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Our lectionary readings in worship this summer have been admittedly challenging. We’ve looked at the harder and harsher parts of the Abraham story, first with Hagar and Ishmael and then with the binding of Isaac. Last week, Lesley continued with the story of Rebekah and Isaac’s ancient betrothal.
So it is a welcome return to the gospels this morning with one of Jesus’ most beloved and well-known parables, which even comes pre-packaged, in a sense, complete with a helpful interpretation from Matthew, which is always nice.
I.
Listen! Jesus says. A sower went out to sow, and when he did, he just threw the seed out there in his field. Some of the seed, when he threw it, fell on the path and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground with not much soil and it sprang up quickly, but there were no roots, so when the sun came up it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and these weeds choked it before it could even begin to grow.
But still other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing and increasing and yielding 100-fold, and some 60 and some 30—let anyone who has ears, listen! Beautiful.
And in case there were any questions—and it seems there were when Jesus said it—the Gospel of Matthew fills in the gaps for us. The seed, we’re told, is the word of God, and it’s sown in different kinds of soil—read: different kinds of people. Some people just don’t have any ears to hear it, so much so that they aren’t really soil at all; they’re more like a gravel path. You’ve known these people. You went to high school with a lot of them. From time to time they pop up on your Facebook news feed and you roll your eyes now like you did then.
And others, we’re told, when they hear the word, are like rocky soil—shallow as a New Orleans cemetery. Sure, they’ve got a neatly wrapped but theologically dubious answer for everything terrible or tragic that happens in your life or in the world that they would love to tell you with a smile on their face. But when the storms of life inevitably blow upon them, there aren’t any roots to keep them grounded. You’ve known some of this rocky, shallow soil, too.
And then, of course, there’s the soil sewn among the thorns and weeds, good people who may have had a chance to grow but were born into difficult circumstances or were simply overcome by so many other distractions and desires of the world—wealth, greed, addiction, indifference, cynicism.
And finally—praise God—there’s the good soil. The soil that’s rich and fertile, that receives the seed thrown upon it and bears fruit in incredible, even unbelievable measure. God bless us when we see this soil! The saints of the church we remember from our youth, the ones who walk among us today. All the people who in so many ways show us what it means to live a good and purposeful life before God and others—the folks who even reassure us that such a thing is possible. The good soil.
So there we have it. The word is sewn in different soils, four to be exact, three of which are doomed from the start. Let’s just all hope we’re the good soil, but the odds aren’t in our favor. Amen, and as you go, receive this benediction, and may you beat the Presbyterians to lunch.
No, it doesn’t sit well with me, either. It doesn’t sit well because I’ve seen so many other soils.
II.
What about the friend from youth group who always found himself with the wrong folks, going nowhere—and not even in a hurry; that would’ve required too much initiative—just kind of floating along (one Sunday morning the church custodian found him asleep in his car out there in the back of the church parking lot by the softball field, still groggy and surrounded with beer cans from the night before. He knew there would be church in the morning!) He stumbles his way to college somewhere in the mountains and you don’t see him until some years later at church homecoming. He’s there with his wife, clean cut and wearing his sheriff’s deputy uniform, with a kind of confidence and peace about him that makes you wonder if you’re looking at the same person. What kind of soil is he?
What about that co-worker whose favorite verse from Scripture is “Everything happens for a reason,” which can be found in Paul’s letter to the Crustaceans. Who always has some story about a friend from church who prayed to God for this or that or the other—credit card debt forgiveness, lower mortgage rate, a new pair of shoes—and received double what she asked and she just knows that God will do the same for you. But then she finds out she has breast cancer and comes to talk to you about it. She confesses that the answers she used to rely on are no longer working. But she keeps praying anyway, and you do too, and some months later, thinner, head-wrapped, skin pale, but with a peace about her you haven’t seen in months, she tells you she’s dying, but she’s okay. Over these many months, her prayers have changed, and so has her understanding of God’s provision. So has her understanding of abundant life. She says it wasn’t until she knew she would die that she understood what it meant to live. What kind of soil is she?
What about the friend who always had it together, always so driven, so charismatic, always everyone’s favorite, but to everyone’s great surprise is going through a rough patch. Or maybe something more than a rough patch: a genuinely hard and painful season. He hasn’t been himself and has done things he regrets, things that have caused real pain to the people he loves. Things that would be hard to forgive. You pray to God he’ll make it through to the other side—of all people, how could he not? Surely he’ll find himself, and it will all work out. But he hasn’t just yet. What type of soil is that?
