First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
24 April 2005
Consoling the Church
Matthew doesn't make it easy for us preachers when he has Jesus sit the disciples down and explain to them the parable of the sower and the seed. In the course of laying out the parable's meaning, he says more or less what any preacher might say. He doesn't even let us get a first crack at it!
"Teacher, Teacher, what does the parable mean?" the disciples ask. Jesus replies, "The sower is God. The seed is the Word, the good news about God's mercy. The path, the rocks, the thorns and the good soil stand for the various ways in which people do or do not receive that good news and do or do not come to full maturity as Christians. Got it? Good. Class dismissed."
And that's pretty much all she wrote. The only thing a preacher might need to add to the explanation would be some moralizing. It would go something like this:
Friend (intones the preacher), does the Word fall on you like it would fall on a hard path? Does it just lie there on the surface as you go through the motions, never really grappling with its deeper demands on your life?
"Yes," some of us would feel moved to say, "that's me all right."
Or (the preacher continues) does the Word fall on you as it would on rocky ground? Does it shrivel up the minute that following Jesus stops being fun or uplifting or convenient?"
"Yes," some of us would have to admit, "that's me for sure."
Or perhaps are you like the thicket of thorns? You strangle the seed with your ambition, worldly preoccupations and ego."
"Oh, yes," some of us would respond, "you've got my number. I am very thorny..."
But wait! There is another possibility (exclaims the preacher). Perhaps you, friend, are the good soil. Maybe within you the seed is growing strong and your harvest will be a Christian life as robust as pumpkins on Miracle-Gro!
"Oh, good Lord," all of us would say, "no way! Good soil? Not me."
No (the preacher pounces), that's right! Not you! And not any of us! And herein, friend, you have the moral of the tale. We are all bad soil. Bad, bad, bad. Therefore we must all do something (or stop doing something) so that we might one day become good soil and produce, produce, produce.
That's it. The great old depressing parable of the sower and the seed. Plain as the nose on your face and clear as a bright summer day.
You can all go home now.
Well, no, not yet. First it might be good to ask what happened to the odd, off-kilter parables of Jesus? To the edginess of his stories? Where did all the mystery go? Where is that elusive quality that even 2,000 years of running parables through the preaching mill has not succeeded in destroying? It sure isn't evident in the way Matthew makes Jesus line out the one-to-one correspondences in this story.
I mean, usually when Jesus spins a parable, people say, "Huh?" and walk away scratching their heads, or "You have to be kidding!" and mutter insults under their breath. The disciples pretty much always look blank, even when they are assuring Jesus that yessiree, Bob, they get it, they get it.
The way Matthew has Jesus explain it, this parable is an allegorical no-brainer. The sower is God, the seed is the gospel, the varying qualities of soil represent various forms of our resistance, and the good soil represents the ideal, the goal towards which we must strive to please God and do God's work. Thus the story has become just another run- of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen story of impending judgment, just your garden variety ethical imperative to try to be a better Christian, because right now, you're really not.
But there is another way for ears of faith to hear it.
Imagine this scene. It is many years after Pentecost. All the apostles have died. A smallish congregation somewhere in Syria is feeling sad and stressed. People are leaving the community because following Jesus is becoming a good deal more serious than they had expected. The discipleship thing they signed on for in baptism is clashing hard with old cultural, social, family and economic values, and some people wonder if it's worth the loss in status to stay, especially if they might one day also lose their lives.
Others are leaving disillusioned with the church's leaders, with the preacher's theology, with the way their money is being spent, or with the inescapable fact that other church members aren't perfect or even all that likeable.
Still others are leaving not because there's anything really wrong, but because there's something else that's come up since they were baptized, a new religion to explore, an exciting new guru to follow, a new technique or teaching that promises complete peace of mind and escape from the cares of the body. So they are off to the next thing, restless and seeking.
Matthew's church is pressured from the outside by persecution and social disapproval; it feels shaky on the inside because of dissension and desertion. How will such a leaky vessel carry people safely over the dangerous waters of the world and deposit them on the other shore? How will such a dim lamp become the beacon for the world? How will such a second-rate instrument fill the earth with the joyous sound of good news? How will such tired arms welcome all creatures into the reconciliation that Jesus embodied? How will such a small bank account pay the light bill? Matthew's church wonders if it has much of a future.
And when you start wondering if you have a future, you can't help but question your experience in the present. And if you are having doubts about the present, you are going to be tempted to invent a more fervent and heroic past. And as you summon up that glorious past, you will likely use it to browbeat people into trying to revive it, even though it never really existed the way you remember it. And before long the only thing anyone will know is how far they have fallen away from the standards of the Golden Age. Thus the community's Sad Sack self-image grows even sadder.
