A reflection for the lectionary readings for th seventh Sunday after Pentecost.
My mom could make anything grow. Her yard was full of blooms and the corners and windows in her house always looks like a jungle with plants of all sorts. We used to joke that she could pick up a dry stick in the yard, poke it in dirt, and it would become a tree. I didn’t inherit that ability. I do best with plants that appreciate not being fussed over. I do have one of her plants, a six foot tall desert rose that she had for many years before she died and that my dad kept because he said it was her favorite. When dad died family lore said I was supposed to inherit it but I think that was just a vicious rumor. Nonetheless, it sits on my front porch near my front door and I check on it and talk to it as I come and go. When it blooms I revel in the beauty of it and take pictures. I don’t ever water it. My niece who did seem to inherit her grandmother’s plant superpower told me not to because it absorbs all the moisture it needs from the air. It feels good to have kept it alive in the almost two years since I’ve been responsible for it but I can’t really take any credit. I’ve just been listening to those who know more than me, tending to the soil to make sure it isn’t too wet, making sure it gets plenty of sunshine, and enjoying the beauty of it.
In the parable Jesus tells us today, we have a gardener who shows reckless abandon with her seeds (I know Jesus uses the male pronoun but it’s a parable and since the best grower I knew was my mom I’m taking some literary license here). She threw her seeds around I like to imagine with the joy of hope that comes with seeds. Will the seeds take root, will they grow, will they provide food and beauty for creation?
Even in her wildness with the seeds, the birds are fed. The NRSV translation renders a Greek word here as ‘wicked one’ snatching the seeds away but the actual word can also be translated as ‘pressed and harassed by labors’. Even in the thinnest of soils the seeds sprouted but they weren’t tended to properly and withered. Some seeds, after sprouting were choked away by thorns and some fell on already fertile soil and thrived.
Interestingly, this is one of very few parables Jesus actually explains. Jesus talks about the type of soil the seeds land in. He doesn’t explain the generous nature with which the gardener shared her seed, he doesn’t say she shouldn’t have done that. He talks about the environments in which the seeds land.
Perhaps in today’s world, he might have explained it this way. The path are perhaps those who are giving all their energy to climbing the success ladder, not concerned with anyone’s wellbeing, not even their own. Their only goal is to climb and gain and be ahead of everyone else. They can’t experience the joy of growth because their life is only a means to an end of ‘more’ of whatever illusive goal they are attempting to achieve in their ‘never enough-ness’. The seeds are merely food to snatch up and keep going.
The rocky ground are those who are willing to attempt some growth but when times are hard, they take the easy way out. They confuse joy with happiness. They expend their energy looking for someone to blame for the inevitable difficulties of life. They are not willing to develop the self awareness that nurtures joy and cultivates the life that God desires for us. They want a quick fix to all troubles and feel entitled to an easy life.
The thorns are the things and ideas of this world that distract us from our true purpose. These are the folks who take the promises of God of abundant life and distort them into material wealth and power and prestige. These are the folks who say God’s love is only for a select few and they are the ones who determine who those few are and are not. They convince others with their charisma that they know the true meaning of life is about having more and to take it all at the expense of others.
But the good soil, well, the goodness of it is only determined by the fruit it bears. Seeds are designed to make more. The seeds of God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven are love, compassion, kindness, and justice. The more we give them away the more there is. The wisdom of this is what enriches our soil so that the seeds of God are nurtured and grow to bear fruit.
The amount of fruit we each bear isn’t the point but that we work together in community – in communion with God and each other so that we and all of God’s beloved can thrive. Our self awareness, knowing who and Whose we are, uniquely made by God to take our place in God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven, is a lifelong journey. All that I am, all that I have impacts you and you me. I am most fully who God desires for me to be when I am together with you and vice versa.
As with all parables, we are or can be, any of the characters. We both sow the seeds and tend to our soil that either enables or prohibits the seed to grow. Sometimes we can even be the birds that eat the seeds, the reason someone else’s growth is inhibited, or the thorns that choke them. We get to choose.
The amazing beauty of my mom’s desert rose is the culmination of all of us tending to it. This amazing life we live is the culmination of all of us together and with God’s help, tending to it.
Keep lovin’ louder than the hate, Y’all!
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 