Soil

Scripture: Mark 4:1-32.

First of all I want to thank Janet for her words last week. I know they found receptive soil here, because some of you have told me that you appreciated what Janet had to say. Normally, you would have been able to tell her directly, but we’re doing this act where we’re trying to be two places at once for a couple of Sundays. So I’m speaking for people who didn’t get a chance to tell Janet directly, and I’m speaking for myself, since I was personally grateful for her sermon.

One of the tiny truths Janet spoke last week was about how we chose the passages we were going to speak about. We had agreed back in the fall that we would preach on Jesus’ parables during Lent. That way we could study them together, and I at least had this image that we would each choose a parable to preach on when we did this preaching exchange as a result of this deep thinking we would do together. The reality of course was as she described it: So, Janet says, it’s almost Lent. We haven’t talked about this yet. What parable do you want to preach on? Me: Well, I don’t really care. But just not the Good Samaritan. Janet: Well that’s o.k. because I was actually thinking of doing the Good Samaritan. So that worked out good.

The rest of the story that she didn’t tell you is that then I said, O.K. so you want me to choose a parable. Let’s see. We’re doing a Bible study on the gospel of Mark, and I just read it straight through, and one of the very few parables in the gospel of Mark is the parable of the sower. Why don’t I do that? Well, wait a minute. I’m going to be preaching about planting seeds to people at Mt. Olivet some of whom grow things for a living, right? Right, Janet says. Oh, well, that’s o.k., I’ll do it anyway.

I hang up the phone and I think: Not only will the people at Mt. Olivet know more about planting and growing seeds than I will. Everyone at Sojourners knows more about growing things than I do. We have some serious gardeners here. But it doesn’t matter. Alien life forms know more about growing things than I do. Joan Richardson brought in a plant to the office that she assured me I could not kill. You know what happened, of course.

And not only that. Not only is this one of the few parables in the gospel of Mark. It’s also one of the few parables that Jesus actually explains to the disciples. So I’m thinking that if I say anything other than basically repeating what Jesus said about his own parable, it will sound like I think I can explain his parable better than he can. I’m thinking that this is a parable that is way different from the Good Samaritan. They don’t follow from one another, or even relate to each other very much. I’m thinking this was a bad choice. And up until last Sunday, I had only a few glimmers of what I was going to say about the parable of the sower.

Among the several things in Janet’s sermon last week that I responded to, was her quoting Mother Theresa saying something to the effect: “I do not do what I do (works of mercy, or however she put that) because I have a natural inclination to do so. I do it because I have been told to do it, and because so far I have not been told to stop doing it.” I like that quote. I like the sentiment of it, but then I started thinking about the sentiment of it, and found myself thinking about it later in the day, and found myself wishing that I could just sit and talk with Mother Theresa about this.

Mother Theresa, I would say, I would love to hear more about this telling. How did you come to be told to go to India and care for the poor? I think I know the answer to who told you. But just how did this happen? Did you feel that some passage of scripture commanded you to go? Or was it through prayer? Or some life-changing experience? Or just what? How do you come to be told to give your life to something, or even to be a Good Samaritan now and then? Because it is true that we don’t do it, not very often anyway, because it seems like a good thing to do, because we just sort of naturally fall into it, or because there are so many convincing reasons to do it.

I don’t know Mother Theresa’s story. Janet’s quote made me curious about it. But even if I did, it would not be your story or my story. And that, of course, is what’s important: how you or I come to be told, say, to be a Good Samaritan. I don’t think there’s any single answer to that. Which is not to say that there’s no answer, but is to say that there are many answers. There are a whole lot of ways in which we may be told what to do.

What became clearer to me as I thought about this though is that none of us does anything really important because we are told to do it from the outside. None of us are going to be a Good Samaritan, not more than once or twice anyway, because Janet told us to. I mean Janet is a good person, and I have learned that what she says is worth listening to, and she not only says good things but has that certain way of saying things that makes me want to listen even more, but I am not going to be a Good Samaritan or do anything else because Janet tells me to. Or because the Bible tells me to. Or because the voice of reason tells me to. Or because the voice of God tells me to. Thinking about it, I realized that Mother Theresa could not have meant that some external thing told her to do what she did. In that sense God did not tell her. The Bible did not tell her. Certainly no other person told her. But something deep down inside of her did tell her—that voice of God. It was something that had to come from inside her and that told her not as a command but as a conviction that there was nothing else she could do. What happened to her, I am pretty sure, is that a seed was planted in her somehow along the way, and what she did was allow that seed to grow until it became a passion. Something like that has to happen with us. If we are told anything meaningful, it has to be coming from inside us. And as I reflected on this, I realized that these two parables really were connected and in a profound way.

I have a pretty clear memory of a Bible study group I was in once, a group of ministers, and one day we were studying the parable of the sower. You heard it. It’s a story about a person who goes out sowing seeds, scattering seeds, and how some of the seeds fell on a path, and some on rocky ground, and some on shallow soil, but some on good, rich, deep soil.

Everyone in the group that day except me was identifying himself or herself as the sower. Everyone was thinking that she or he was going around scattering seeds sort of the best way we knew how and waiting to see what would happen. Everyone had this sort of activist mentality where we see ourselves as sowers, going around doing things, saying things, sowing the word of God, because after all that’s what Jesus said the seed was, so when we preachers were preaching, presumably that’s what we were doing, sowing God’s word.