Now imagine that into the middle of just such a demoralized church comes the Lord. Jesus sits the church down and says:
Children, come here. A story. For you.
Once upon a time, in the olden days, farmers took seed and tossed it far and wide in fields that still had the stubble from the previous year's crop sticking up everywhere. They didn't clear it or prepare it in any way, they just threw new seed everywhere.
Now, when they sowed seed like that, they did not always get all the seed onto the fields, but they didn't stop to retrieve the wayward seed. They just kept broad-casting until all the seed was gone. Then they plowed the seeds under along with the leftover stubble.
But before they could finish plowing it under, birds would come and make a meal of most of the seed. They really went to town on the seed that had not made it onto the field but that had fallen on hard pathways around the field. The mid-day sun fried up all the seeds that had come to rest on rocks, and the briar bushes strangled some too. And so sometimes the harvests were good. But sometimes they were not so good.
One farmer who had sown seed in just this way came back to his field after weeks of patient waiting, and lo and behold, the stubble field was thick and green. It looked for all the world like a double, triple, or quadruple yield! No one had ever seen a crop like that before! People came from miles around to gawk and point, and the Miracle-Gro people wanted to put the farmer under contract.
Do not forget, my children, that the farmer's field was scraggly, and bordered 'round by rock and thorns. Remember that the birds ate most of the seed. Remember that the sun burned almost all the rest. How few seeds were plowed into the earth!
I am trying to tell you therefore not to be afraid. Not of anyone or anything, and not of yourselves, either. People look at you and say, "There is no good soil anywhere in that field, rocky and thorny and hard. How will anything grow? Why would anyone waste good seed there? Why should anyone want to have anything to do with such a thing?"
But they do not know anything about sowing. The farmer knew, and he planted in your field. With joy and abandon he flung out the seed. And if not all the seed took root, if some blew away or dried up or was carried off to feed the sparrow's hatchlings, why should that surprise you?
What is surprising about human frailty? What is unusual about trouble, impatience, failure and fear? These are the ordinary and the expected things. For these things there is ready mercy and healing as great as God is great. The extraordinary thing is growth, not setbacks; the sixty-fold yield, not the sorrowful lack; the abundance, not the scarcity; the victory, not the rout; the joy, not the pain.
The amazing thing is not that you are weak and inept and timid and faltering. What is breathtaking is that you do good with empty hands; you stand up to evil on feet of clay. The surprise is the gift given to you to treasure in earthenware jars, the crop of mercy and truth that is already lush within you. Pay attention with joy to these things.
Now, children, don't ask me to say another word. This is a great mystery. You need to be still. Listen with your hearts. You will understand.
Sisters and brothers, sometimes I wonder why the church (that's you and me) has ears tuned exquisitely well to all sorts of squawking weaknesses but tuned very badly to the Gospel's deep tones of consolation and encouragement. And I wonder what would happen if our faith were recalibrated to pick up that deep consolation long before we ever become aware that there is any static on the line?
Would we eventually stop trying to recover imagined pasts or live up to anxious ideals? Would we eventually get over ourselves and learn to live and minister with Jesus in the midst of daily disappointments and failures, all the world's difficulties, its contempt for humility and meekness, and all our own sins?
Would we release each other to dare more, risk more, love more, pray better, care for each other and take our joy to the world with lighter hearts if we did not focus so much on all the ways we can and do fail, all the resources we could use but don't have, all the big hopes we are hoping but that we do not act on because we believe they are too grand for the likes of us?
What would happen if we stopped believing our own bad press and started believing the gospel? What might the impact be upon our church and on the world if we believed in the mystery of the extravagant, paradoxical way God works in us and in the world, with such joy and trust, such hope and abandon, such encouragement and consolation, heedless of our resistance and our problems, unconcerned about obstacles and never calculating the odds for failure or success?
And what would happen if what we came to believe about the church we also started to believe about ourselves—and about each other? What would happen if we cut ourselves and each other the holy slack of this great consolation that removes fear and disables anxiety—namely, that my weakness is my glory (and my only glory); that your lack is your wealth (and your only wealth); and that in the depths of our stoniest, hardest, thorniest selves, a harvest of beauty is even now being gathered with approval and tenderness by the God who planted it in us by the Word?
It is a great mystery, dear friends, and it is true. If your hearts have ears to hear, please use them.
© 2005, J Mary Luti