice on a farm of acres and acres and acres. Perhaps, it is not even the best practice for gardening. Even today, I use container gardening and want each well-loved seed placed in the ground one at a painstaking time to matter and to produce abundantly. I want each moment of weed-pulling, watering, repotting, and consideration of location to matter deeply to the health of the plant.
The sower from our parable today appears to have none of the same concerns for gardening that I have had in the past. We hear that these seeds go this way and that way. Some do not even end up in traditional areas of vegetation – paths and rocks, just the same as good soil. It seems as though, we have encountered a sower, who instead of careful planning, seems downright careless, wasteful, even extravagant. Seeds here and seeds there. Surely farmers today, pay close attention and make excellent use of their seed investment to get the best possible yield for their crops. To my knowledge, not too many farmers use the scattering to sow seeds to increase germination method. Instead, I believe many will do this. (Picture) This is a seeder and planter, to the best of my knowledge – spreading those seeds far and wide and depending on a certain percentage to actually germinate.
But remember, this is a parable. In this portion of the gospel of Matthew, we hear Jesus teaching the crowds, those who gathered to figure out what this wandering preacher was all about or who wanted to be healed. Jesus teaches in parables; these parables utilize metaphors. Metaphors, different from allegories, do not have one absolute and distinct definition of one character equaling one description.1 Parables, instead, allow for multiple fluid understandings in order to suggest a way of thinking, rather than an absolute answer. Parables allow for you and I to engage in debate and discussion about who could be what and how we could understand God’s role here.
But, you might suggest that we have in the second portion of our scripture, an exploitation of a sort for the parable Jesus lays out. Biblical scholars have suggested that the explanation found in our text is actually an editorial addition. That those hearing and reading the gospels so wanted to understand what it is that the parable MEANT that they desired someone to lay it all out for them in black and white. From the teaching methods that Jesus employed, I could imagine him offering possible understandings and turning to the disciples and saying what do you hear in this parable.
Let us look at this familiar parable through different lenses this morning. So, often you and I have tried to follow the temptation to figure out who is the rocky soil and who is the thorny soil, who has been scorched by the sun, who has been snatched by the birds, and who (and don’t we hope it is US!) is the good soil. I think what we miss when we lean only on that understanding is the possibility in this metaphor that you and I and the neighbors that we love and those we judge find ourselves at different parts of the metaphor during different stages and phases of our lives. Perhaps, even on the same day, acting open to God’s word in the morning before we get out of bed and scorched by the heat of the sun as people at work push our buttons – AGAIN!
Let me remind us that each of the soils did in fact, hear the Word of God, initially, that is receive the seeds – know the love of Jesus, and feel the mercy of God. It was what occurred later that distinguished each one. The richness of the relationship and the soil was not a one-time event, but a process of openness to receive and be transformed by the Word of God.
Some of the seed fell on the path. The path has not been prepared for growth. The path is not prepped and ready. The path is not full of rich and fertile ground. The path has only narrow entrances for the seeds to find home. Perhaps, there are times in our own lives, when we are not ready and prepped for the love of God. Perhaps, there are times when other priorities crowd out the good and fertile places we might have for knowing and sharing God’s love. When convenience and security, when career and accumulation find a higher priority than preparing one’s heart to receive and share God’s love, perhaps, we find ourselves on a rocky path.
Jesus’ parable goes onto a realization that in that state, it is easy for the birds to peck away seeds. It is easy for the actions of others to be distracting rather than enriching, demoralizing, rather than opportunities to share the love of God, angering rather than exchanges of mercy. I believe we all know times in our lives when we are more susceptible to the pecking and picking of others, than we might want to admit.
Much of the land in the Holy Lands is rocky lands. All of our friends and colleagues who have gone on archaeological digs in Israel have noted that they are often clearing rocks, first and foremost. This might have been the most familiar image to Jesus’ listeners. And perhaps, the most common to us as well. Rocky soil is you and I when we nod our heads on Sunday morning. When we do our best on Monday when the tough is starting to getting going, but by the time Tuesday comes around, we have lost trace of any focus we had on the love and light, mercy and goodness of God. The seeds of God’s presence do not grow in us, so much as find temporary shelter in us. We get excited after a mission trip and fizzle out days later. We read a great devotional that we forget about by lunchtime. We commit to change our lives and are back to our embarrassingly inappropriate ways quicker than we could shake a stick. I believe rocky soil is as common here as it is was in Jerusalem.
The scorching sun and the thorny garden limit the further growth of each of us. Burn-out is a serious issue affecting many in ministry, clergy and lay. Feeling as though you, alone, are giving your all and no one else is giving enough, is the pain of the scorching sun on your back and work. The criticism and critique of the weeds are much the same.
It is the good soil that you and I all desire to be – we want to produce thirty, sixty, hundred fold. We want to go back to those moments that we have had in our lives when it seems like, even if for a moment, our attitude and life situation lined up with the goodness and generosity of God and we could not help but know God’s presence, share God’s love, and exude God’s mercy.
This week, I want to encourage you to find the ways to prep yourself to be good soil, rich faith in which God’s word and way can germinate and bloom. If you look in your bulletin, I began a new practice to guide you. Below the scripture for this morning is a short devotion for each day of the week, based on the scripture. I invite you to join me in reading the scriptures and here is one way to do so. You can pray on it, your can journal it, you can share it. This is just one way you and I seek to prepare ourselves as rich soil for God’s word and way.
(Picture) This is a Vincent Van Gogh painting from 1888. You cannot do an in-depth study of Vincent van Gogh without discussing this painting or the recurring theme of the sower in his pieces. The same summer that Van Gogh painted “The Sower,” he was also painting a series of paintings around the theme of harvest. To better understand the subject, he actually worked in the fields for a week, harvesting wheat.
Unlike my careful, intentional, overcautious planting, the sower does not just offer us one opportunity to be rich and fertile soil for the word of God. Thanks be to God! It is not as though you heard about the love of Jesus Christ once ten years ago and if you did not have it figured out then – you were doomed for all of eternity. The thing about this sower, our God, is that the seeds of love and mercy are sown extravagantly – even wastefully on soil (you and I) that sometimes does not even seem like it is worth. Soil (people) that others would walk right by, disregarding, can one day produce thirty, sixty, and hundred fold. Let us nurture our relationships with God as rich soil.
This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
Influenced by http://marthaspong.com/2011/07/09/seed-changes-2/ in distinguishing metaphor and allegory.