Becoming Better Soil

Sermon     Proper 10 A    All Saints      7-12-20

Isaiah 55: 10 – 13    Psalm 65      Romans 8: 1 – 11      Matthew: 13: 1 – 9, 18 – 23

Becoming Better Soil

If you are listening to this sermon, I suspect you will hear at least one thing that will offend you.  I have stepped on my own toes in preaching this text in this manner, but I needed it.  I have not yet mastered the art of being fully Christian in all times and all places.

Our Gospel text is the Parable of the Seeds and the Sower, a familiar parable if you have been to church more than twice.  Reading it, I always remember my father in the Spring planting his annual garden.  He would scatter the seeds by hand, spreading them carefully in the rows he had prepared.  My father spent as much time preparing the soil as he did in the planting.  If the soil were not good, he knew that his garden would not produce. 

Jesus tells the parable about the farmer finding four types of soil: the hard-packed dirt of the walking path, the rocky shallow soil, the soil overgrown with weeds and sandspurs, and the good rich soil ready for seeds.  No matter where we have lived, it is not hard to imagine any one of those soil types.  Let us think about these as descriptions of our hearts and minds.

First, the hard packed, well-travelled kind of heart and mind.  Some of us have not entertained a new thought since our third-grade science project.  We accept the lens of our childhood as the one true lens for life.  In my deep South hometown, I learned that racial separation was installed by God and my job was to maintain that separation. I learned that my church was the one true way and other brands of Christianity were suspect.  More things were forbidden and to be feared than were appreciated and enjoyed.  Keep your head down.  Hold on tight.  

The rocky shallow soil is rich in minerals but not very deep. In that heart and mind, lots of new ideas land, blaze up fast and then wilt.  Habits, like the rocks, are too hard to break.  There is a desire for God and for God’s love. But our habits win out and we cannot let go of easy ways. The real work of raking, hoeing, tilling and enriching that soil seems too much trouble, too much work while the status quo is okay, comfortable. After all, there will be another new idea tomorrow and we will do the work then.

The soil that is overgrown with thorns and sandspurs describes the heart and mind that is too convinced of its own rightness.  Nothing new can take root, nothing old can be examined. This mind is sure that it already knows what it needs to know, nothing new can be engaged.  This heart is much too afraid of getting hurt to embark on any adventure.  The grip on what is known and trusted right now is fierce.  No new idea can creep in.

We have all known people who fit each of these descriptions.  Some of us have been each of these at different times.  Jesus calls us, however, to be the good soil that allows seeds to grow and to put down deep roots.  To be the kind of soil that understands the pain of tilling and the necessity of weeding.  To be the soil that love and rain and sunshine use to produce good things.  God calls us to produce GOD things.

Our world is complex and confusing, a place of both too little and too much.  What we have trusted is being questioned and what we stand on seems to be under attack.  God challenges us to be that good soil – to ask questions of ourselves and others, to listen for God’s voice wherever we are.  God asks us to see God’s image in every person we meet.  God desires that we talk directly to God in our prayers about everything in our lives so that God can show us God’s way in all things.  

Both old thoughts and new ideas can come from God.  We should not fear either.  We are not stranded on a wicked planet looking for a way out.  We are God’s beloved children, God’s beloved and created soil in which the Holy Spirit can plant love and mercy.  A heart and mind that reaches out to all of God’s children and risks new adventures with Christ Jesus.  Jesus promised never to leave us.  When we test Jesus’s promises, we find that they are true in every circumstance.  

Blessed be the name of the Lord!