But, everyone was saying, all we could do was sow. The results of our efforts to preach, the results of our efforts to minister, the results of the church’s efforts to minister—none of this was certain in any way. So the message people were hearing was just to keep on sowing, and to tell their congregations on Sunday to keep on sowing, and to leave the rest to God. That was pretty much the way the discussion went that day.

I didn’t say much that day. I was feeling that for me there was something not right about the tone of the discussion, but it wasn’t until later that I figured out what my problem was. I had not been relating very much to the sower in the parable. I had been relating much more to the soil. I had been thinking of myself, feeling myself to be much more like the soil, than like the sower. I was feeling not so much like a dispenser of the seed of God’s word, but a receiver of that word. Not the planter but the planted. Not the giver, the doer, the activist, but one who has taken in some small but powerful planting of God’s word…of love…or God’s loving word. I didn’t have good words for that, so I kept quiet while everyone was talking about the importance of going out there and sowing.

Now I am not saying it is wrong to identify with the sower. And it’s not even a question of whether we should be sowers, whether this is something we ought to do. The truth is, we can’t help it. We are sowers, like it or not, whether we want to be or not. All of us. All of us who consider ourselves Christian or who are associated with a Christian church, all of us by what we say and do and who we are plant ideas in others as to what Christianity is all about. We can’t help but scatter those kinds of seeds.

But sometimes I think identifying with the sower can lead us in the wrong direction. It is possible to think of ourselves as the sower in a kind of a prideful way. I am in possession of a whole bag full of truth here. I got God’s word just sort of slung over my shoulder here, got a big supply here, got truth and faith in abundance, and because I’m a good person I’ll spread some of these seeds around so others can have them too. Of course I know that some of those “others” are pretty shallow type people, and some are pretty rocky, and some are just plain hard and resistant, so I realize that this seed might not take, in spite of all my effort.

In contrast, for me anyway, being a person of faith is a lot more like being the soil where that seed is planted. I don’t want to talk this morning about what kind of soil we’re going to be—hard, rocky, shallow, or fertile. I feel myself to be all of those, sometimes one, sometimes another, sometimes maybe all of them together. I don’t want to discuss all the things that may make us good soil or bad soil. No need to decide whether on the whole we’re good soil or bad soil—for now it’s enough to know that we are, that we are a field for God’s work. The field is not first of all out there. It is in here.

The Quakers say that there is something of God in everyone. And I think that’s all I’m really saying, except that I do like the image of the seed. Because sometimes people of faith don’t feel like they have this great abundance of spirituality that they can just spread around. Sometimes people of faith don’t feel like they can reach into their bag and pull out a handful of faith, hope, and love. Sometimes people of faith don’t feel very much like people of faith, don’t feel like they have very much faith at all. Sometimes people of faith are not just those who are called to bring God to other people. Sometimes people of faith need to have God brought to them…to us…to me. Sometimes what faith we have within us seems as small as a seed, and all we can do is trust that that will be enough.

And sometimes that seed comes to life within us and does tell us things, like who we are and where we need to be and what we need to be doing. It’s true—as Janet said last week and I’ll say again today—there are times when we cannot give reasons for what it is we need to do and where it is we need to be. There are times when we cannot point to what good it will do. There are times when we find that we need to be in a certain place—by a bedside maybe, or on a picket line—just because…because there is no because, except for the because that I cannot not do what that voice inside tells me. And what a freeing thing that is for us when we find ourselves “told” in that way, compelled, the religious word is “called”. To be compelled by something outside us is of course not freeing at all. It’s restrictive, oppressive. To have a bunch of possible options confronting us and being confused about which way to go, making lists of pros and cons and decided first this and then that and trying to decide whether the pros outweigh the cons—all that is not freeing either. It is simply to be confused and stuck. But to be told from the inside who we are and what direction we need to go and what we need to do—that is freeing, and a very great blessing.

Just one more thing. This voice, this seed, this word of God that has been planted in us—in you, in me, in Sojourners Church and Mt. Olivet Church—this word of God is not just a word like a word on a page, or a verse or a passage from scripture, or even some profound, inspired thought. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is like…and then he told the parable of the sower. And so when he described the seed as being the word of God, it was not a word of scripture. It was more like a vision that has been planted within us, a vision of that realm of God that I believe filled Jesus’ spirit. The seed that God plants within us contains that whole vision of a realm where, as far as the eye can see, there is justice, and peace, and plenty, a realm where every tear of needless suffering has been wiped dry. Just as the seed contains in a sense the whole mustard tree, so every seed of faith, every seed of God’s word and spirit that has been planted in us, contains the entire realm of God. It is just a seed right now, but it is all there, within us. Some people say that the correct translation of one of Jesus’ sayings is that the kingdom of God is among you, rather than within you, but it may be that in the form of a seed, the whole kingdom of God is indeed within us.

Sometimes we talk and think of the word of God as though its purpose is to give each of us individually guidance and comfort, and I don’t want to in any way deny that to be the case. Words of scripture and other seeds of faith have given me comfort and I have known people who have turned to those words, when they had nothing else to turn to. But the word of God that is like a seed that is planted in us is not there simply to comfort. It is there to bring to life, even within us, a vision of a new creation. May that vision come to life within us. May we help to bring that vision to life in our world. May we nurture that vision, even as it nurtures us. Amen.

Jim Bundy
March 25,2001