Isaiah 55: 10-13
NPMC
Psalm 65
9 Pentecost
Romans 8: 1-11
July 13, 2008
Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23
Anita Retzlaff
The Seed of Hope in Kingdom Soil
Grace to you and peace from God the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the
Christ. In our moment of silent meditation this morning we pray for the work
that was done at our Mennonite Church Canada Assembly in Winnipeg this past
week. The delegate body was clear in their determination to support the Osler
Resolution that mandates our Canadian conference to find ways of speaking out in
media advertising and by other means in order to enliven the public imagination
to think in ways of peace. This will involve money and in the end, our
commitment to spreading the word of peace in anxious times. Let us pray for this
work. You, O Lord, hear every prayer. Help us to be people of your peace. AMEN
Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed some seeds fell… They fell all
over the place: on good soil, on rocky ground, on hard, beaten down paths and in
amongst the weeds. Everywhere! The seeds fell everywhere. The sower seems a
little sloppy, don’t you think? Any respectable farmer trained up in the ways of
broadcast seeding would be more careful, especially if the yield is only about 7
to 10 times of that which is seeded. This farmer threw the seed around as if it
didn’t matter much if many of those seeds did not grow into full-fledged
producing plants. Strange story illustration really. Pretty wasteful if you ask
me.
The sower doesn’t hoard the seed but scatters it liberally and generously onto
every kind of terrain. He doesn’t seem to plan out carefully where every little
seed will go, doesn’t predestine or control where the seed will produce most
abundantly but salts the earth with seed indiscriminately.
This is a parable, a story that holds a secret. There are some bits of this
story that we figure out pretty quickly, especially in this parable because an
interpretation is given by Matthew in verses 18-23 in this morning’s text. So we
suspect immediately that the sower is God or Jesus. But what is the secret
contained inside the story and why does this information come to us in parable
form? Why not just make a bold and obvious statement that God wants such and
such and the expectation is that his followers will respond by doing this, that
and the other thing?
Many books have been written trying to explain parables and no doubt each one of
us has thought about the why and the wherefore of Jesus’ consistent use of
parable and questioning instead of giving straight answers or direct orders that
would leave things unambiguous. Reflecting on the writing of Brian McLaren in
his book The Secret Message of Jesus, it seems to me that the core of Jesus’
message, the truth about the gospel is subtle. It is about quiet and inner
transformation. The impact of the Kingdom of God is often enacted and
experienced behind closed doors where the public isn’t watching. The Kingdom of
God experienced as shalom, peace, doesn’t usually make the news.
You know how some smaller treasures in our world are referred to as a “best kept
secret.” Well in a way, the Kingdom of God is such a secret. It is a secret in
the sense that it needs the right combination of a stirring of the heart and a
receptive and readied environment in order to grow into the heart of God. Love
of God and love of neighbour cannot be a national movement or a political
campaign because kindness and compassion don’t work as a strategy. These
abilities come out of a way of being and cannot be legislated, coerced or even
taught unless there is openness and receptivity. We can plant seeds in the
public sphere, we can show images of peaceful relationship and love but we
cannot force anyone to become such a person.
Hence the venue for parables and this parable in particular. God is the careless
broadcast seeder; casting seeds of love willy nilly, everywhere, in all corners
of the world and in all situations in life. These seeds of God’s heart are
scattered over the face of the earth - in hope. It is God’s reality of hope that
to us appears as carelessness. God does not plan and predict every detail but
sows seeds in hope that we and then others will catch on to the secret.
So the critical piece is whether or not we care enough to pursue the secret. Do
we believe that huge changes can grow out of tiny acts of mercy? Do we recognize
in ourselves the potential to grow and blossom in the midst of our mundane
lives, even in the midst of crisis in our lives? But also as important for us
today, do we imagine that we are responsible to provide a matrix wherein others
are formed and transformed into the kingdom? Do we help seeds take root?
