Proper 10A 2020 – Parable of Sower
July 12, 2020
The Rev. Jeunée Godsey
A sower went out to Sow… that’s how Jesus begins his parable. In fact, As we begin chapter 13 in the Gospel of Matthew the parable we heard today is the first of 7 parables which try to describe the Kingdom of Heaven.
A parable is a story meant to explain something bigger. Literally it means, to throw along side .. putting an example along side of what you are trying to explain.. it makes a sort of comparison. Jesus uses stories and parables that take common everyday images from 1st century life in order to offer some images that begin to explain what life in God was like. He talks about farmers and housekeepers, shepherds, landlords and such.
Today we have the 1st of 3 parables in a row about gardening and planting. We’ll hear them all these last three weeks of July. Today we have the Parable of the Sower and the different soils. Next week we hear the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, and the following week we hear the parable of the Mustard Seed. Seeds planted in the ground with different results… all to give us images to illustrate what the kingdom of God is like.
So, while we often think of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, maybe these next few weeks we need to think of Jesus as the Good Gardener. Except is he really that good a gardener? Think about the willy-nilly way the sower is planting his seed… just throwing it hinder and yon with no regard for where it lands.
Compare that with the great work going on in St. Michael’s Garden.
Here I am standing in St. Michael’s yard, and just behind me is our community Garden.
Jesus tells us the story of the sower who goes out and sows… The sower scatters the seed everywhere. Some lands on the path, the rocky ground, the briar patch, and some on good soil.
And while Jesus doesn’t normally explain his parable, this parable has a “magic decoder ring…”
Jesus just explains what it means.
The seed is the word of God. The soils represent different environments in people’s lives in which that seed is scattered: Hardened, rocky, thorny, or good soil. The sower is not named. Perhaps it is Jesus himself.
But even Jesus’ own explanation doesn’t exhaust the meaning of the story. Parables are not really meant to have just one interpretation. We can’t just ask, “what does it mean?” and walk away satisfied with one pat answer, all wrapped up and stored on the mental shelf of “lessons learned.”
Jesus tells parables not to have us ask questions of them.
Jesus tells parables so that they can ask questions of us.
So what questions does the story of the sower ask you and me?
At least two, I think.
What kind of soil are you?
What kind of sower are you?
What kind of soil are you?
I think very few of us are just one kind of soil. When I look at my own life, I can see how on any given day, on any given hour there are parts of my life that are like the hard path, or rocky ground. There are thorns that choke out other concerns and there are places that are growing and being fruitful.
What kind of soil are you?
There are places in my life that are hardened by convention and routine. The hard packed earth of “this is just the way I am,” or “we’ve always done it that way” won’t let new seeds germinate, even when they are seeds of God’s will.
Perhaps the hard path represents areas of your life where you are most resistant to change, or areas that you just aren’t really to till up because what’s packed underneath is too painful to unbury.
Perhaps the hard path represents areas of our lives that we feel the most control over, or the most secure of, and therefore are the most hesitant to stir anything up, especially when you don’t know what a new crop might yield.
But what promises of abundance do you and I miss by having hard places where the seed of God’s word doesn’t even get a chance to take root?
What kind of soil are you?
Ever get excited by something new, but fail to carry through? For me, beginning new things is always more fun than sustaining them through the long haul. Jesus speaks about this in the Rocky ground.
There are people who joyfully embrace the teachings of Jesus and accept God’s forgiveness and promise of new life, until they realize that it might mean they have to dig up some of the rocks that are blocking their growth. The initial feel-good stage of faith or spiritual practice gives way to some dry spells and challenging weather, and if the roots of faith haven’t gone very deep, our faith can languish. Sometimes this can happen when someone has a mountain top experience of God, but doesn’t know how to live in the valley. Or when someone turns to Jesus in desperation, and finds true acceptance and forgiveness, but doesn’t go on to build the relationship.
