First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Matthew 13:1-9
Contrary to my father who, when he wanted to be difficult, would try to convince me that there really was only one correct way of doing anything, it did not take long for me to discover that there are a great many different ways of doing things, and a great many different ways of saying things. And it is often when people choose unorthodox means of doing and saying things, that we are left with some of the best stories.
Recall the Roman Catholic nun who ran out of gas on a remote rural road in Northern Ireland. She walked half a mile to a filling station where, sure enough, there was gas to be had for a price. And while she had the price of the gas, what she lacked was a means of getting it from the pump to her car. ...a problem that was not as easily correctable as you might think. Because of the ongoing hostilities in Northern Ireland, there was a local ordinance against pumping gas into any hand-held container. And the station attendant was unwilling to make an exception, even for a container to be carried by a nun. But the nun was persistent, leading the attendant to pursue some kind of solution. At last he hit upon an answer. He found an empty six pack of beer bottles and filled them with gas, figuring that no one would be suspicious of such unlikely containers in the possession of such an unlikely lady. So back to her car walked the nun, whereupon she began to empty one beer bottle after another into her gas tank. In the midst of all this activity, a leader of the Protestant Extremists happened to drive by. He slowed down, stopped, and then in utter amazement rolled down his window Just long enough to shout: “Sister, we may have our political differences, but I’ve sure got to admire your faith.”
Like I said, in a world in which there are commonly-accepted ways of doing and saying commonly-accepted things, we find ourselves remembering the unorthodox. Which brings us to the tendency of Jesus to teach in parables. Parables are (by definition) simple stories affording deeper looks at basic truths, presented in ways which are disarmingly unorthodox so as to make them dramatically compelling. Most of them grab us because they start where we start....in the day-to-day experiences of ordinary life. A woman is baking bread. A man tears a garment. A valuable coin is lost. Some people are going over the seating chart for a banquet. All of us can identify with truths that grow out of experiences which are so incredibly daily. In fact, part of a parable’s power rests in the reader being able to say: “Hey, I’ve been there.”
Moreover, parables go with a light touch. They never overpower anybody. As contrasted with an argument (which seeks, by definition, to win), a parable makes its point without appearing to put anybody down. And parables are more interesting than arguments, which explains why dull preachers tend to employ them as a means of delivering their sermons from boredom and their congregations from sleep.
So given the fact that summer is a very out-doorsy season and that Jesus was a very out-doorsy man, perhaps an out-doorsy parable is in order. But before getting into the meat of it (or, should I say, the “kernel of it), a little stage setting might well be in order.
By the time we get to Matthew’s 13th chapter, things are beginning to take a turn for the worse in the life of Jesus. He has begun to surface some serious opposition, especially among the religious authorities. And as my old college chaplain, Bill Coffin, is quick to remind us: “Hell hath no fury like that of a bureaucracy scorned.” Still, we read that “the common people heard him gladly,” which may explain why he always seems to turn up in private living rooms or on public beaches. In this particular instance, he has just left somebody’s living room to go sit by the lake. But so many people have gathered around him that he gets into a boat, from which he tells this story.
“A sower went out to sow some seed,” he begins. And it is entirely possible that both he and the crowd can look off into the distance and see some farmer doing exactly that. But Jesus has already lost me. I know next to nothing about seeds. I am a city boy. When I was growing up, if a piece of ground didn’t have a curb in front of it and an alley behind it, I couldn’t relate to it. Oh, I’ve cut a little grass, watered a few flowers, and snipped an occasional bean. But you couldn’t fill a 3x5 card with what I know about farming. And in spite of being the son-in-law of a horticulturist, I can’t spell “euonymus,” or identify “coreopsis.”
But people who know such stuff tell me that Jesus is describing a methodology of planting known as the “broadcasting of seed.” Apparently, you put a whole lot of seed in your apron, and (while using one hand to keep a pocket formed in the apron) you use the other hand to scatter seed anywhere and everywhere as you walk along. Which is something I could get into. The few times I’ve planted seeds, I remember spending all my time on my hands and knees trying to figure out how deep I should submerse them, how far I should separate them, while trying to follow the little white string that keeps the row straight. Therefore, the idea of throwing seeds hither and yon kind of appeals to me.
