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The Sunday Sermon
Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. We hear in today’s Gospel that such great crowds gathered around him that he had to preach from a boat! And Jesus teaches the crowd using this parable, the parable of the sower.
A sower -- a farmer or planter -- goes out to plant some seeds. Some of them end up on the path, and are eaten by birds. Some fall onto rocks and can’t really take root. Some are choked by thorny bushes. And finally, some fall on good soil and take root, yielding great crops of grain and fruit.
Jesus explains this story to his disciples as one about hearing God’s word and understanding it. I have to wonder if he was maybe thinking about the great crowds he had just preached to. How many of them had really heard his words and taken them in? Were some people just there to get a look at this famous prophet and healer, but they were not really listening? Did some people not understand his message? Were some people wowed by his words, but as Jesus puts it, choked by the cares of the world? And so maybe they just went right from hearing Jesus’ sermon to the marketplace or back to the fields and barely gave his words another thought?
Maybe Jesus was hoping that at least a few people would be like the good soil, would hear what he had to say and would really be changed by it, and take his message of good news to others. Maybe that’s what all preachers hope -- certainly I know that I can’t always touch everyone’s heart with what I have to say, but hopefully one or two people are comforted or challenged each time I get up in this pulpit.
There’s a piece left out of today’s reading -- if you notice, the reading we are given skips several verses of chapter 13. In the middle part that’s cut out, the crowds go away, and the disciples get Jesus alone and say, What was that all about? Your stories are so confusing, Jesus! And Jesus says, okay, guys, for you, I’ll explain. And he gives the interpretation we heard today, in paragraph two of our edited version.
Jesus says, we are the soil. The seeds are the word of God. So the sower must be God. The plants that grow in the good soil, that is us, are the fruits, the kingdom of God growing on earth.
Now this is all well and good, and I’m sure you’ve heard many a sermon on how to be good soil, and have tried to do the things to be receptive to God’s word.
But the thing is, in explaining his parable to the disciples, Jesus has given one interpretation, but by definition parables are mysterious, they are tricky, and they ALWAYS have more than one meaning, more than one interpretation.
Sometimes we are soil, for sure. We are the receivers of God’s word, we are the ones to receive and learn and to nurture seeds to grow. Sometimes we are soil. And we know that being good or bad soil, it’s not a static condition -- we are more receptive to God’s voice some days, and some days we are more closed off, tired, rocky or thorny. Sometimes, sometimes, we are the soil in this parable.
But sometimes, sometimes in our lives, especially times of change and transformation, sometimes, we are the seeds. We are the ones going underground for a while and being transformed, into something new, something bigger than we could have imagined.
There are obvious times when we are growing, incubating, becoming something different. When we are babies, and again, when we are adolescents. During those big life transitions, our bodies are changing, our brains are changing, and we are learning and experiencing so many new things.
But there are other times when we are seeds too. When we start a new job. When we get married. When we retire. When we lose a parent or spouse. When we develop a chronic illness or disability. These can be times of feeling buried in the ground. These can be times of great transformation and growth. These too can be seed-times for us.
So, sometimes just as Jesus explains to the disciples, sometimes we are the soil in this parable. And sometimes, sometimes we are the seeds.
And also, sometimes we are the sower, spreading the seeds.
We are the sower, spreading the seeds. We spread the seeds, when we raise our children and watch them grow up and go out into the world. We hope that they will bear much good fruit, more than we ever could. We spread the seeds, when we teach or coach or mentor, helping young people who will leave us, hopefully to be happy and do great things. We spread the seeds, when we serve our neighbors and communities through paid or volunteer work. We spread the seeds, whenever we do the work of increasing justice and peace in the world.
You might notice that in this parable, the sower doesn’t seem to be very careful in their sowing. I mean, if you were a farmer planting seeds, would you really throw them on a rocky area, or on a stone path? It does not seem very smart, it does not seem very cost-effective. I mean, I can understand that a farmer can’t always see from the surface if the land will be good or not-so-good, but they can certainly see that a rocky area or a thorny thicket would not work for planting crops!
The sower in this parable is being extravagant with scattering the seeds, reckless even. Presumably the sower knows that most of the seeds won’t take root. But maybe this sower doesn’t care, or at least thinks it’s worth the effort to plant the seeds, even if the chance of anything growing is low.
This is exactly how God works in the world. God sends love to all of us, all the time, whether we are deserving or not, whether we are ready or not, whether we want God’s love or not. God loves us all, just for being us, no matter what. God is speaking to us, all of us, all the time, whether we are listening, or not.
We can be sowers like this too. We can sow our seeds as God does, freely sending out what we have without concern for how it might turn out.
We at St. Paul’s are practicing this already. When we pledge a part of our income to the church, for example, we are doing it in trust, not trying to manage exactly how our pledge is spent, not expecting a certain return on our investment.
We are practicing this already, by trying new things that we hope will bear fruit, but we are just trying them without having to be sure. An outdoor chess board. Making blankets with the Lutheran Church down the block. Hosting a summer reading program. Joining with St. George’s for our picnic, at a train station.
We are leaning into the sense we have had for some time now, that church is changing, that we too need to change, that this is a good time for planting seeds and seeing what comes up.
We are being the sower, we are doing our sowing a little bit like God does, and by doing it that way, we are doing God’s work.
We are getting the same message, that it’s a good time for sowing, about our earth. I don’t know about you but I have found it just shocking that after Sunday’s intense rain storm, the roads to West Point and the top of the Palisades Parkway are closed, perhaps for the indefinite future. Meanwhile, in the West and South, people are being cooked alive in the intense heat.
Here also, it’s time to scatter some seed, time to plant in earnest, whether we know if the soil is good or not.
This week in the news there was a story about just that kind of planting, on the Louisiana shores, where thousands of miles of coastline are being lost due to climate change. The Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe has partnered with a nonprofit coalition of volunteer workers and restaurant owners to collect oyster shells and form them into artificial reefs to protect the shoreline. Louisiana restaurants serve a lot of oysters, so it’s a great recycling project, and the reefs attract baby oysters, so they become homes for living creatures, another benefit. And they seem to be working, but only time will tell.
But even before we can be sure if this Louisiana oyster shell experiment will do what we hope it will do, it seems that this partnership between Indigenous residents of the area, concerned volunteers, and restaurant owners happy to get rid of some of their empty shells -- it seems this group is also partnering with God. They are doing the work of the sower, throwing some seeds, and hoping for lots of fruit.
The project of imagining what church will be in this new age will take lots of seeds, and lots of sowers. So will the project of caring for our planet, now that we’ve let things go so far off track.
These are transitions to the unknown, to a new thing being born. We need to sow as many seeds as we can, in as many places as we can, to yield new crops for the Church and for our Earth. We may not always know if we are throwing our seeds on good soil. But we don’t have to worry about that. We just need to keep being the sower, and encouraging others to do the same.
We have a good partner, Jesus, with us as we do this work.
And just as we know that at least some of the people listening to him preach that day definitely heard and remembered his words -- because we are here talking about them today -- we can have faith and confidence that if enough of us sow enough seeds, something beautiful and fruitful will grow. Amen.
--The Rev. Dr. Mary E. Barber
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