When hard times come - lost job, illness, divorce - they don’t have the depth of faith to carry them through. When difficult decisions have to be made they find it easier to go along with the world or the crowd than to stand the heat of making an unpopular decision based on Christian principles. It’s easy to get scortched and wither. A feel good experience one day a week, or revelations that come while away on a spiritual retreat or mission trip are great, but won’t really make a difference in the spiritual harvest of your life unless it’s rooted in daily discipleship of prayer, study, service, and godly relationship with which make the soil of your life richer and richer year.
What kind of soil are you?
Life during the COVID crisis has had a different rhythm. In some ways, we are not in the same rat race as we were. But for many of us, what prevents our growth in God is simply letting other things choke out our faith.
Sometimes administrivia fills my days, to do lists are ongoing, I want to start decorating my house like all the pictures I see my neighbors posting in Facebook. And what am I cooking for dinner tonight? These are really even the thorny issues so many other people have to deal with.
I lie in bed some nights and wonder, “Where was God in all that?” Did I grow today at all? Did I help anyone else grow? Did I choke out God’s Spirit? I know there are weeds in my garden. What weeds are in yours?
What kind of soil are you?
Thank goodness that you and I are not always hard, or shallow, or crowded with preoccupations. Sometimes God’s seed falls on soil that’s rich and fertile. The right word at the right time can make a world of difference. The yield from those seeds is phenomenal… life-changing even.
I think that these are sometimes the nuggets of wisdom and truth we receive, from scripture or Godly advice. These seeds in the good soils are those times when we see God’s path for us clearly and we follow it, or we begin to use our gifts in ways that honor God and we are finding joy in fulfilment and meaning.
When God’s seed is growing in your life, the job there is to be patient. Tend to the fragile signs of new life. Feed and water it well. Pull the weeds while they’re still small. Expect the fruit of God’s planting to yield great things.
I wonder if we can really choose what kind of soil we have in our lives, or merely learn how to observe ourselves and do what we can to enrich the soil of our lives at any given time.
In the passage we heard earlier from Romans, Paul wrote, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… We are set free from the law of sin and death.” Jesus does not condemn us because we have had hard places in our lives, or shallow soil, or thorny weeds. Jesus sets us free so that we can turn over a new leaf, or - a new spade of soil.
Even when the soils of our life are hard, or shallow, or crowed, Jesus continues to broadcast seeds of blessing and opportunity hour after hour, day after day, even though much seems to be wasted on us. God is abundant in his generosity.
God is a generous sower.
What kind of sower are you?
Jesus method of sowing is meant to be a model for us. How do you spread the seeds of God’s love as you walk through life? The seeds we have to share shouldn’t wait of perfect planting conditions. Jesus gives us a model of reckless abandon when it comes to spreading God’s love in word and deed. Jesus doesn’t just hedge his bets and plant where the soil seems the most fertile, he scatters it here and there and everywhere.
Any actions we do, big and small, done in God’s name, scatter God’s seed and have the potential for Divine Harvest. Sometime the seed has to be scattered over and over again until the soil is ready to receive it… and in good time, it just might. Are you a generous and reckless sower of seeds of God’s love? The seeds you scatter might be kind words to a neighbor, Praying with your children or grandchildren, volunteering to help those in need, or reaching out to those who are alone. Seeds of God’s love might look like starting a study group around issues of racial justice, Sharing an answer to prayer with a friend, finding ways to introduce spiritual topics into a conversation.
What kind of soil are you?
What kind of sower are you?
To conclude I want to share a cute this piece I collected quite a time ago.. It’s called Gardening God’s way. While it talks about planting not just scattering, I think it the seeds I think are the kind of seeds we need to be planni
Plant three rows of peas:
Peace of mind
Peace of heart
Peace of soul
Plant four rows of squash:
Squash gossip
Squash indifference
Squash grumbling
Squash selfishness
Plant four rows of lettuce:
Lettuce be faithful
Lettuce be kind
Lettuce be obedient
Lettuce really love one another
No garden without turnips:
Turnip for worship
Turnip for service
Turnip to help one another
Finally, in our garden
We must have thyme:
Thyme for God
Thyme for study
Thyme for prayer
Water freely with patience and
Cultivate with love.
