Sermon on July 12, 2020: 6th Sunday after Pentecost
I have a garden, but I can’t say I know very much about gardening. My children know more about it than I do. One day in the spring, my daughter went into the backyard and took a handful of sunflower seeds and scattered them around an empty patch by the fence, where nothing else was growing. Now, months later, a healthy crop of sunflowers has sprung up where the seeds were sown—some of them are just a few feet tall, some are as tall as me, and still others are upwards of seven feet tall. Sure enough, the ones that are the tallest are in the spots that get the most sunlight. But all of them are growing, and their growth would be impossible without the soil into which those seeds were sown.
Soil is not the same as dirt. Dirt is a word for a process wherein something else becomes dirty. It doesn’t have a life of its own. But soil truly does have a life of its own. I don’t know very much about gardening, and yet I know this. Soil is the womb of earthly life. Without soil, nothing will live. Without good soil, nothing good can grow. Because soil is alive, it must be nourished. Must be cultivated. Too much acidity, and your tomatoes won’t grow. Not enough calcium, and they’ll rot. And whatever chemicals and pesticides that are found in the soil will also work their way into the plants that grow out of it. Soil is the place where life happens; the realm where everything goes to die, and from which everything comes alive.
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells his disciples a parable about a sower who went out to sow seeds. The seeds represent the word of God, what Jesus calls the “word of the kingdom.” But the parable is less about the seeds themselves than it is about the places they are sown. It’s no exaggeration to say that this parable is about the quality of soil, and the kinds of ground that are hospitable to bringing forth life.
The sower sows indiscriminately. Some seeds fall on the path, some among rocks, some among thorns, and some on good soil. Such gratuitous sowing may prompt us to question the wisdom or skill of the sower, who we think should know better. But if we knew ourselves better, we would be thankful that God does not cease to shower us with the truth, even when we are resistant to it. How often are the seeds of truth being sown in our lives, and we have neither the eyes to see nor the ears to hear? As it happens, we need all the seeds we can get.
In a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes that the parable of the sower is highly relevant for the churches in the West struggling with the decline in membership—churches like The Episcopal Church. Amidst all the hand-wringing about decline and strategies for renewal, Hauerwas says, churches set the bar as low as possible for what represents a life of faithful Christian discipleship, rather than teaching that discipleship carries a high cost. He writes:
“The shallow character of many strategies for renewal is revealed just to the extent that the resulting churches cannot understand how Christians might face persecutions. This is a particular problem in America, where Christians cannot imagine how being a Christian might put them in tension with the American way of life. This is as true for Christians on the left as it is for Christians on the right. Both mistakenly assume, often in quite similar ways, that freedom is a necessary condition for discipleship.”
In the civil religion of America, freedom is the highest virtue. We are a people who want the freedom to do what we want, which explains why even mask-wearing in a time of pandemic has become controversial. But the Christian life is marked not by freedom but by discipline—the discipline to let our lives be entirely determined by the teachings of Jesus. You may remember the razor-sharp words of Jesus from earlier in Matthew’s gospel, which were read in church just four weeks ago:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
What does any of this have to do with the parable of the sower? If nothing else, it helps us to see just how important is the character and quality of soil. Just as soil lacking in nutrients will keep seeds from bringing forth life, so too will the church fail to bear spiritual fruit unless it can welcome the truth of Jesus into itself. But when the seed is sown on good soil, it will bring forth grain: “some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” Good soil will always produce a harvest of righteousness.
Tending to the quality of our spiritual soil is the task of the Christian life. Our work comes down to soil preparation, but it is only God who gives the growth. If we are listening to the parable of the sower, we should be asking: what makes for good soil? How can we receive the word so it is planted, before getting snatched away? What rocks must be removed so that it can take root? What wealth must be given up so that it won’t be choked?
When we hear a parable such as this one, we tend to think in individualistic terms: what is the quality of my soil—what is the state of my heart when it comes to receiving God’s word? These are questions worth asking, but they can only be answered in the wider context of the church. Churches are where our soil gets tended, and they tend it in both healthy and unhealthy ways. If the church plants within us the belief that we can live faithfully as Christians only to the extent that we are able to love our neighbor—even when our neighbor is our enemy—then the soil of our hearts will be ready when the seeds arrive. But when churches fail to be the places where our soil gets tilled, we should not be surprised when nothing good is growing.
I don’t know much about gardening, but I do know that it takes work. Lots of hard work, if you want to grow a good crop of vegetables. The Christian life is just the same. It is hard work to cultivate the habits that will shape our lives into those that are patterned after Jesus. Those that are cast in his mold. So often, for each us, we don’t even know or understand the ways that our soil has become inhospitable to the word of God. We don’t always have the ears to hear what Jesus has to tell us.
And yet, every so often, a seed finds its way through. As if, for the first time, a word is spoken. A sign appears. Life comes alive, even when the soil was not as healthy as it could have been. Remember, the sower sows indiscriminately. The seed is sown gratuitously. The word of God, the truth of God, will find its way in somewhere.
And that is nothing less than the grace of God, being sown into our hearts, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the sower who sows the word of God—who is the Word of God—Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.