'Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”
“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”'
Does anyone know what the opposite of a green thumb is? Because that’s what I have! I did do a little research and found that the opposite of green on the color wheel is magenta, so maybe I should say I have a magenta thumb. The point is I’m bad at sowing and farming and reaping and all that other stuff. My wife Kristen and I have joked that when the zombie apocalypse comes she’s going to have to use her bow and arrow to kill for our food because I’m sure not gonna be able to grow it!
For what it’s worth, I have given it a try. My dad used to keep a garden with his bike-riding buddy in the summertime, and he’d have me till it, dig up taters, throw down seeds, and the like. When I moved in to the house where I've lived for the past eight years, I tried planting some things in a raised bed along the side of the house. Kristen and I had just started dating, and she was excited to get her hands dirty and for us to be able to eat veggies from our own garden, and you know what, it worked! At first. There was corn and okra and green beans and tomatoes. And then, there wasn’t. The soil had no depth and wasn’t very good. Too much of that Carolina clay. So nearly everything died about as quickly as it sprang up. We did get a few green beans and a couple of maters before the end, though. In the years since we’ve tried but have never been able to get that side bed to grow anything – except some wildflowers that finally came in this year. I suspect the intercessions of my wildflower-picking mother had something to with that. It’s a good thing I’m a priest because I don’t think I could cut it in the farming business.
Ah, but you know who IS in the farming business? God. Corny as that might sound – see what I did there? – God’s always been about planting and sowing and reaping and feeding. That’s just who God is.
Jesus understood this about the one whom he called Abba. This week's section of the Gospel of Matthew kicks off a series of parables from Jesus, those similes and metaphors uses to describe something about the nature of God and what he called the Kingdom of Heaven, which is nothing less than the reality of God’s compassion and mercy most fully present, even to the most closed-off human mind, even now. This first parable is often called the Parable of the Sower, though I think Farmer would do just as well. A farmer goes out to plant some seed, and all manner of results occur. The seeds go everywhere. Some get plucked up by animals, some get scorched, some flourish a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
Did you catch that there is a whole section of our reading today that’s missing? Can you guess what happens in that section? The apostles ask Jesus why he speaks to the crowds in parables. He says it’s because the apostles have been given the secrets of the Kingdom, but regular folk haven’t, so he has to speak in parables to them, but of course, the apostles don’t get it, either, and Jesus has to explain the parable to them – this is the first of only two times in the Gospel that Jesus takes the time to explain his teaching. The seed is the word – lowercase ‘w’ in our text, but we could just as easily capitalize it. The message Jesus brings about the compassion and mercy of God. The people hearing this word are the soil, which sometimes is rocky, sometimes full of clay, sometimes healthy and hearty. Whatever becomes of those seeds depends on that soil and how much care goes into it.
The seeds God has thrown down upon this earth are numerous: seeds of new ideas and refreshed traditions, seeds of hope and forgiveness, common seeds and rare seeds, seeds of longing and contentment, of controversy and of change. Seeds scattered everywhere, within each of us. Which will take root and grow? Will the soil, will we, receive them? Will we do our part to care for them?
Each of us has a part to play in God’s seed-sowing, crop-growing business. Sometimes we are given a bag of seeds and sent out, like the apostles, to throw them down wherever we go – into our work places, into our homes, our churches – whether the soil is dried up or fertile. Other times we are handed a hoe and a spade, and maybe some New Skin for the inevitable blisters, and told to get to work breaking through that hard ground, digging those trenches, preparing the soil for seeds that we will never touch but that others one day will bring.
Whether we are called to prepare or to plant, to work, or to study, or to pray, we can help nurture the kind of soil that will be a good home for the seeds that are the compassion and mercy of God made known to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can devote ourselves to dreaming deep and breaking open and making space within ourselves and our communities for the sprouting of the Good News that Jesus offers, that the Kingdom is closer than we can possibly imagine. We can each play a part even if we never see the results.
And that, brothers and sisters, is what the Church – big ‘C’ and little ‘c’ alike – is really all about. My dad used to tell the high school basketball teams that he coached that unless you won a state championship, the last game you ever play is going to be a loss. And for us, unless we’re around at the Day of Resurrection, when Jesus does come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead, well then, we’re not likely to see the end results of whatever seeds we’ve planted in the soil that is our own contexts – be it in our current church community, current city, or wherever. Ministers come and go. Kids graduate. Longtime pillars of the community go on to glory. But the church remains. The ekklesia. The people of God. The soil. And the soil will always need tilling, watering, and all manner of care.
Sometimes that old garden my dad and his buddy kept up yielded some really good corn and taters. Sometimes not so much. Sometimes when we offer a program or a worship service, it doesn’t yield the harvest we hoped. It’s easy to get discouraged. But God is still the one providing the rain and sunshine, even if we are the ones with the hoe and spade. When discussing this text in our Bible Study this week, one person noted that the yielded up hundred, sixty, and thirty fold seemed huge, and that they were lucky to even get five - they later came back and said that five was too much and that they were lucky to get one! That’s kind of the point of the parable. The amount isn’t what’s important because God is still moving in the hearts of those who receive those seeds, even if it doesn’t seem like much has been done. All you have to do is be faithful and trust. In the case of the Good Shepherd in Asheboro, the parish I've served for the past eight years and to whom I will be saying goodbye at the end of this month, even if the reputation they've garnered is that they're the church that offers an ice cream social to neighborhood kids in the summertime, or that they're the one church where literally all people are welcome, well, they've yielded a good harvest.
We all have been given seeds for planting, even those of us with magenta thumbs. But those like us have still been given a spade and a hoe. So what do ya say? For the sake of the ones who’ll come after and reap the harvest, let’s get to work, wherever the seeds get thrown.
