EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

July 10, 2005

Gen. 25:19-34; Matt. 13:1-9; 18-23

Reaping the Harvest

Whenever Jesus teaches the people using a parable of planting and reaping, I realize how little I know about gardens.  I love the concept of growing my own vegetables; tending my array of flowers, getting my hands into the rich soil.  The reality in our house is far different; however, from that ideal.  The only vegetables we plant are tomatoes.  We put them out very late this year and will probably be harvesting them freeze dried.  When we bought our house, we inherited a flower garden.  I am still not sure which of the variety of growing things in that garden are flowers and which are weeds.  And, did you know that the rich soil is filled with bugs?  Yuk!

Week after week during the long season of the church year that begins after Pentecost and concludes at Advent, we hear those stories Jesus told that are called parables.  Usually these stories are metaphors conveying some form of instruction on how to live the Christian life.   We have trouble with many of these parables because our culture is far different from that of the early church; so a story based on an archaic form of farming does not relate to our experience or, I might add, our theology.   It is easy for us to downplay the significance of most of those parables because they sound like tall tales that have an interesting or shocking conclusion.  And yet, there are morsels of insight in these stories that we would do well to consider.  

When confronted with one of these difficult stories, I begin wrestling with it by reminding myself that those who benefited most from the parables were the vulnerable communities of the early church.  The members of those early churches gave their hearts and sometimes their lives to the Christian life.   They often experienced the pain of beloved and trusted community members suddenly withdrawing or falling by the wayside.  Why, they asked themselves, was it so hard to bring people into the faith?  Why, they wondered, could people, who were a part of the community of Christ, leave the fellowship and return to the gentile culture or the Jewish synagogue after they had experienced the life of the gospel and the warmth of the fellowship?  Why did some of the most promising of converts just seem to lose interest and drift away?.   The early church needed to hear the story of the sower in order to understand that there was hope and there were bountiful harvests yet to come.  Parables such as that of the sower gave them insight into both the successes and the failures that they encountered in proclaiming the Good News to a world not yet ready to receive it.

We contemporary folks are not the only ones who have trouble with the parables.  Frequently in the gospel accounts, there is tension  that surrounds the parables.  This is often expressed as Jesus’ frustration that people heard but did not understand what was being said.  The parable of the sower is a good example.  It was originally shared with people whose livelihood was earned on farms and in sowing and reaping harvests in soil that might or might not be rich.  We know that this story is multi-layered.  Most of those first century original listeners did not. The farmers among Jesus’ listeners knew all about the randomness of wind sown seeds falling in various locations, some better than others.  The seeds were so plentiful that there was no need to worry about the loss of a portion.  Besides, things had always been done this way.  Those listeners understood the words Jesus said but they did not appreciate the theological or the evangelical meaning of the parable.  In contrast to the later urban Christian communities of Rome and Corinth, the crowd at the lakeshore was made up of pragmatic Galilean farmers whose livelihood depended on the harvest.   Their lives revolved with the farming seasons.  Sow, weed, water, reap.  This, and this alone was life.  Maybe they perceived Jesus to be somewhat arrogant in providing them with a gratuitous lesson on agronomy.  Can’t you hear them muttering to themselves about this Jesus person who seemed more comfortable in a boat than on a farm, telling them how to grow wheat.  If you were one of those farmers, wouldn’t you think the same way?  When there are limited parameters to your life that are put in place by education, circumstances, tradition, it is very difficult to think beyond those parameters.  And, can’t you hear the disciples muttering to themselves that Jesus was wasting a great opportunity to preach the good news by talking about seeds, for goodness’ sake.  The disciples were fishermen and at least one tax collector.  Now if you wanted to talk about nets and catches of fish, or interest accrued on outstanding tax debt they’d get it.

I know that I need to be more open to what the parables say,  And when I go back to the story of the sower,  I am surprised to find some elements that could have been written yesterday.  Do you recall how crowded the church was following September 11?  People came looking for answers to horrors beyond their capacity to understand.  Amid that terrible reality was a profound awareness of our human fragility and need to find strength and hope in the company of the divine.  For weeks people came, not only to our church but to virtually every house of worship, breathing in hope and taking away comfort.  But the weeks became months and gradually the fear subsided.  Steady on their own feet, the folks no longer felt the need to be surrounded by a community at worship.  As the New Jerusalem translation puts it:  “The seed sown in thorns is someone who hears the word, but the worry of the world and the lure of riches choke the word and so it produces nothing.” 

