Christ at all hazards fruit hath shewed – Isaiah 55:10-13, Matthew 13:1-9
I caught up with a friend for coffee at the start of this week.
When I was young there was a wall poster – with an image like this – that said, “I know into each life some rain must fall – but this is ridiculous!” It’s from an old song by Bill Kenny and Ella Fitzgerald, but you know how there are some people whose lives fit that description? Well, my friend’s life fits that description. Into her life a ridiculous amount of rain has fallen!
And she hasn’t handled it like a saint – depending on how you define saint. She has handled it like a normal person. She has been angry. She has been depressed. She has walked away from some relationships. But she has hung in there with the people who need her, and she has hung in there with faith and with being part of a faith community, and I think she is remarkable for that.
But we were talking about the impact that our Christian lives have had, and she was mentioning that her adult children only come at Christmas and Easter to church and she said. “You know, Belinda,” she said, “When I think about my whole life, I don’t think anything I’ve said or done has ever brought someone else to faith…”
Then, she took my response out of my mouth. She said, “I know that sometimes we are just planting seeds and we do not know what will happen…”
So, it was an interesting coincidence to find that our Matthew passage was today’s reading, and all week, as I’ve looked at it, I’ve had that conversation replaying in my head. What does this parable, this story told by Jesus, mean? How do we align ourselves with the seeds that fell on good soil and produce fruit for God’s kingdom? Is this really the Parable of the Sower, or is it the Parable of the Seeds or the Parable of the Soils? Or might it be the Parable of the Mysterious Harvest?
It was as the Parable of the Mysterious Harvest that my friend and I spoke about it on Monday.
In that reading we are called to live faithful Christian lives – to serve God, to love others, to share God’s message in every way we can, but if there are no visible results, then we need to wait – William Barclay, in his commentary, says, “It takes a long, long time before an acorn becomes an oak; and it may take a long, long time before the seed germinates in the heart of a man…” – or we need to trust that the results of our seed planting, that the silent growth in other’s lives, is in God’s safekeeping.
Barclay retells a story, told by Herbert Leslie Gee, about a man in his church, Thomas, who died. Gee thought there would be no one at the funeral – Thomas had outlived his friends and had no family – so he decided to go. There was no one at the funeral so afterwards, he followed the coffin to the cemetery. But at the cemetery gate there was a soldier waiting, who came to the graveside and as the minister finished, stepped forward and swept his hand up in a salute “that might have been given to a king”, Gee writes.As they walked away from the grave, the soldier said to him, “You will perhaps be wondering what I am doing here. Years ago, Thomas was my Sunday School teacher. I was a wild lad and a sore trial to him. He never knew what he did for me, but I owe everything I am or will be to him, and today I had to come and salute him at the end.”
As Barclay concludes, “It is our task to sow the seed, and, without discouragement, to leave the rest to God.” It is a comforting way to read this parable, and there are times – as in my friend’s life – when we need this comfort.
However, we can also read this parable as a corrective tool – as a way of evaluating the witness of our lives and our work for God’s Kingdom – as the Parable of the Seeds or, more accurately, the Parable of the Soils!
This is the most prevalent reading – probably because it is the one supported by the explanation of the parable found in Matthew 13: 18-23. As it is the exception – rather than the rule – for a parable to be explained, many commentators believe this could be a later interpretation that was popular in Matthew’s community.
In this reading we are responsible, for the kinds of seeds we are sowing – as that marvellous Mavis Staples’ song says, “Sow good seeds everybody… You gonna reap just what you sow!” – or for the kinds of soil that we are. After all, the seed, is good! In the parable it produces a harvest, and, in the explanation, it represents the word of the kingdom – the message of God’s overcoming love.
What we are talking about then is the kinds of soils – the kinds of lives – in which the word is planted. Are our lives like hard soil, soil that has been beaten down, compacted over the years, so the words of the kingdom cannot take root there? Or are our lives like shallow soil where seeds root and grow, but when adversity comes, life and faith cannot be sustained? Or are our lives like thorny soil where the other growth takes all the available nourishment? Or are our lives good soil? Soil that is crumbly, that is full of organic matter, that has a healthy pH, that results in a good crop – more seeds emerging and developing so seed can be sown again?
