“Listen! A sower went out to sow.”
This is the first of a string of parables that comprise the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew begins this thirteenth chapter by telling us that the things he is talking about happened on the same day as those that end the previous chapter, which is the storyteller’s way of saying that the two narratives are related. In the twelfth chapter, Jesus has been getting in increasing trouble with the religious leaders of his community, and wonders aloud why he and the good news he brings are being rejected by the people best able to hear and understand his message.
And then he starts to tell the crowds that have been following a series of subversive stories which demonstrate exactly why the religious and civil authorities are so angry with and frightened of Jesus.
The word “parable” is related to the word “comparable” – it simply means comparison story. And indeed many of Jesus’ parables begin with direct comparisons, things like, “the reign of God is like a mustard seed…” But in this case, he launches right into the story, and saves the comparison for the end.
“A sower went out to sow.”
Many of Jesus’ parables have agricultural metaphors, which makes sense considering his audience. But we, either because few of us are farmers anymore, or because we are so used to hearing the parables that we don’t think about their content very much, only their meaning, may fail to notice that the sower in the parable is obviously metaphorical because no actual sower would have done what the sower in the parable does.
Seed, after all, was precious. A portion of the year’s harvest, the next portion after the ten percent given to God, was set aside and insofar as possible protected through the winter from pests and rot, and, in a year of bad harvest or harsh winter, from hungry humans as well. Nobody who had put the effort into growing, harvesting and protecting such a precious thing would scatter it wildly on ground where it could not grow.
Jesus’ crowd of followers would have known instantly that the sower Jesus was talking about was himself, and that he was preaching against those who had begun to hound him.
So it is not Jesus’ listeners, but us who need the interpretation of the parable that follows it, and indeed, it is clear to scholars that the interpretations of the parables we find in the gospels were generally not in the original collection of the sayings of Jesus, now lost to us, that Matthew, Mark and Luke all had in front of them when writing their gospels.
So Matthew takes pains to let readers (including us), who are removed from the plotting and intrigues of early first century Jerusalem by both time and distance, know what Jesus means.
The seed is the Word of God, and the soil, rocky or fertile, is the hearts of those who hear the Word, and the Word grows and spreads or withers and dies according to the nature of our hearts.
And the story tells us something about the profligate nature of God’s love, because unlike a sensible sower, God scatters the Word, the Good News, indiscriminately. The revelation of God’s abundant love isn’t reserved for the educated or the deserving, or even those to whom it has been promised, but shared extravagantly – we might, if it were anyone other than God we were talking about, even say foolishly – among all within the reach of the sower’s arm. And even the wild profligacy of the sower is a sign of that love – an enactment of the Word, for spreading the Word so freely is itself an embodiment of the love that is the Word of God, that is, we are told, God.
Well, that’s one interpretation.
But it’s not the only one. Even in Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ explanation of the parable, the meaning already begins to slide. By the end of the passage, the seed is no longer the Word, but the hearer of the Word, and it is we, and not the Word, that wither and perish or grow and flourish.
That is, after all, the beauty, the glory and the wonder of parables. They are open-ended. They are meaningful to the teller, but as the stories interact with the memories, experiences and aspirations of the hearer, they may mean something completely new, and meaning is multiplied, and the stories shift in the retelling, and seeds of tales turn into harvests of significance.
Let me offer just one, close to home example.
Many, many churches are wrestling, these days, with how to respond to our rapidly changing world. Many have discovered that their neighborhoods have changed around them, in demographics, in affluence, in churchgoing, in needs and hopes. And many, many churches, in the midst of all that change, have noticed that the things they have been doing well for very many years no longer have the same results they once had. Most churches in America are shrinking, many have become commuter churches as members in their neighborhood move away but still return on Sundays, while the families that moved into their former homes do not also join their churches, either because the new families are still commuting to their old churches, or because church just doesn’t seem to them to offer anything they need.
Onto that particular soil, God is always scattering one particular seed among many, which is the idea that we, as church community, need to change in some way to thrive or even survive in the changed world in which we find ourselves.
Does that sound familiar?
Certainly that was the situation St. James’ was in when the seed was planted here that we could not be church the way God was calling us to be church in our beautiful historic building. Some of you were here when that particular batch of seed fell, and remember that the results were a lot like the parable. For some people, the idea took root and grew into ideas about expanding and adapting the old church facility. For others, the idea of a new building in a new location inspired them. For others, it was, “wait and see,” or “over my dead body!” And, like the parable, some embraced change quickly, some more slowly, and some fell away.
But the seed of the idea of a new building that would enable the community to grow and live out the Gospel in new ways in a new world is the one that took root, and in the end yielded a harvest in this amazing building in which we gather today to give thanks to God.
And just as different people here responded to that seed in different ways, so have different churches. Some, when the need for change, whether it be change of building, or of worship, or of leadership, or of community norms and practices, respond to the idea quickly and joyfully. Some respond cautiously but hopefully. And others dig in their heels and say no. I even know of one church in the area where the majority of the church leadership has said out loud that they would rather see the church die than see it change.
St. James’ Church has responded to that particular seed of change graciously, and gracefully, and, most importantly, fruitfully. I am grateful every day for the gift of this place, and the gift of the community that built it and sustains it.
But, and this is the unfortunate thing, I suppose, about the Word of God, God doesn’t stop planting a field just because it has borne good fruit. In fact, it would be reasonable to guess that it is the fields that provide the best harvest that get planted again and again.
So the question is, and it’s a perfect question for a church in leadership transition, what new seeds are being planted here? What ideas, what changes, what dreams are we being called to, individually and as a community? Are there newer or better ways we can serve the community around us? Do we have any inklings about how to tell, and even better to show our neighbors how much God loves them?
It may be that the seeds of what happens next are already here, ideas that are just bubbling up in conversations, or even just knocking around in one person’s head, waiting to be shared and spread and grow. Or it may be that the dream of who we will be is in the heart of someone who is not yet part of our community, someone we have to find a way to welcome and embrace.
As I said, God is profligate with the seed – the Word is constantly falling on all of us, and manages to grow in the unlikeliest of places. And if you think about it, in the parable, even the seed that fell on the path still managed to do good by feeding the birds. The word that falls on your heart may not find fertile soil in you, but it might in another if you are willing to share it. And sometimes none of us alone is able to nurture the Word that God sows, and we have to tend it as a community.
Amen.