Looking at the flower beds along Marconi Avenue and various vegetables in the garden here around the church property, the seed sowers around make it seem so effortless, beautiful, and amazing. I don’t have such a green thumb. From my own time in planting, watering, weeding in the gardens, I realize the intense work of tending plants that get squashed and ripped, worms and bugs, too much and too little water. So much intense care must go into the watering, the planting, the soil, the fertilizing, and the weeding!
Even with care and attention to detail, only some plants flourish; the scorching of the sun can be too great, and some plants are choked out by other plants.
Sitting in a boat near shore, Jesus looks out at the crowds gathered on the beach and tells them a parable: A sower goes out to sow. As the sower sows, some seeds fall on the path, and the birds come and eat them up. Other seeds fall on rocky ground, where they spring up quickly, but wither when the sun burns their shallow roots. Other seeds fall among thorns, and are choked. Still other seeds fall on good soil, and bring forth abundant grain.
Reading the parable, we can try to determine the four various soils that Jesus describes in our lives. We can judge our spiritual soil as less hard, less rocky, and less thorny. Sometimes, life isn’t even given a chance. We might look at the world and ourselves and only see the places that are inhospitable to growth. We see war, hunger, addiction, poverty, a dying planet, and broken hearts. The Apostle Paul looks at his own life and, at first, sees nothing beyond spiritual death. He reminds us that death is not just physical, but also spiritual. In the parable, three-fourths of the seeds die, and three-fourths of the sections of the field are inhospitable to flourishing life. A good farmer would have been more careful about where to plant the seeds. Instead, we get the parable of God as an extravagant sower, or some might call the wasteful sower.
What’s surprising is that the farmer chose to sow it there. That is simply wasteful, inefficient, and ineffective. It’s bad farming. You can’t plant seeds among the rocks and thorns or along a path and then act surprised or complain when nothing grows.
Parables offer a different perspective, a new worldview. They give us a glimpse into God’s world and how God operates. The nature of God as the sower is extravagant, generous, and abundant in sowing love for all types of soil.
Biblical interpreter, Debi Thomas, writes: “as he sows the seeds fall everywhere. Everywhere! Imagine it — a sower blissfully walking across the fields and meadows, the back alleys and sidewalks, the playgrounds and parking lots of this world, fistfuls of seed in his quick-to-open hands. There is no way to contain that much seed. No way to sort or save it.” It scatters wistfully in every direction.
This parable is not about the quality of the dirt; it’s about the quality of God, the divine sower. We want to judge what kind of dirt we are. God simply wants to sow life in ours.
The kicker is that this farmer’s crop is blessed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. This foolish farmer, who, in a world of scarcity, casts his seed on soil everyone knows is worthless, is blessed in shocking abundance: a harvest of 30, 60, or 100-fold.
In perspective, a sevenfold harvest was a good year, and tenfold meant true abundance. But a hundredfold was unheard of!
But God’s harvest is plentiful. God blesses richly. We have been entrusted with God’s word, God’s love, and God’s forgiveness, and these gifts increase a hundredfold when God’s people scatter them absolutely heedless of who is worthy to receive them.
Writing in The Christian Century this week, Pastor Kathryn Johnson tells of little over a year out of seminary and newly ordained when my friend from college called her and said that the guy she met on the internet and had been dating for only a little while had asked her to marry him. Would Pastor Kathryn come out to Arizona and officiate the wedding? Kathryn tells how she was judgmental of the relationship and declined. The friend got married regardless; the photos were joyous, and the relationship is rooted, faithful, and bearing fruit to this day.
In April 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl plant exploded, sending clouds of radioactive material across the countryside. You might expect the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster to be a barren wasteland. Yet soybeans growing in the area have altered protein structures that allow them to survive despite the chronic radiation, helping the ecosystem persist despite the fallout. Trees, bushes, and vines overtake abandoned streets surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power facility in the Ukraine today.
Posted on the fireside room bulletin board is a photo someone took and shared years ago of a sunflower seed planted, perhaps by some bird in the crack of an asphalt school parking lot in Sacramento, that took root and grew.
Imagine if our lives, we, people of faith, Christians, were known less for judging soil and for sowing generously, instead of being gardeners trying to discern who is good soil, worthy of Christ’s compassion and forgiveness. What would it be like if people could see a quiet, gentle confidence in us when we tend to the hard, rocky, thorny places? What would it be like if the seeds of love, forgiveness, humility, and justice fell through our fingers in appalling quantities? Sometimes, in hard or dry soil, the seeds can germinate and take even deeper roots, immensely resilient and fruitful. We might indeed see that hundredfold harvest of love, forgiveness, humility, and justice.
St. Charbel, a Lebanese monk living at the start of the last century, reflecting on today’s Gospel lesson, offers this charge in closing: “Sow on earth seeds of prayer and love. Sow among the rocks because they may contain a dusting of soil capable of causing what you sow to sprout. If you must crush the rock, strike it without ceasing; if it does not break at the first blow, it will end up being dashed at the hundredth blow. If you grow weary, others will do it instead of you; they will labor and sow. There is a time for sowing and a time for reaping.”