The bible says you reap what you sow,
and so may you reap 30 fold, 60 fold, 100 fold of God’s blessings.
The Rev. Jeunée Godsey
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
Proper 11A Romans 8:12-25
July 19, 2020 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
I’ve got a problem with this Gospel reading today.
Let me rephrase that.
I’ve got several problems with this Gospel reading today.
First of all, the weather this last week has been way too hot to hear about the weeds of evil being thrown into the furnace of fire to be burned up, accompanied to the tune of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Oh LORD! Please don’t let ME be a weed in the wheat field of life!
But my major problem with this passage comes from the impracticability and irresponsibility of it all. You just can’t go letting weeds grow all over your garden!
Believe me... I’ve done it…It’s not pretty. You have to get those weeds early before they do much damage, or sure enough, when you do try to pick them, you uproot your garden plants as well.
I’m pretty lucky right now. I live in a new home with new mulch, and the weeds are pretty easy to pluck up as they poke through. But I don’t have a great history with weeds. One of my old homes had this insidious sort of crabgrass that was all gnarly and sent its tentacle roots into my flower beds and bushes, encircling all my plants, then, when I tried to pull it up, I’d end up uprooting my daffodil bulbs or other flowers as well. I never managed to get it under control.
Obviously those weeds are sown by the Devil.
I guess it’s my frustrating experiences of the past that color the way I see Jesus’ parable today.
“For in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” True enough, but it goes on. “Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” Now, that’s where I have trouble. Maybe wheat and daffodils aren’t quite the same, and maybe Jesus’ weeds and crabgrass aren’t quite the same, but if you let the weeds and crabgrass continue to grow, it adversely affects the harvest or the garden doesn’t it? It does make a difference, doesn’t it, whether you have a beautiful garden or a weedy garden? I think it does. I don’t want to see weeds instead of flowers.
So if this parable Jesus teaches about the weeds and the wheat is an analogy of the Kingdom of God, how are we to understand it? God doesn’t want this to be a “weedy world” does he? Don’t we have some responsibility as Christians to work against evil in the world? Don’t we in our baptismal covenant “renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?” Don’t the we promise to “persevere in resisting evil?” Shouldn’t we be out there, weeding the world from evil?
Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe life is as simple as “live and let live, and let God sort it all out in the end.” That would certainly make life a heck of a lot easier, wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t need to worry about anyone or anything. I could just enjoy the sun and look forward to that Holy Harvest Day. Just so long as I am sure I’m not a weed.
Well let’s look at this parable more closely, to see what we can glean from it. First of all, you’ll want to remember that this is just one of Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom of God in Matthew.
This parable of the weeds comes just after the parable of the sower and the four soils we heard last week. In the same chapter, Jesus speaks of the kingdom as a mustard seed and as yeast, as a fine pearl and as a treasure.
But for now, let’s see how this parable of weed and wheat helps us understand the Kingdom of God, as it pertains to the World and Ourselves.
So what about Wheat and Weeds in the World?
Like Jesus’ parable of the sower and the soils, Jesus offers a rare direct interpretation of this parable. “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.”
While Jesus’ allegorical interpretation of the parable seems to focus on the end of the age, this parable doesn’t get all it’s meaning from the Final Harvest, even though we do get some dramatic language about that time.
This parable focuses more on the questions of the servants, “Lord, didn’t you sow good seed?” And, “Do you want us to gather up the weeds?” This parable focuses on how do deal with kingdom life in the present, not just about the final end times.
“Lord, didn’t you sow good seed?” The answer is Yes.
“Do you want us to gather up the weeds?” The answer is No, at least not outside your own little plot.
The parable of the weeds illustrates a spiritual truth that has been true ever since the very first Garden: Whenever God creates something wonderful, the Devil tries to spoil it.