Except that this parable is not primarily about seeds and how they are thrown, but about the soil that they are thrown into. Which puts me at a greater disadvantage, given that I know even less about soil than I do about seeds. The only thing I know about soil is that, until I got to Birmingham, I never lived anywhere where it was any good. After 11 years of watering sand in Livonia and 13 years of breaking my back in the clay of Farmington Hills, the Bishop took pity on me. One day he called me up and said: “Ritter, you’ve been a good boy. You’ve paid your dues. Now go to Birmingham and play in the dirt.” The move has been a salvation experience for the spasm-prone muscles of my lower back. For previously, whenever my wife wanted to torment me, she would suggest that we (that’s an editorial “we”) move some shrubbery. Some husbands get to rearrange furniture in the family room. I consider them the lucky ones. I get to move trees. But having been liberated from a backyard where I once busted a spade in half while moving a bush from one place to another, I am ready (if not entirely knowledgeable) to hear what Jesus says about soils.
“A sower went out to sow some seed. And some of it fell along the path, where the birds came and devoured it.” Which means that the first kind of soil is “hard.” You might call it stubborn soil. So much has gone over it that nothing can get into it. Nothing sinks in. I have seen that kind of soil. And I have met those kinds of people. Nothing sinks into them. They are tough. They are resistant. They are hard-nosed. They play hardball. They are hard nuts to crack. They are hard to reach. And, when reached, they play hard to get. They take pride in their rigidity. There is even a major denomination in this country whose more fanatical members identify themselves with the adjective “hard-shell.” What a terrible word to describe the Christian life....”hard-shell.” Oh, I know it’s just a phrase that is meant to describe the zeal of their devotion and the untainted purity of their conviction. But that same shell which (they believe) keeps temptation, doubt and heresy out, also keeps them from being penetrated by things like truth, pain, and human need.
You can admire the hard-shell people of the world, but I am willing to bet that you don’t like them. That’s because (as unreceptive soil) they have long since defined their lives in ways that are pleasing to them, and have long since passed the point where renegotiating that definition is something they are willing to do. So they announce to us: “That’s just the way I am. I have no interest in changing. What you see is what you get.” I suppose we should thank them for warning us. But once warned by them, why do I always have the feeling that I want to get away from them?
Still, there is one additional word to share with any hard-shell folk who may happen to be among us. “You’re for the birds.” Don’t get mad at me. Get mad at Jesus. For didn’t he say that if seed be cast upon you, yet can’t work its way inside you, it may lead to your getting pecked to death by the birds who come to eat the seed off of your hard-shell head....or off of your hard-shell heart?
But let’s move along. “Other seeds fell on patches of rock where they found little soil, causing them to spring up almost immediately because there was no depth of earth.” Which is relatively easy to understand, once you begin with the fact that much of Israel is a rock pile. It is common, therefore, to find thin layers of soil barely covering large ledges of lime rock So that when Jesus speaks of casting seeds on rocky ground, he is not necessarily talking about soil that is full of individual rocks, but about a thin coating of soil resting atop a rock ledge. The rock, you see, will absorb and retain the suns rays (baking the soil from below), even as the sun is beating down upon the soil (baking it from above). As a result, seeds falling into this thin layer of warmed soil will sprout quickly. But upon sending down roots in search of moisture, will strike rock and starve.
We are talking now, not about soil that is hard, but about soil that is “shallow.” I have seen that kind of soil, too. And I have met those kinds of people. There is a character in a Peter deVries novel who speaks for quite a few of us when he says: “Down deep, I’m shallow.” Some of us are shallow because we never stay long enough in any one place, with any one person, doing any one thing, to grow the kind of roots which will be sufficient to feed us when life becomes parched and dry. Others of us are shallow because we never drink in enough learning or corral enough up-to-date information, so as to help us form a set of convictions worth having the courage of. But even education alone can’t save us from shallowness, given the number of scholars I have known who have chosen to be alive, only from the neck up.
