Sowing Seeds and No More Condemnation

July 16, 2017

Cate Thorn

Ordinary 15     Isaiah 55:10-13     Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

The parable of the sower, one of the better known parables I’d say. Maybe because in NZ so many of us have been gardeners, not just to beautify but to supply food for the table, this parable resonates closely with our life and experience. Strangely enough, even though the imagery of this parable is quite accessible, it’s easy enough to follow what’s going on, from quite a young age I’ve never liked this parable much. It always seemed to me there’s something inherently unjust in it. Not only to the seed that gets sown on rocky ground, eaten by birds, scorched by sun or strangled by thorns so it never gets to flourish but also to the soil that by chance happens to be poor, have short lived fertility or be rocky, not yet having had chance to be ground small enough to be part of fertile soil. It just seems mean, as if they only get the one chance and circumstances conspire against some of them from the start. Mmmm … maybe I’m being a bit literal (my indignant child self).

When training at St Johns College I recall this parable becoming topic of discussion during a lecture on Mark’s gospel. A statement was made to the effect. “Of course we all know what the parable means, what Jesus was talking about.” I found myself squirming a bit, did I really know categorically? Couldn’t there be more than one meaning depending on who you were, where you placed yourself in the parable? Were we meant to take it as written – some people ‘got it’ and they and through them the life of God flourished, some people kind of did but it all got a bit hard, when push came to shove, survival mode kicked in and they retreated, some people got overtaken by, well, life generally and just got too jolly busy and of course some just never had chance to even notice. But that doesn’t necessarily mean people intend not to be fertile places. It all seems a bit harsh, judgmental, and exclusionary to only get the one chance. Or have I become too literal again – who ever said the sower only sows once. One of my younger colleagues with some glee laughed out loud and said, “Well, duh, of course we all know.” I sank deeper in my chair, something she happened to notice, she caught my eye, “What you don’t?” she quizzed me. I demurred momentarily, after all I was meant to be training for ministry, before responding, “But how can we ever be sure we know the one thing this means?” “Seriously?” was her more than a little astonished reply. By the way I never did get chance to hear from her what this parable means - I wonder what wisdom I’ve missed.

I suspect this reveals as much my suspicion of easy or obvious explanations, especially when it comes to things of God and faith. Part of this is that the easy, obvious explanations often claim the high ground of being right and so by default anyone who questions or proposes alternative explanation must be wrong. It breeds intolerance and exclusion, the need to defend a particular position can then make religion rigid and suspicious of difference. The other part is that if we approach such parables with the mind-set that there is a right and a wrong way to hear and understand, then we’ve already closed our ears, our hearts and minds to the divine speaking afresh to us through them. We deny the very spirit of their uttering – refuse to be surprised, overturned, confounded by the simple wisdom that unstitches all our clever thinking.

Maybe it’s because Jesus gives explanation that we tend this way but maybe it’s also because of the way we’ve learned to listen. As I listen to the parable I find myself becoming concerned about whether the seed sprouts and about the adequacy of the soil. Which causes in me a bit of surreptitious looking about, a clandestine cross examination – of myself, of others by compare – who is which soil? A looking for fault, divisive judging mentality that seeks and expects to find inadequacy, right and wrong, whose in and whose out. I struggle to find this a good news parable.

So usually when I listen to this parable I hear it to be mainly about soil and a bit about seed. But this time as I listened I was struck by the abundance of the seed that’s sown rather than the relative paucity or richness of the soil. This time I was struck by the profligate nature of God who sows over and over again, with unwise abundance and generous abandonment. It made me pause and think, are the seeds of this profligate God always being sown on and in us?

This returned me to issues of soil but with an altered perspective. How many of you would sow seeds straight into soil without any preparation and expect a flourishing crop? Not many I suspect – well not after the first few tries. If you want a more abundant crop you’ll probably spend some time finding out about the soil type, feed and till and supplement it, give it chance to release its potential so it can be ground for the seed that takes root to flourish. What’s more we know that all seeds do not flourish in all places - thank goodness for variety of seed and soil and climate. Even the most inhospitable climes can prove fertile for some sort of seed, some sort of plant to grow – only in that particular place, in those particular conditions does it flourish. Therefore what makes for a good soil evidently can vary. Whether a soil is deemed good depends upon what you expect the seed sown in it to yield. So there are different fruits, seeds suited to different soils and the need for some preparation – thank goodness for a profligate God with many and varied seeds.

It might take us a bit of time to consider and accept the idea of us being an adequate site for God gardening. Multiple factors have and do intersect that affect our receptivity, our willingness to hear, our capacity to yield to God. External factors have and have had significant impact on we becoming who we are, on how we develop, are formed. We process such external factors internally, negotiating with our inherent sense of self such external factors impact and influence us. Influence how open we are to difference, how accepting we are of change, of being changed, how readily we adapt, accept and/or invite newness. The boundary between these inner and outer worlds is of course never quite so distinctly or clearly defined. When you’re about to do something you’ve been warned against, how many of you hear an admonishment from a person who’s warned you not to? How many of you can replay in your heads moments, things you’ve done or said, or had done or said to you that have had formative impact – for good or not so good. What are the odds you remember the not so good ones the most? We’ve this curious propensity to remember the negative, almost as if we prefer to hold onto it. What if we apply this to a God context? If God stuff’s been an external factor in our life we’ve likely heard about good and evil, right and wrong, heaven and hell, judgement and sin and guilt for insufficiency. Given our tendency to remember the not so good, it doesn’t take much for us to not think too well of ourselves, to not imagine we’re a site for a bit of God garden flourishing. We exclude ourselves, as if to protect God from us for surely we’re inadequate, unworthy, arid rather than good soil.

Familiar we might be with the idea of soil types, feeding and tilling the soil so to enhance its capacity to receive and to make seed flourish. Yet strangely we don’t seem to apply such wisdom, patience, understanding and attention to ourselves and our life in God. To imagine the God who brings us each into being desires that each of us are fed, sustained, prepared so to receive the seed of a flourishing life uniquely suited to who we are. We worry about our adequacy, our being good enough as if there’s a singular ideal of good we have to measure up to and of course never quite do. Yet we know there are many seeds and many soils and many different fruits that are borne only out of their unique combining. Maybe our biggest hurdle is to accept, to simply receive – the potential for our full and fruitful life resides within the seed – it is the ground of our accepting that will enable it to flourish.