Readings: Isaiah 55:10-13, Matthew 13: 1-9,18-23
Let us pray. O God, may your word teach, challenge and
assure us as we gather to hear your hope for us. Amen.
We have come to a time in the Church year
that you might call the season of the parables – the teachings of Jesus told in
story, many very familiar, some troubling, always challenging. The parable of
the sower is the first of seven gathered in this chapter of Matthew, and the
first of three Sundays of parables as the lectionary Gospel reading.
So what about parables! Do we agree with the writer who says
“Explaining a parable is a bit like explaining a joke – the more we talk about
it the more we lose the point of it.” Do
we try to explain them to death? And do
the parables of Jesus have a singular
point or are there many layers, multiple threads to follow? I’m going to go with the layered complex
approach, suggesting that the more we delve into the parables the more we can
find new and fresh meanings. Time will
tell if I am right on this won’t it?
And now to turn to this very familiar
parable. Our natural tendency is to
concentrate on the soil in this story, is it not? To wonder which of the soils we might be, to
figure out how it is that we respond to the word of God – do we misunderstand
God’s word, are we shallow in our response, or easily tempted away by worldly
pleasures, or are we the good soil, well
nourished, deep and fruitful beyond all measure, looking ourselves to sow in
that same obviously well prepared soil. Immediately C.S. Lewis’s ‘The Screwtape
Letters’ springs to mind as the junior devil uses all those techniques to
entice the new Christian away from God into misunderstanding, shallowness and
worldly pleasures. And Jesus has
experienced all of these measures in his ministry too. The disciples lose faith when a storm hits,
the Pharisees want to choke out the Word of God, his hometown of Nazareth
exemplifies the hard soil of rejection.
This parable comes from direct experience.
But, today, can we focus on the sower
instead of the soil? Can we think about
a God who chooses to sow not just in the well prepared, deep, nourished soil
but also scatter the seed to the winds, letting it fall where it may. Let’s face it, in my last Parish of many
retired farmers, this technique of chucking the seed over the ground, letting
it all over the place and, as they did in those days, then ploughing the paddock,
would have not gone down well. What a
waste, how inefficient, the returns would be minimal!
Not so, says Jesus. He reminds us that the gospel is bigger than
our limited strategic planning, has way more possibilities than just
investing in the good soil, the place where we hope for the best rate of
return. The seed is good, wherever it
might fall, powerful enough to break through the crustiest soil or the most
barren of wastelands. A friend told me
of going up to the demolished Christchurch and seeing all the wild flowers
growing in the most inhospitable places – cracks and gravel and piles of broken
masonry and the sense of hope that that gave.
Good seed found homes in the midst of disaster.
We live with an optimistic God, folks. One who indiscriminately throws seed on all
soil – believing in possibilities where we see none. Jesus reminds us that God’s redemptive care
is for all people, and that there are times where we might have to trust to God
to provide the conditions for a blossoming, a taking root in the unlikeliest of
places. A seed might lay dormant for
seasons before the conditions change, the thorns and stones and hard packed
earth are weathered away and life bursts forth.
And so we have this struggle you might say:
the abundance of God against the hard ways of the world. The flowering of new life in the midst of
death.
It would be no surprise to find that
sometimes we feel that the hard ways of the world have the advantage, that
there are way more stony and thorny places than there are fruitful and healing.
Where is the healing reconciling love of
God in Israel and Palestine at the moment?
Where are the fruits of justice and compassion when we cut off aid to
the most needy, turn away refugees, entrench the violence of offenders with
punitive prison terms, struggle to get support for restorative programmes?
Where is the assurance that the reconciling
abundance of God is come to heal the world, all the world?
Well Mark mentioned one last week – the
mother of one of the three Jewish teenager’s killed speaking out against
retribution, against further violence.
And elements in Israel seeking to deal with
its own extremists, condemning the act and arresting the people who horribly
killed Palestinian youth Mohammad
Abu Khieder
The many people who work within and around
the justice system in this country, seeking to restore and heal rather than
purely punish.
The people that continue to sow the
seed of mercy and justice and freedom
with grace and courage into the most desolate places in our world and our
societies, often never knowing if their word or act of care will bear fruit in
any way at all.
We can trust in the abundance of God – one
who takes the most unusual approaches to living, who is hugely optimistic of
the power of good to overcome evil, who expects, nay demands that we will live
in that same optimism, that same abundant hope in our lives.
Listen again to the words from Isaiah
‘For as the rain and the
snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the
earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to
the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not
return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed
in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in
joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their
hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.[1] ‘
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.[1] ‘
The parable’s end, the vision of
fruitfulness, is the greatest challenge
for us. It is more than asking us to
keep on keeping on in the face of rejection.
It is more than us trying to keep from being inhospitable soil or sowing
only in well established soil. It is
more than a seven fold harvest from the good soil. It is about the miracle of hope,
extravagantly optimistic hope in Jesus promise of the thousandfold. Amen
Margaret Garland
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