Religion can be shallow, as when it promises everything to us, while asking nothing of us.... or when it coaxes tears from our eyes without ever inducing movement in our feet....or when it allows us to substitute a ten dollar bill in the plate for the kind of discipleship that Jesus urged upon his followers. Steven Birmingham (a novelist with an interestingly-appropriate name) writes of a wealthy matron who is proudly showing the rooms of her elegant home to an impressionable visitor. Later, while serving tea in the garden, the matron says: “Perhaps you would like to see the pool. It’s just beyond the hedge.” Which it is. But the visitor is shocked by the pool’s highly unusual shape, which is a scant 28 feet wide by 200 yards (600 feet) long. In response to the obvious question, the matron explains: “The reason I had them build the pool long and narrow is because while I truly like to swim, I’ve never been able to build much enthusiasm for turning around.” That should strike a nerve with us, given that most of us would like a faith that keeps us swimming, but few of us want a faith which requires that we do much turning around.
Finally, following hard soil and shallow soil, comes what most farmers like to call “dirty soil.” This is soil that is rich but cluttered. Concerning it, Jesus said: “Other seeds fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.”
Now I may not be much of a gardener, but I know that it’s hard to grow anything of value without some attention being paid to cultivation... which customarily includes things like weeding, thinning, pruning, and cutting away. All of which leads to a personal question. What is currently choking your growth? What is thwarting your harvest? What is dirtying your soil? Could it be a destructive habit you can’t break, or a destructive feeling you can’t purge? Maybe its a hurt you can’t forgive, or a grudge you won’t surrender. Maybe it is the icy crystal covering of self- hatred that you will not allow the love of another to melt. Or maybe it is a bridge over troubled waters, lowered by your enemy, onto which you refuse to take the first step. Or perhaps it is the lingering presence of a favorite sin that you have chosen to tame rather than maim. Or maybe your soil is being dirtied by the terrible ways you use clock, calendar and date book, so as to leave no time for better seeds to grow.
Hard soil! Shallow soil! Dirty Soil! All three have one thing in common. They yield no harvest Good soil alone does that. And we are called to be good soil. True, we cannot guarantee the harvest We cannot even will the seed to appear. But we can go to work on the dirt.
Which is my task, every bit as much as it is yours. For it falls to me as your leader to mind (not only my own dirt) but yours as well. This is something I take with utmost seriousness.
When I gathered the program staff for a two-day retreat at my place up north (just one short week into my tenure here), I began our time together with this question from Eugene Peterson:
Why, pray tell, do new pastors often treat the congregations to which they have been freshly appointed with the impatience and violence of a developer building a shopping mall, instead of the patient devotion of a farmer cultivating a field?
Then, having raised the question, Peterson goes on to admonish and advise:
The congregation is not the enemy. Pastoral work is not adversarial. These people in the pews are not aliens to be conquered and then rehabilitated to the satisfaction of the pastoral ego. Neither is the congregation stupid and lumpish, just waiting for pastoral enlightenment. No! The congregation is topsoil, seething with energy and organisms that have incredible capacities for assimilating death and participating in resurrection, before which the only proper pastoral stance is awe.
Listen to that last sentence again: ‘The congregation is topsoil.... before which the only proper pastoral stance is awe.” When I finished reading that, I expected the staff to be most impressed. Bertha, in turn, announced that she was going to go home and tell you that I said you were dirt. So I beat her to it. But I also said it. For you are.... dirt, that is. And if you have followed this little story carefully, you know that “dirt” is precisely what you ought to be.
For from dust we came. And to dust we shall return. But in between the dust that was...and the dust that is to be.... let us (in this present hour) make of ourselves the best dirt possible. And as for the rest, what choice do we have but to
