Plants, Parables, Perspectives

This sermon was preached on August 24, 2008, at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. The text for the day was Matthew 13: 1-17, The Parable of the Sower.

Planting a seed that grows into a flower, or a tree, or a strand of wheat. Is it easy, or is it hard? What do you think? Who here thinks it’s easy?

And you're right! Nothing easier in the world. You take a seed, put it in the soil, give it a little sunshine and water, and before you know it you have a plant. It is the nature of a seed to sprout and grow. It happens millions and billions of times every day, all over the earth, in every kind of condition or climate, with or without human intervention. It’s a very, very simple, very ordinary process.

Planting a seed that grows into a flower, or a tree, or a strand of wheat. Is it easy, or is it hard? Who here thinks it’s hard?

And you also would be right! Just open up any biology textbook and you’ll see that planting a seed is just one part of an incredibly complicated biological process in which an embryonic plant, contained within the seed coating, is influenced to germinate and grow only with the confluence of perfect internal structure and perfect external conditions—proper amounts of temperature, water, oxygen, and light. In fact, some seeds won’t germinate and grow unless something fairly complicated or dramatic happens to them--like heating in a fire, or soaking in a body of water, or passing through an animal's digestive tract. It’s not a simple process—in fact, it’s a miracle that any seed, anywhere, sprouts and grows at all.

Is planting a seed easy or hard? Really, it depends on your perspective—but I would feel pretty comfortable saying that it’s both.

Now that we’ve discussed botany, let’s talk about the parables of Jesus. Is understanding the parables of Jesus easy, or is it hard?

On the one hand, scholars tell us that Jesus taught in parables in order to communicate great spiritual truths in simple ways that ordinary people could relate to and understand. So we have the parable of the sower. It would be easy to interpret even without Jesus explaining it, but in fact he does just that in Matthew 18-23, the passage immediately after the words we read for today.

God is the sower who throws seeds over the path. The seeds represent the word and the way of God--and the different soils and conditions in which that seed takes root represent the different kinds of people who hear that word, and the ways that they grow and flourish in that word—or not.

Jesus tells us, “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."

It’s a simple parable, and a simple interpretation. Or is it?

One of the things that makes it so tricky to preach on the parables is this sneaking sense I always get that the more I study them, the more there is in them to see; and the more I see in them, the more complicated they get; and the more complicated they get, the more there is to say.

And the parable of the sower fits right into that category. It gets more and more complicated the more I think about it. And here’s the thing. I think it’s meant to.

In one of the articles I read while preparing this sermon I found an interesting story. A minister is friends with an artist, a painter, and goes to visit him in his studio. The painter shows the minister one of his finished paintings, and the minister, impressed, says to the painter, “What does that painting mean?” And the painter tells him, “If I tell you, that’s all you will ever see there.”

I think the parables of Jesus are like that painting. Yes, they have an obvious interpretation. But if we stop there, and that’s all we ever see, we’ll miss the fact that they offer us so much more.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus speaks not only to those historical people gathered on that beach in first-century Palestine. He speaks not only to us as his people. He also speaks to each of us individually. And like the artist’s paintings, what we hear in Jesus’ words not only concretely describes a spiritual truth—but it speaks to our hearts, and our souls, and our sense of imagination as well.

“Listen!” Jesus tells the crowd, “Let anyone with ears listen!” and again, “Hear then the parable of the sower!”

Jesus isn’t calling for memorization and repetition or a formulaic interpretation. He is calling for us to listen, and to be ready; to open our ears, our eyes, our hearts, and our minds to the movement of the spirit. Jesus is telling us that if we are ready to listen there will always be something for us to hear: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see,” he says, “And your ears, for they hear.”

Jesus is telling us that in the parable of the Sower, as in all of scripture, each of us will always hear not only Jesus’ clear call to salvation and the life of faith, but our own pitch-perfect and uniquely resonant call to meaning and ministry in Jesus’ name—if we are willing not to sit passively and be only receivers of information—if we are willing to open ourselves, sit up, pay attention and be active listeners--to hear, to look, to think, and to imagine.

In the parable of the Sower, Jesus is telling us to listen. But he is also telling us to trust.

Now those of you who are master gardeners and experts at growing things: What do you think of the Sower’s planting technique as Jesus describes it for us in this passage?

It’s a planting technique that would have been commonly seen in Jesus’ day. A farmer puts a bag of seed over his shoulder and sets off through the field, throwing seed all around him as he walks. After he’s done sowing, he might get out a plow and go over the field a few ties to work some of the seed into the soil. But only some of those seeds sown so abundantly will grow into a viable crop. Many of the seeds will fall onto the path and be snapped up by birds. Still more will fall onto rocks, get poorly rooted, and have a precarious existence. Still others will find their hopeful shoots choked to death by weeds. And some of the seeds that have just the right conditions, the right temperature, the right soil, the right water, and the right light—even some of those won’t germinate and grow, for no good reason that anyone can tell.