The seed is sown or the yeast is rising, or the tiny mustard seed grows into a
huge tree. The seed of the kingdom of God is being sewn all around us, all the
time. As the very first hymn in our hymnal reminds us so poetically, “Words from
afar, stars that are falling, sparks that are sewn in us like seed. Names for
our God, dreams, signs, and wonders sent from the past are what we need. We in
this place remember and speak again what we have heard: God’s free redeeming
word.” The seed, the spark is our desire for God, for shalom, for love that
translates into a thoughtful understanding of the way of peace; God’s way of
being in this world. How else can the essence of God’s way be adequately
communicated but through poetry, through quiet transformation, through a secret
that becomes clear only when we slow down enough to pay attention to the desires
of our hearts? In that matrix God meets us.
The seed from the hand of the sower, the heart of God cast everywhere upon the
face of the earth falls onto the surface of real life in all of its
complexities. The hope of God covers the hardened, unyielding, impermeable
places in our lives and when it attempts to take root there can only but be
blown away. We know of people who have no room or imagination for grace, for
gift in their lives. We know of times ourselves when we have not been open to
the stirring of God’s heart in us. The potential is eradicated before anything
can even begin to take root. We have closed ourselves off from hope.
But God’s hopeful ways continue to be broadcast over rocky terrain where in
nooks and crags there are soil and receptivity enough to generate a gentleness
of the Spirit. Yet, that receptivity is not deep and rich enough to sustain that
gentleness over time. Possibilities wither and die before the roots are
fortified with more soil that would ensure mature growth.
The seed of God’s mercy is scattered liberally in places where weeds grow too.
The soil may be good soil if it grows weeds in abundance or it may be marginal
soil that is a good host for weeds but does not support growth of domesticated
plants. Weeds do well in both environments; they are the ever present seductions
around us. The cares of the world, all the anxiety that crisscrosses our
consciousness and bombards our senses day in and day out, the lure of wealth and
self-protection; all these weedy wonders of our day choke out the secret
strength of shalom, of healing in God.
The seed of peace is sewn in a world where many never will understand the
subtlety of the Kingdom and the good news is scattered into oblivion. The Word
from God is planted into the frenetic activity that has become our lives where
passion is easily misdirected, where immediate gratification is so central that
there is no staying power. The roots that connect us to God are torn up and they
shrivel: the potential to bear the fruit of compassion, never fully realized.
And yet because of the audacious and profligate seeding of hope in our world,
God realizes great productivity in some places. This is the secret of the good
soil. The seed that falls here is the same as has fallen elsewhere so it must be
the host environment that is different. The good soil is fertile, receptive,
open and ready to receive God’s gift. In this matrix the hope-filled seeds grow
and bear fruit. The heart of the Creator and the heart implanted in the seed are
one. Hope meets hope. I would like us to see ourselves in this parable as that
fertile soil and welcoming host. More than likely most of us have identified
with the seed that grows in fertile soil. We have been that and continue to grow
and bear fruit I hope. That is why I think our identification with the good
soil, the matrix in which others take root and grow, is an apt image for us as
the Church, the body of Christ. We have become the good soil of the kingdom. We
will help the church to grow.
We will do this, not by any major noisy public campaigns, though I hope we
continue to put our time, energy and money behind some of the necessary social
initiatives in our community, like the Station 20 West project, like the
revitalization of the schools and neighbourhood in Pleasant Hill and other good
projects. Probably more directly we will quietly live the truth of the kingdom
out of the range of any spotlight. Maybe we can be that extra soil that is
deliberately mounded up around the precarious roots of those who find themselves
seeded on the rocks. We have received the Word of God into ourselves and are
secretly positioned to provide a matrix in which others who yearn may grow
toward God.
When we are incorporated into the medium of the good soil, others will see in us
the hope that we have, not trotted out on some billboard but subtly present in
the way we live, in the decisions we make and in the way we treat people. This
is not a dominant stance but a yielding and nurturing one. It is a word, that
when sent out does not return empty. In fact, as the parable hopes, God’s seed
of peace yields 100 times, 60 times and 30 times the shalom that is first
planted. And this phenomenal yield depends on us. It is our mission; it is the
mission of Nutana Park Mennonite Church, today and into the years that spread
out before us.
We will need to think more about specifics. That is what Patrick, Wendy and I
hope to do in concert with the board and with all of you in the next few years.
How can we be rich soil that facilitates growth? How can each one of us carry
within us that secret seed of hope, compelling and transforming? By the grace of
God, the peace of Christ and the kindness of the Holy Spirit we will live the
kingdom of God together. AMEN
.