Be Incomprehensible
Rev. Heather Kirk-Davidoff The Kittamaqundi Community
July 13, 2014 Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
A few years back, when my daughter Rosa was in middle school, we had a Halloween party for her and her friends. Dan and I really got into this party—we told the girls a ghost story and then took them on a walk down the pitch-dark bike path to our little tot lot that we had covered in cobwebs and fake spiders. I walked with them, and then slipped away and hid underneath one of the little bridges that they would cross on the way back. I waited there for what felt like a long time and then, as the girls were just about to walk over the bridge, I heard Rosa announce, “I think my mom is hiding under the bridge. I think she’s going to jump out and try to scare us.” What could I do? I jumped out but the girls just laughed at me.
My daughter Rosa has an uncanny ability to wreck a surprise. She’s the one who will loudly announce to an entire movie theater, “Someone’s going to jump out of that door!” right before it happens. She loved the book, “A Fault in Our Stars” and urged me to read it too saying, “Someone dies in the end but it isn’t the person you would think.” That’s her idea of NOT spoiling the ending, but of course it meant that I figured out immediately who was going to die.
Don’t you just hate a spoiler? That’s my problem with the parable we just heard. I usually love parables because they are so mysterious. They draw you in to a scene and spark your imagination. They stick with you because they have a lot of different dimensions and can be interpreted different ways. But not this parable. This parable should have the heading, “Spoiler Alert!” There are 40 parables in the Gospels and only two of them are explained. This is one of them. And the explanation isn’t even that interesting. Instead of intriguing us, this parable just describes what we all know is true.
A farmer sowed seeds on different kinds of ground, Jesus says. The seed that fell on good soil grew and bore fruit. But the seed that fell on rocky ground, the seed that fell on the path and the seed that fell among thorns didn’t do so well. Big surprise. What does this mean? Jesus says the parable is about how the “word of the kingdom” is available to lots of people but only some of them really take it to heart.
Jesus doesn’t teach in secret—he stands on hillsides and at the shore and speaks to thousands of people. People have different responses to his words—some take it to heart and change their lives and others shrug and walk away. This was the case in Jesus’ day and it is the case today. The same message that moves one person profoundly seems silly or irrelevant to another person. A principle or a practice that is at the center of one person’s life seems bizarre to another person. And if we think of our own lifespan, we know that there were times when we weren’t ready or able to hear something that we now know would have made a big difference to our lives, had we only been open to hearing it.
So what? What are we to do with this information? I’ve heard a number of sermons in my life about the importance of being “good soil”—maybe you have too. Preachers often turn this parable into encouragement to do things that will make you receptive to God’s word. Things like prayer and study and confession are the spiritual equivalents of tilling and aerating—they make it more likely that God’s word will bear fruit in our lives. But these exhoratations aren’t there in the scripture itself. Jesus doesn’t suggest that one kind of soil improve itself. The rocky ground can’t get up and move to a better area. That’s not how soil works after all.
Really, the parable teaches us to see the world as made up of certain kinds of people, some of whom are productive and some of who just aren’t. Christians have in fact built entire doctrines around this principle—the doctrine of election, for example, that suggests that God selects certain people for salvation based not on their merit, but simply on God’s free will. That doctrine led to the idea of predestination—an idea that suggests that some people are destined for heaven and some for hell before they are even born.
Before we laugh off the absurdity of these views, let me remind you that most of us see the world this way. We try to find people who are “worth” our efforts to help, people who will repay our kindness, reciprocate our friendship. This past Thursday, the Help End Homelessness team met for our monthly meeting. We have a new person on our team and he had lots of questions for us. What will we do if the family who rents the home we are planning on buying ends up damaging the home? What if they set it on fire? What if they rip up all the carpet, steal the appliances and move in the middle of the night? We assured him that none of these things was going to happen because we would thoroughly screen all applicants, check references and their criminal background. Our goal is to find the family that is most likely to succeed. To put it bluntly, we are only interested in sowing in good soil. I’m guessing that most of you here would do the exact same thing.
But here’s the funny thing. Although this parable describes the world exactly was we imagine it to be, there something in the story that doesn’t play by our rules. There’s something surprising in this parable, something that has slipped past the explanation. The wild card in this parable is the sower. The sower plants seeds in the good soil where he can expect to see it grow and bear fruit. But he doesn’t stop there. He keeps sowing, scattering seeds on the rocky ground and on the ground where the thistles are growing. And then, in a truly surprising move, the sower spreads seed on the path where there isn’t even the slightest chance that it will grow.
Why? What could possibly explain the actions of a farmer who works like this? Maybe this is a sower who doesn’t really care about maximizing his outcomes. Maybe this sower believes there are little spots between the rocks, between the thorns, where something could grow after all. Maybe this sower sees the birds that eat the seeds as his partners, knowing that they’ll spread the seeds and plant them elsewhere. But one thing is for sure—this sower is not worried about conserving seed. This sower must have more seed than the good ground could possibly contain. This sower has seed in abundance, so much so that he can throw it around in a way that most of us with our careful analysis of soil quality would find reckless.
Maybe we’ve been looking at this parable the wrong way. Maybe the point is not to stand back and analyze the soil—maybe we should be acting like sower. And before you object that you don’t have money or houses or time to throw around willy-nilly, consider what you have in over-abundance. Creativity? Laughter? Compassion? Love! Because God loves us without limit or qualification, we have a deep, underground reservoir that continually refills our own wells of love. We have enough to scatter on people who seem likely to succeed as well as those who seem like lost causes. And in my experience, money and time and other resources have a way of flowing into the places and the people we love. Things do take root and grow in the most surprising places—but we won’t notice that if we spend all our time tending the soil we have predetermined to be “good”.
The illogical actions of the farmer are what make this parable profoundly hopeful. There is so much sadness in the world, so much that is broken beyond our understanding of how to fix it. There are so many lost causes, so many damaged people, so many devastated places. If we stood back and evaluated the potential of the world around us, we’d be likely to give up on most of it. But Jesus came to declare to us that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near! God doesn’t stand far away, God hasn’t turned God’s back on us. God has come close and sown love all over the world. What are we to do in response but to be as incomprehensible as God?
In closing, allow me to share one of my all-time favorite poems, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” by Wendell Berry:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.
Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of Marriage, copyright ® 1973 by Wendell Berry, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
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