Now doesn’t that seem just wasteful to you? Surely seed is a precious commodity—each one a valuable potential plant—not to be thrown profligately and inefficiently into places where it will never grow, or will grow badly, or get eaten by birds.

Those of you who are gardeners—don’t you treat your seeds and seedlings a little better than that? After all, you want your plants and flowers to grow! You have a plan! You want your garden to look a certain way. You don’t just throw the seed out over your shoulder and hope, do you? What if none of it came up—or it came up at the wrong time, or in the wrong place?

But you know, it isn’t the parable of the Seeds, or the parable of the Master Gardener, or the parable of the Landscape Architect. It’s the parable of the Sower. And Jesus tells us in the parable that when the Sower throws seeds extravagantly, abundantly, generously, over every kind of soil and in every earthly direction, a bountiful crop comes up—Jesus says, “a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”

Jesus is telling us to trust in the harvest.

And Jesus is telling us that, in spiritual matters, trusting the harvest is not about calculation, or even preparation-- but about grace.

Jesus is telling us that whatever spiritual seed we’re planting and whatever we hope will grow—in God’s garden, in our church, or in our ministry in the world--our sowing should not focus on efficiency, or yield, or cost/benefit analysis, or spreadsheets, or the bottom line.

Whether it’s money we’re worried about, or mission, or members—or the future of this or any church—Jesus is telling us to use all that we have and all that we are, to sow our gifts extravagantly, and generously, and joyfully—maybe even foolishly—confident, and trusting, that the Harvest belongs to God, the God of Grace, the God of Provision, the God who holds us and holds the future.

We can’t be afraid to give away our time, and our talent, and our treasure. We must sow our seeds, throw them out to the winds, give them over to God’s Grace and God’s directing. We must trust in the Harvest, in God’s harvest, even if it’s a harvest we’ll never know or see.

I want to read you some of a little essay by author Nicole Johnson. It’s really a meditation on motherhood, and it appears in her book entitled “Invisible Women.” It’s told from the point of view of a mother named Charlotte who is lamenting about how no one in her family notices all the things that she does.

It started to happen gradually…
One day I was walking my son Jake to school. I was holding his hand and we were about to cross the street when the crossing guard said to him, “Who is that with you, young fella?”
“Nobody,” he shrugged.
Nobody? The crossing guard and I laughed. My son is only five, but as we crossed the street I thought, oh my goodness, nobody?
I’m invisible.
It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I’m thinking, “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” Obviously not. No one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all.
I’m invisible.
Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more.
Can you fix this?
Can you tie this?
Can you open this?
Some days I’m not a pair of hands; I’m not even a human being.
I’m a clock to ask, “What time is it?”
I’m a satellite guide to answer, “What number is the Disney Channel?”
I’m a car to order, “Right around 5:30, please.”
I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude – but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again.
One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my out of style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My unwashed hair was pulled up in a banana clip and I was afraid I could actually smell peanut butter in it.
I was feeling pretty pathetic when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package and said, “I brought you this.”
It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn’t exactly sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription. “To Charlotte, with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.”
In the days ahead I would read, no, devour, the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I would pattern my work:
• No one can say who built the great Cathedrals—we have no record of their names.
• These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.
• They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.
• The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.
A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, “Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it.”
And the workman replied, “Because God sees.”
I closed the book, feeling the missing piece just push into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, “I see you Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one else does. No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on, no cupcake you’ve baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become.”
I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who will show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on . . . and one day it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.

Nicole Johnson points out in this essay how easy it is to get discouraged when you work faithfully, day in and day out, without appreciation or recognition or even visible results. It’s easy for mothers to feel invisible, get discouraged, swallowed up by caring and caregiving, dirty socks and whining and soccer games and hair with peanut butter in it.

It’s easy for churches—especially small ones like Laurelhurst—to feel invisible too--to feel that maybe the glory years have passed us by, that the ground is no longer fertile, that no matter how much seed we throw out there, nothing is going to grow, that nothing we do can make a difference. Yet Nicole Johnson points to the great cathedrals as lasting symbols of what faithful people—faithful mothers-- working day by day, little by little, loving deed by loving deed, on a job they will never see finished, can accomplish to the glory of God.

In the parable of the Sower, Jesus asks us to pay attention to God’s word, to sit up and listen for God’s voice calling us to lives of meaning and ministry. Jesus urges us to sow extravagantly, not to count and measure the seeds but to throw our gifts and our resources and our talents to the wind of the Spirit for planting. And Jesus asks us to trust in the grace and provision of God—to trust that God will bring those seeds to sprout, to flower, to fruition and to bountiful harvest—that God will use our ministry to the glory and increase of his Kingdom—even if it’s a harvest we never get to see.

Planting a seed that grows into a flower, or a tree, or a strand of wheat—or a child, or a ministry, or a great cathedral. Is it easy, or is it hard?

For certain it’s a work of generosity, a work of beauty, a work of grace.

Amen.