So many others. The harsh and absent father who, in his old age, reconciles with his son and softens into the most gentle, loving grandfather.
The young mom who’s drowning in children and homemaking and a career who feels like she’s not doing any of them well enough.
The young man who’s good and tenderhearted but is searching, and searching, and searching, until he’s not so young a man anymore.
The beloved old preacher, who, when he looks back on all the words he’s offered, remembers only what he would have said differently and the blessings he should have offered but didn’t.
What about you? What about me? Who among us could honestly look in the mirror more days than not and say, yes, we’re that good soil of which Jesus speaks?
What about so many others whose soils are more complicated than the options we’re given, or whose fruit may have come at a different pace, or we pray is on the way? Is there nothing to be done?
III.
I’m sure it’s true that there are plenty of examples of each of the kinds of soil mentioned here in this parable of Jesus. I’m certain there’s plenty of gravel path in the world, and rocky terrain and thorns and weeds—even more certain than I am most days that there’s any of this rich, fertile soil of which Jesus speaks. I’m sure all these soils are out there. But what seems more true to me is that you rarely find them fully and completely in one person or the next, but rather partially and imperfectly and all mixed together in each of us.
What seems more true is that in the garden of your life there are many soils.[1] There are many terrains upon which the Holy Spirit will tread and the good news will fall. There will be seasons when, for reasons outside your understanding, you’ll be about as responsive to the call of God on your life as a pile of rocks. There will be other times when you’ll wish desperately that your roots were stronger, when it will take far less wind or rain than you’d care to admit to wash away what’s been sewn. Thorns, briars, weeds—the cares of the world, the allure of lesser but captivating things, the subtle drift away—yes.
When you scan the horizon of your life, you’ll see that there are all these different soils, where all of these different things take place. And somewhere back in a distant corner, you’ll find that there is some soil fertile enough for God to do something with. And not just “something,” but in God’s time and imagination and great humor, perhaps even something approaching this 30-, 60-, and 100-fold abundance of which Jesus speaks. Remember that the sower throws the seeds all over. All over. And even in those seasons when the gravel, rocks, and thorns seem to win the day, the good soil is there, receiving the seed, nurturing it into growth, keeping it safe so that, in due time, the fruit might come—and remember, this all takes time!
It’s no coincidence that Jesus draws so often from the world of planting and growing and reaping when describing the Kingdom of God and the movements of the soul. All of these things take time! They take so much time. They move at their own pace, or nature’s pace, or at God’s pace, but certainly not at our own.
Audrey is the gardener in our family, but years ago I tried my best to grow tomatoes out of a few contraptions I built out of Rubbermaid tubs and PVC pipe, with plans from a friend. I’m proud to say we had some nice, tall plants that produced some fruit. But between the bugs who got out there earlier in the morning than I did, and our travels that summer, we hardly got to eat any of those tomatoes. At the end of the season, I just pulled out the remaining, haggard vines, tossed them in a heap in the back corner of the yard, and forgot about them. And do you know that every summer after we had volunteer cherry tomatoes, springing up, bright, vibrant red, somehow from that green, discarded overgrowth, that the boys would stop and pick as they played, and eat them, just standing there. Every summer.
Someone much wiser than I and much more familiar with these mysteries once said, “A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all, it teaches trust.”[2]
And isn’t trust in God—which is to say faith—at root, a question of timing? Isn’t so much of faith the capacity to keep our minds and our hearts open to a timing different from our own? To be open to the possibility that there’s something growing just under the surface of the soil, something growing even from the things, the happenings, the seasons, the people, we would have rushed through or thrown away? That there’s more yet to be revealed than what we see and know in the moment—in ourselves, in others, in the church, in the world. Who knows what fruit will be borne and when? Isn’t that good news?
IV.
Listen! Is how Jesus begins this parable. Listen! he says. A sower went out to sow. And then at the end—let anyone with ears to hear, listen! And it may be that this word, which is where the parable begins and ends, is actually the point all along: Listen! Pay attention! Lay aside, for a moment, your own pace, your own time, your own plans, your own expectations for yourself and when you will be complete, and your expectations for others and when they will bear the fruit you know is within them. Let go of that, lay all of that aside, and listen.
Listen to the sower and the gentle falling of the seed being thrown upon the ground.Listen and wait for all to be revealed in due time. Listen and see how the garden of your life grows, slowly—so slowly sometimes. At times, it seems, against all odds and despite your own efforts. But it does grow. It is growing. God bless us all that we’re still growing.
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1 I first heard this approach from one of my greatest influences and favorite preachers, Steve Shoemaker.