This is a challenging reading of the parable. As one commentator puts it, “If we are honest with ourselves, we can probably find evidence of several kinds of soil in our lives and in our congregations on any given day.”
Certainly, as people in a first world nation, in a city with the highest average incomes nationwide, there is a real danger that “the cares of this world and the lure of wealth” will inhibit the flourishing of our faith; our willingness to go where Jesus leads us, our generosity, our compassion for others.
But there is also a danger – because faith is a long haul – that we do not seek out the resources we need to sustain our faith; time with God, time in God’s word, time with God’s people. And when adversity comes, we wither.
There is a wonderful story about Archbishop Desmond Tutu from the apartheid years in South Africa when he held a church service in St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town because the government had banned anti-apartheid rallies. But as the service started hundreds of police gathered outside and then, as Tutu was preaching, they came into the Cathedral, armed, and lined the walls. They took out notebooks and recorded Tutu’s words.
But Tutu continued to preach against the evils of apartheid, declaring that it would not endure. At one point he addressed the police directly, “You are powerful. You are very powerful, but you are not gods and I serve a God who cannot be mocked. So, since you’ve already lost, since you’ve already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!”
With that the congregation erupted in dance and song! The police didn’t know what to do. Their attempts at intimidation had been overcome by the Tutu’s confidence that goodness was stronger than evil, that goodness would eventually triumph.
We, too, need to seek out the resources that will enable us to sustain a faithful witness in our lives. We must keep our hearts open, soft and crumbly, for the seeds of the kingdom that God keeps sowing, that God never stops sowing.
There are many more readings of this parable we could do, but thinking about it this week, I came back to the title in our Bibles – the Parable of the Sower. And two things struck me.
Firstly, Jesus tells this parable in the context of growing conflict. In chapter 12 we’re told of a series of conflicts with the Pharisees, who, verse 14, plot to destroy him, and, verse 24, even accuse him of working for Satan! At the end of chapter 12, Jesus appears to be also at odds with his own family (12:46-50) and at the end of chapter 13, he is rejected by his hometown (13:54-58). The Parable of the Sower, then, explains what is happening around Jesus, it explains that many who hear the message will not respond, but it also promises that there will still be a harvest!
Secondly, what we notice about this harvest is – unlike Mark’s telling of this parable where the numbers ascend in an impressive climax: 30, 60, 100! In Matthew, they descend! In Matthew it is not the size of the harvest that is important, but, again, that there will be a harvest!
Despite the unwelcoming environment, the discouraging circumstances, the opposition, there will be a harvest. There will be a harvest because, as I said earlier, God keeps faithfully sowing. It is simply the faithfulness of the Sower who ensures that the harvest will come.
Which is what, I think, now that I’ve had a whole week to think about it, I should have said to my friend….that she – she alone – is evidence of the harvest; that the faith God has placed in her life, the faith she continues to hold onto, the faith she continues to witness to is the harvest! The faithfulness of the Sower ensures that the harvest will come.
There is a poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins that speaks of how Christ has shown us that fruit will come from the darkest of circumstances, despite the most determined opposition. In his reading bread comes from the rocky soil and the birds become the angels who desire to carry Jesus as the seed of God to heaven.
Although the letter said
On thistles that men look not grapes to gather,
I read the story rather
How soldiers platting thorns around Christ’s Head
Grapes grew and drops of wine were shed.
Though when the sower sowed,
The wingèd fowls took part, part fell in thorn,
And never turned to corn,
Part found no root upon the flinty road—
Christ at all hazards fruit hath shewed.
From wastes of rock He brings
Food for five thousand: on the thorns He shed
Grains from His drooping Head;
And would not have that legion of winged things
Bear Him to heaven on easeful wings.
May this Sower who continues to faithfully sow into our lives be our comfort and our challenge and our promise as we continue to sow into our world – its hard places, its rocky places, its thorny places, its good places – knowing that the faithfulness of the Sower ensures that the harvest will come.