A
farmer set out to plant some seeds
As
he was sowing he noticed birds so he went and bought some aluminum foil and a
fake scarecrow to scare off the birds.
He hung it all up and resumed sowing
But
he noticed some of the seeds were falling on rocky ground so he went for his
wheelbarrow and shovel and spent a long time getting the rocks all stacked up
and thinking about what he might do with them.
Then he went back to the sowing but soon he began to see thorny weeds
coming up and he knew that the weeds would steal the nutrients in the soil from
the seeds so he headed out to buy weed killer, but opted instead for pulling
them.
By
the time he found his gloves and pulled the weeds it had gotten dark so he went
inside and went to bed.
The
next morning he woke up and picked up his seed pouch and headed out to plant.
Much to his surprise there was a large bird sitting on the scarecrow, the
places that he thought he had cleared of rocks seemed to have more rocks than
ever, and the weeds that he had pulled up were sprouting new shoots from the
left over roots. At first he thought he
would cry then he threw back his head and began to laugh. He grabbed his seed pouch and began flinging
seeds everywhere. And much to his
surprise the more seeds he sowed the more he seemed to have. That year the harvest was more bountiful than
it had ever been before. Now none of
this made any sense to him but wonder of wonders – he had never been happier in
his life.
Let
him who can hear - hear.
Not
the traditional telling of the parable.
From a sermon by Barbara Brown Taylor who teaches at Piedmont College in
GA. Barbara’s words struck such a chord
with me that I decided to share some of them with you. So giving credit where credit is due much of
the basis for my words today was inspired by her sermon.
In
her sermon on the parable of the sower, Taylor tells us when she hears this
parable her immediate response is to do a mental inventory of what kind of soil
she offers for God’s Word. In her words
she tries to figure out if she is good enough dirt. Her immediate response is to hear the parable
as being all about Barbara. But then she
says that if that is true then the parable should have been called “the Parable
of the Dirt” Of course that is not its
name and so Taylor turns to the real center of the parable – the sower – God. The focus is not on us and our attempts at
perfection, but rather it is on the generosity of the sower who did not give a
whit about the quality of the ground, but rather tossed the seeds of blessing,
the seeds of salvation around for all comers – and there seemed to be no limit
to the abundance of those blessings.
It
is hard not to make a parable allegorical – by adding an interpretation years
later. Each player is assigned a meaning
that may or may not be part of the original intent of Jesus - the birds are the
“evil one”, the weeds – the cares of the world, and so on. That is what happens when we use that
familiar understanding that Barbara Brown Taylor called the “Parable of the
Dirt”. Everything has to stand for
something. But the way we have begun to
understand parables is that they really only carry one point and that point
will probably have something to do with a very deep understanding of God,
W
of
what God’s Kingdom is like,
W
of
what it means for us to be so loved by God that there is no limit to the honor,
blessings and the grace that God showers upon us – regardless of whether we are
worthy of those blessings or not.
W
We
are invited to stop trying to make ourselves more acceptable to God by being
the perfect receptacle for God’s love.
W
We
are invited to use our imaginations and to lead with our hearts instead of our
logical minds and
W
to
envision a different way of being in relationship with God and with each other
– one that is upside down from what we see everyday.
In
many ways parables tease us with more questions than answers. They are like a painting of a crystal clear
lake in a mountain valley. We see the
landscape, but if we open ourselves to look deeply into the vision of the artist,
we are also aware of the life and vitality of the place. Parables are dynamic and offer us insight
into our own time and place - they change the way we see and understand very
familiar images. Parables take our
understanding of the world we live in - and turns that understanding on its
head. They tell us that our idea of the
way things are is not the same as
God’s idea of how the world works. And
they leave us with the choice of whether or not we want to live our lives in
the world’s reality or in God’s reality.
The
Parable of the Sower is about how God acts in unexpected ways of generosity,
faithfulness, and hope – not what the early Christians expected of life - and
certainly not what we expect in our world today. But isn’t this what Jesus is trying to tell
us? From the Parable of the Sower we
learn that we can live our lives hoarding our gifts, our possessions, our love
and compassion or we can share them – give them away with reckless abandon the
way the sower does.
This
morning I want to suggest that the Parable of the Sower is EXACTLY what we here
at St Patrick’s need to hear. We are
struggling to hold our parish together in the face of fear, anger, despair,
selfishness, isolation, loss, helplessness, - on and on… And it would be much easier to simply succumb
to the temptation to blame or shame ourselves or others for the challenges that
we face. But to do so would be to make
ourselves the dirt that determines where and how God’s seeds might grow – and
that is just not what Jesus is offering us this morning.
Jesus
is inviting us to let go of our assumptions about the way things “should”
be. Inviting us to open ourselves up to
the unexpected, the non-traditional – the unfamiliar. to scatter our seeds widely and with glorious
abandon just as God showers us with love - widely and with glorious abandon.
2020
has ripped the foundation of our church from us by isolating us and depriving
us of the very Body and Blood of Christ on which our community is nurtured and
sustained. Our response can be to
withdraw, to take our marbles and go home or to step out in faith and share the
gifts that we have in the same way that the Sower shared the seeds of God’s
love. Share our gifts without judging
the value or the potential of the opportunity we meet. Share them with the assumption that the
outcome is not left up to us alone, but is in fact the Word of God that does
not return without having accomplished that for which it was sent. Share them without worrying about running
out. That is one of the crucial pieces
of faith – that we give the job of replenishing our strength up to God. We cannot be the Source – God is.
If we are to be Jesus’ disciples
then we must turn our focus to the scattering of the seeds of God’s Kingdom
using whatever means we have and giving thanks to God for providing the love we
share.
I pray that as we live into this new
way of being church, that we will put aside our assumptions and come God’s
Tables together. I pray that God will
lead us into a new place of ministry and mission. I pray that the ministry
W
begun with energy and purpose on the
beach and
W
sustained by the faithfulness of the
people at St Patrick’s,
W
then bolstered by the hope of a
fledgling Lighthouse
will continue to flourish and give
hope to those who worry that they will be forgotten. But we can only do that by putting aside our
fears and our judgments and picking up our pouch of seeds to scatter those Kingdom
seeds widely and with reckless abandon. Amen