God sows good seed and Satan sows bad. This is an important thing to remember. Too often, people start blaming God for the bad things in the world. But God doesn’t create evil. Evil is a perversion or counterfeit of the good.
One reason Jesus told this parable is to highlight what was happening in his own time. Jesus was sowing seeds of the kingdom of God, and he began to see the fruit of faithful disciples. Meanwhile, however, controversy grew around him. Enemies tried to trip him up, and eventually had him killed. I don’t believe the evil of suspicion and hate leading up to Jesus’ death were part of God’ plan. But God knew the enemy’s tactics and the frailty of the human heart and took them into consideration in his plan for our salvation.
So the evil in this world is not of God. When things go bad, we don’t necessarily need to be wondering why God is testing us. We can look for God to guide us through the weed patches of life.
Also, when God sows good, we can expect some spiritual backlash. It happened in Jesus Day. It happens now. As your eyes become more open to spiritual things, you will begin to see it as well.
I can’t tell you how often a new ministry gets ready to start and lo and behold, a significant number of the participants are struck ill or have car trouble.
There are times when God works to bring about exciting positive change in the church or community or the world, and soon the grumbling begins, or things go sideways. We just need to be aware that when God does something new, the devil often tries to spoil it, and we need not be surprised. One positive thing we can do is to pray for God’s protection. Prayer is a form of spiritual “Round Up” that helps eliminate evil and its effects.
Now, bad things happening isn’t always the Devil’s fault. Life is messy, and sometimes the bad stuff just happens. Besides that, it’s not always clear what’s good and what’s evil. One person’s weed is another person’s flower. Baby’s breath is considered a weed in California, but it appears in almost every flower arrangement. You might not like having Dandelions in your yard, but the greens are edible, it can be made into wine, and the seed pods are magical in the hand of a child.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the weed and the wheat at first, and we need to be careful not to judge other people or other situations too quickly. Sometimes whether something is a “noxious weed” or “helpful herb” is a matter of perspective.
The weed Jesus mentions is thought by many scholars to be bearded darnel, a weed that in its early stages closely resembles wheat, making it almost impossible to identify. As the plants mature, the roots of the weeds and wheat intertwine, making them almost impossible to separate. It’s not until the grain matures that you can tell the difference.
If the darnel is not separated out, however, it will ruin the flour because it is both bitter and mildly toxic. The usual solution was to separate the grains after threshing by spreading them on a flat surface and having people remove the darnel by hand, which is a different color at that stage.
This parable points out that even when the good and bad grow together, God takes the time to gather the good and rid the harvest of evil. God won’t let evil ruin the bread at the heavenly banquet.
I think this parable points to why time in this world is so confusing right now.
For example, I personally believe that a renewed movement to eradicate racial injustice is good seed, sown by God. I believe good seeds have been sown to help reform our criminal justice system to provide greater justice and accountability. Yet, it also seems that some bad seeds are being sown by the Enemy, who wishes to destroy the Good God may be up to. Violence, hostility, blaming, suspicion, hatred. It’s sometimes hard to tell the wheat from the weeds.
When is a hard conversation offering different points of view, simply that… a hard conversation?… It may be a necessary tilling up of the soil of hardened opinions so you can plant good seed for future harvest.
Or, when is the confrontation of a fight truly good verses evil? Just because someone thinks differently than you do, doesn’t mean they are a weed, or worse, “a son of the Devil.” At the same time, evil abounds, and not everyone trying to effect change has good motives.
Unfortunately, many in our society have gotten to the point of demonizing people who have different political views or different solutions to hard issues. Even more so in an election year.
It’s gotten to the point that even dealing with COVID seems to a mixture of Wheat and Weeds. Good information or bad? Best of intentions or conspiracy theories? It’s hard to know what’s what.
Sometimes good and bad are so intertwined that our efforts to rid the world of bad end up hurting the good.
The truth of the matter is that there are not some people who are “Wheat” - all good, and some people who are “Weeds” - all evil. Each of us produces weed and wheat in our lives. Each community or church or organization is a mixture of wheat and weeds. We’re all a garden that contains both.
