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And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A Sower went out to sow.” Matthew 13:3
In the late winter and early spring of 2016, John and I attended a class at Longwood Gardens entitled Hungry for Vegetable Gardening. In six sessions, Master Gardener Elizabeth Alakszay lead us from soil preparation in February to an abundant harvest in September. It was an absolutely fascinating course and one which the farmer in today’s Gospel ought to have taken.
We learned to consider climate, garden realities including how sun shines in the course of the day, availability of water and drainage and most importantly, the quality of the soil. When she started talking about Ph levels, nitrogen, phosphate and nutrients, I got confused and whispered to my husband, John, an inorganic biochemist, “This is your part.” He took careful notes, so that we would have good soil, living soil, full of the microorganisms needed for plant growth. Only then did Elizabeth talk about garden plans and planting seeds. If she’d encountered the farmer in our Gospel, she would have thought he was crazy – throwing seed willy-nilly, here and there without carefully preparing the soil and considering all the factors involved. A good farmer plants in tilled, properly prepared fields, acts prudently and wisely, doing all he can to maximize his yield and minimize his risk. Only a foolish farmer is so reckless. Sure enough, the birds came and devoured the seed that fell on the path. The seed that landed on the thin, rocky soil tried and tried, but failed to grow roots and was soon roasted by the hot sun. While that which fell among the weedy thorns was choked out. Elizabeth would have said, “That was to be expected.”
But what was not expected is what happened when the rest of the seed fell on good soil. In a place and time where a ten-fold yield was considered an excellent harvest, the seed grows by itself. And not only does it grow, it explodes, bringing forth grain, “some a hundred-fold, some sixty, some thirty.” Poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote of this mysterious process in a sonnet:
In spite of all the farmer’s work and worry,
he can’t reach down to where the seed is slowly
transmuted into summer. The earth bestows.[i]
Jesus tells this story of a wild and crazy farmer who does not carefully manage and calculate, and yet the earth bestows a bountiful harvest. God is this freewheeling farmer sowing seeds with abandon, taking foolish chances and risking it all for an abundant harvest.
The church has always struggled with this story. Many biblical scholars think that the explanation of the parable that begins in verse 18 where Jesus says “hear then the parable of the sower” was not part of his original story. It was added by the early Church to explain the behavior of lapsed members who were obviously those who fell on the path, in the rocky ground or the weeds while the faithful ones who endured, were the good soil. While the scholars came to this conclusion only after extensive study, here’s a clue for your own reading of the parables.
Jesus was a story-teller and a very good one. Good-story tellers let the story stand on its own. If it needs an explanation, the story has failed to serve its purpose. Whenever long explanations are added to Jesus’ parables, it’s often a sign that leaders in the early Church were uncomfortable with the parable and sought to shape it to fit their agenda. We do the same whenever we use the Bible to justify our own actions. And when we do, often love is sacrificed and grace denied. We can be so wrong, when we try too hard to be right!
It’s challenging when God is so free and loose with the seed – tossing love and grace here and there willy-nilly. Yet God dared to do this in the midst of a pandemic! During those early days full of fear and uncertainty, when we were not able to safely worship together in our sanctuary, seeds were planted and something new took root – Virtual Worship. One of my friends sent me a meme with Forrest Gump sitting on a park bench with caption: “Just like that my Pastor turned into a tele-evangelist.” And not just the pastor, but whole team – Jen, Tom, Dale. Bill and Rosa – all working together to learn how to communicate the Gospel in a new way. Now, the crazy farmer is scattering seeds of faith through the internet into homes, a movie theatre in a continuing care community, across the country, into army bases and living rooms, on computer screens and cell phones. Seeds are flying here and there — all around town and throughout the world!
This leads to the question, if we have a crazy Farmer, does that make the Church, a funny farm? After all it is a place where no one is more worthy than another, where sins are forgiven and forgotten, where we are transmuted into new people, where faith is bestowed in the waters of baptism and nurtured in meals of bread and wine, the body and the blood of Christ; where peace is shared and blessings are bestowed. God gives us all we need to go forth from this place and time of grace, to serve the Lord by scattering seeds of hope and love everywhere.
Yes, God is a crazy farmer. That’s what Paul told the Church at Corinth – “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” Such is the folly of the cross, incomprehensible to many, and yet for those who see with the eyes of faith, “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Let us praise God, for the wild and free scattering of seed, some falling here in this place, some being scattered virtually, all of it bearing faith, hope and love. Amen.
[i] Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, New York: Random House, 1995, Sonnets of Orpheus