Listen! No, Really, Listen!

The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, the 13th Chapter

That same day 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.”

In seminary I learned Greek, the language of the New Testament.  They had us learn Greek because sometimes subtle meanings are lost in translation.  So this week, when I read where Jesus said, “Listen!” at the beginning of this parable, I wondered what “Listen!” was in Greek.  It’s a good thing that I looked, because it turns out that “Listen!” translated as, “Erik, you are about to read this parable completely and totally wrong, so delete what you’ve done so far and start over!”  Now, I wasn’t the best Greek student so that might not be a “perfect” translation, but I got the message.   

This parable, it turns out, is the Parable of the SOWER, but what I was about to do and what many people do with this parable is to turn it into the Parable of the FARMER.  We read this parable and assume that God is a FARMER with a farmer’s goal of bringing in a harvest.  Farmers plant to maximize the return on their investment.  I assumed, and I think many people assume, God is a Farmer too and as a Farmer cares only about the GOOD SOIL because it is only in GOOD SOIL that a harvest of 100, 60 or 30 will happen and the assumption is that the harvest is THE thing God cares about.  

But Jesus, this week, reminds us not to “ASSUME” but instead to “LISTEN!”  This is the Parable of the SOWER, not the Parable of the Farmer.  The Sower doesn’t only care about the “Good Soil” that brings a harvest.  The Sower cares about sowing the seeds of God’s infinite and unconditional love, grace, forgiveness and compassion in EVERY kind of soil EVERYWHERE!  The Sower’s goals, you see, are not as narrow as those of the Farmer.  The Sower has important work for those seeds to do in EVERY kind of soil.

When we think of the idea before us, the idea of merging with other churches, we all know people who are welcoming that idea like the hard, packed soil of a path welcomes a seed.  A Farmer might ignore the path or break it with a pickax until it changes, but the Sower has a greater vision for his seeds than JUST a Farmer’s harvest.  The Sower intends, in addition to a harvest, that the birds will eat the seed sown on the path and be fed.  That the birds will then “deposit” that seed right where the Sower intended it to go from the beginning, planted now with exactly the helping dose of fertilizer it needs to grow!  The Sower loves, values and has important work for that hard packed soil on the path to do.  Jesus is reminding us that the people and churches we know who are hard paths, have important work to do in this process which can’t be done by any other kind of soil.

The same is true of the Rocky Soil.  There are folks who see coming together as the final solution, the way out of a financial bind, a way to maintain “the way we’ve always done that” or a path to reclaim the glory days.  Many others know that coming together for shared ministry will be EASY, compared to the work that will need to be done after that, figuring out who we are together and what we're being called to do together as a new community of God’s people.

A Farmer might say that investing in planting in the Rocky Soil is a waste, that if we aren’t all coming together for greater mission, beyond merging, beyond simply survival, then it isn’t worth trying at all.  Except the Sower knows that even quick growing plants without deep roots have something to give.  The Sower has a use for the enthusiasm of the quick growing plants and even for the plants that whither in the sun.  The withered plants make compost and the compost builds the soil making a place for another seed to grow.

Even the seeds that are sown among the thorns... and you know who you are!  Even you, the thorniest soil, has value and is important to the Sower.  The concerns you have are real and important to hear.  They pull the dreamers among us back toward earth.  Even the fears that come out as wild conspiracy theories worthy of wrapping our heads in foil... even THOSE have something of value buried deep beneath them... something important lies underneath even the strangest and most unreasonable fears and panic and it is worth the work to dig down beneath all that and hear what is at the base of those fears.    

In the end, when Jesus says “LISTEN!” he’s challenging our narrow vision of what we think God is doing in our world and the narrow ways we believe God will get that work done!  This parable tells us that the power of God’s infinite love, compassion, grace, forgiveness and the transformational power of what God is sowing among us reaches WAY beyond our limited idea of what “good soil” looks like and is actually at work.... in, with and under every person, every type of soil and in each one of our churches.     

Our call... not our Lutheran call or our Episcopalian call... but OUR call as people of God, as we talk and dream and plan for doing God’s work together in a new way, is that we model what we do after the work of the Sower!  That as we meet and talk and ask questions and plan, we focus on sowing the seeds of God’s love and God’s promise into every single molecule of what we do with reckless, uncalculating abandon and then take the time to step back and simply allow each seed do whatever it is God needs that seed to do in that particular place, person or church at that time.

This exciting (and also terrifying) opportunity that God has set in front of us has admittedly not come at the optimal time.  Prince of Peace has real healing work it still needs to do.  Our congregation is a bit tired, sore and overextended and yet here it is!  So, as we meet after worship today and as we talk and plan and dream and worry in the days to come, may we keep in our minds the Parable of the Sower and that we simply can’t fully wrap our minds around all that the Sower is looking to accomplish in us!  The Sower sees in us much more potential than we could ever see in ourselves.  May this parable continue to remind us that what the Sower has sown is, right now, powerfully working within ALL the soil of ALL the people of St. Andrew’s, St. Barnabas, Christ Church, St. Marks, St. Matthew’s and Prince of Peace and the Sower’s seed will indeed accomplish abundantly far more than we could EVER ask or even IMAGINE on our own.  Amen.