We are indeed called to work against evil and injustice in this world, but we know that we will never reach perfection this side of heaven. Weed and wheat will always be together in the same field. That is where this parable is good news. God takes care of the final harvest. We don’t have to. It’s not our place to be the final judge.
Hopefully you are tending the good seed God has grown in your life. Hopefully, through regular self-examination and confession, you are pulling the weeds of sin in your life before they have much chance to grow deep roots and send runners into other parts of your life. Hopefully your friends and family are tending to their own fields as well… because you know, if your neighbors yard is full of weeds, its hard to keep those weeds out of your yard. If you spend time with those who are evil, prejudice, or hateful, those noxious seeds can get in your garden too.
I’d dare say most of us have at least one corner of our interior property that we haven’t tended very carefully. Sometimes we have been the ones sowing the bad seed in our own gardens, through poor choices, or selfish desires. Sometimes the bad seed has come from an enemy. When our lives are so entangled with the growth from the bad seed, that we can’t see how to pull up the weeds without destroying everything.
It can seem pretty hopeless. But our God is a Master Gardner.
The key here is to not judge yourself out of the kingdom. And don’t let others judge yourself out of the kingdom, either. God can see the good wheat in your life, even if at times it seems strangled by the weeds. And don’t be afraid of the fire. The fire of God’s love burns away any weed of evil that stands between you and him. That’s what I believe Jesus means when he says he will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin to throw in the fire.
God’s forgiveness burns away the weeds of guilt.
God’s healing burns away the weeds of brokenness.
God’s holiness burns away any weeds of unrighteousness.
God’s love and peace can burn away the weeds of hate and division.
The weeping and gnashing of teeth comes from the Devil, who has been denied his harvest of weeds.
The good news is there’s not just one final harvest at the end of time. Season after season God wants to gather up the fruit in our lives, and burn off the weeds. And parcel by parcel God will sort out the wheat field of the world in his own time. In the end, we can trust in the Lord of the Harvest.
Amen.
Proper 12-A, 2020
July 26, 2020
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Reverend Becki Dean
Jesus said to the disciples, “Have you understood all this?” They answered with a resounding, “Yes.” Now, right off the bat, I’m suspect. Really? The disciples understood this. They haven’t understood anything else Jesus tried to teach them. And now they get it? I don’t think so!
In her book, Seeds of Heaven, Barbara Brown-Taylor says Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom were “a way of weaving things holy with the ordinary stuff of life; a way of breaking open our everyday understanding of things and inviting us to explore them all over again.”
So, let’s explore today’s parables.
There was a story that went around a number of years ago when Bill Clinton was president. As the story goes, Bill and Hillary were taking a walk one afternoon when Hillary spotted a man at a gas station along the way, stopped and had a conversation with the gentleman who turned out to be the gas station attendant. It seemed to the President to be a pretty lively conversation. As Hillary and the gas station attendant said their goodbyes the attendant said, "It was great talking with you." Following the exchange Bill and Hillary continued their walk. Curious, the President looked at Hillary and asked if she knew the man. Hillary admitted she did. She told the President that they had gone to high school together and had even dated for a while.
"Boy, were you lucky that I came along," bragged the President. "If you had married him, you'd be the wife of a gas station attendant instead of the wife of the President of the United States."
"My dear," Hillary replied, "if I had married him, he would be the President of the United States and you would be the gas station attendant."
The problem is we humans have a difficult time seeing the big picture; we think we have the proper perspective on an issue when in fact we’re out there in left field. Jesus understood this inclination for us to get it wrong; especially when it comes to things spiritual. So, he told a few parables intertwining the Holy with the ordinary. He said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed.”
Some of us probably remember when girls use to wear mustard seed necklaces. When I was a young girl, they were all the rage. The seed was centered in a small glass ball and worn on a chain around your neck. The seed was so tiny in that glass ball. So why would Jesus choose something so small to represent something as large as the kingdom of heaven?
He did it because even though the Kingdom of Heaven is exponential in size, we are so often blind to its presence. It’s hidden in plain sight and yet we miss it. Think of the seeds planted in our garden that Jeunee mentioned a couple of weeks ago; some of them so very tiny, and yet look at their size now and the amazing amount of fruit they have produced, “some thirty, some sixty, and some 100 fold. That’s the irony in Jesus words. The KINGDOM OF HEAVEN is like a mustard seed. If you have ever seen a mustard seed or a mustard seed necklace then you know how ridiculous this statement sounds. Mustard seeds are as small as a grain of sand. Yet one seed grows into a huge large bush large enough for birds to build their nest among its branches. The ordinary mustard seed knit within the Holy.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” Jesus’ followers would have known that three measurers of flour with the yeast required for leavening would produce about 100 loaves of bread. All from a tiny amount of yeast. That’s a lot of bread; so much bread that the woman had enough bread to share with her entire community.
A few months ago, when we were first quarantined due to COVID 19, I decided to bake some cookies; only I didn’t have any yeast. Katherine Townsend came to the rescue and gave me some yeast. Now you all know that it’s only Kerry and I living in our home so imagine my surprise when I baked those cookies with the smallest amount of yeast. As I added the yeast, I thought, “this can’t possibly be enough!” Once baked, I had more cookies than I knew what to do with! If you haven’t figured it out, I don’t bake or cook very often! But what was really cool for me was the folks with whom I was able to share all those cookies.
Like the mustard seed, small things produce beyond what seems reasonable; the ordinary woven into the Kingdom. Again, Jesus used this one sentence parable to show us how blind we are to the presence of the Kingdom of Heaven. Douglas Hare’s Commentary on Matthew suggests Jesus is trying to get the point across that, "God is at work, even though our human eyes often fail to perceive what is happening." Which is comforting in these days of pandemic and social justice.
I love the parable of the pearl. There’s an ancient legend about a monk who found a precious stone. A short time later, the monk met a traveler, who said he was hungry and asked the monk if he would share some of his food. When the monk opened his bag, the traveler saw the precious stone and asked the monk if he could have it. Amazingly, the monk gave the traveler the stone.
The traveler departed overjoyed with his new possession. However, a few days later, he was back, searching for the monk. He found the monk, returned the stone, and made a request: "Please give me something more valuable, more precious than this stone. Please give me that which enabled you to give me this precious stone!"
I love this parable because Jesus does not say the Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl of great value. He says the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant; a merchant who finds a great deal on a perfect stone and does everything in his power to purchase it. But it’s the merchant’s response that is significant because his response gives us the meaning of Jesus’ parable – commitment! Commitment to a greater cause; commitment of the whole heart; commitment to the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
As Christians we understand that imperceptible things have real influence. Unfortunately, we get tied up in the minutia of our day to day existence. We get caught up in issues of social justice; we become overwhelmed with the unknown in this pandemic and with huge social problems like world hunger and innocent children flowing into our country in order to avoid the violence in their own. We can’t even pick up the newspaper or watch the evening news for fear of the next act of violence perpetrated upon children of God and the deceitfulness that comes with it as everyone plays the blame game. We are so overwhelmed it’s no wonder we overlook the tiny ordinary seeds of God at work among us.
Because you see, the Kingdom of heaven is not sometime in the future; it is not some day in the distant future. The Kingdom of heaven is present now. It always has been. It always will be. We pray, “…thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven…” The Kingdom is within each one of us. It’s in the little ordinary things we do; that, woven together with the Holy, grow the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. It’s those little things that have tremendous power.
Remember, when God moved in history for the salvation of mankind, God did not call in a legion of angels; God did not call a meeting of all the principalities of the earth. God did so with a seed planted in the womb of a peasant girl. That microscopic seed would one day be the leaven, weaving together the old ways of living with a new alternative way of living that would change the world.
Paying attention to the ordinary stuff of life being knitted into the Holy; right here, right now. That’s what heaven is like. Amen.