That is an extreme example but we do live in a culture that prizes independence.  “I can do it on my own,” is the rallying cry of millions of individuals who stand or fall by themselves.  When worry becomes fear; when a crisis occurs; when there are more questions than answers; how many of us just want to “tough it out.”  And, in toughing it out how many choke on the emotional or physical brambles that block wholeness?    In the wake of September 11, countless numbers of people knew that they couldn’t tough it out and needed the family of God, but sadly, those same countless numbers never understood that the particular strength and comfort that they felt in terrible times is a daily source of nurture in all times.  The thorns of everyday life may sting but cannot choke those who have the wisdom to draw upon the sustenance of God and that of God’s family.  Perhaps that is what puzzled those early church members.  Why would someone  turn away from a place of love and acceptance?

On Thursday evening, some of us had a conversation that touched on issues ranging from terrorism to assuming a personal responsibility for doing those proverbial random acts of kindness that are advertised on bumper stickers.  We recognized that there is much in the world that frightens each of us.  There is much that we do not understand.  In our conversation there were points of disagreement on why things appear to be out of control, but what everyone agreed on is that we all have a responsibility to “do unto others..”  Someone suggested that acts of spontaneous kindness should be a part of each day.  This is so simple that it sounds almost trite, doesn’t it?  Will my being nice to another person end terrorism, stop the war in Iraq or halt genocide in Africa?   Would that it could.   And yet, if we are what we say we are, we should not need a reminder to ourselves to be kind to friends and strangers.  On the other hand, some of us become so enmeshed in saving the world that we forget to notice those who live and work and pray and play in the microcosm of the world that we share.  A life of faithfulness requires not ‘either/or’ but ‘both/and.’ 

I don’t know about you but I am constantly being sent petitions for or against a variety of important issues.  If I feel that the petition has merit, I sign it.  So, let me use this petition flood that I sometimes feel inundated by as an example of ‘both/and.”  If any of us sign petitions to have the UN go into Africa to stop genocide we also better be aware of and care for the 90 year old widow who lives alone down the street and can no longer drive.  She is physically and emotionally dying inside her own home.  And while we might sign a piece for or against the war in Iraq, we also had better be reaching out to the families of guard personnel to ensure that they have the support and care they need while their loved ones are in harm’s way.  What happens when the household income is drastically cut but the mortgage still needs to be paid for the house that feels very empty without that one who is away.    We are called to a life of both/and.

It is not trite to engage in daily random kindness.  In fact, we never know the affect we might have on one who is the recipient of such kindness.  When we slow down and allow a car into the lane, the driver may be rushing to visit a loved one in the hospital and our kindness has meant the necessary few seconds of time to bid farewell to that loved one.  A simple kindness done to a child may be a seed leading to that child becoming a generous, caring adult.  I don’t need to catalogue the thousand ways of kindness; what I need to do is be kinder myself.  How about you? 

The harvest of kindness is very likely one we will not see for ourselves.  Will our signature make a world of difference?  Will our effort to be kinder and more generous enhance the life of that stranger in the other car?  It doesn’t really matter.  We have sown the seeds.  The harvest will come in its season.  We are the living parable.  What we do and what we say will be experienced by others as kindness, hope, compassion, justice, meddling or nothing at all.  Yet as we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God, we are the farmer; we are the seed; we are the wind that blows the seed to God knows where.  We will have done our part.  The rest is in God’s hands.  Amen

MORNING PRAYER

Loving and giving God, keep us always mindful of the power of love.  In Christ you show your love to us.   Help us to love and care for all our brothers and sisters; those we know and those who are strangers.  There is such pain in so many lives, O God; pain of illness, of fear; of loneliness.  Be with those in pain surrounding them with your strength and peace..  Guide us to those who hurt that we may be your partners in care.  Be with those whose lives are torn by war and terrorism.  Grant healing and strength to the people of London and to the people of Iraq.  Be with our own men and women who are in harm’s way.  Bring us into a time of peace; a time to become family to one another.  This we ask using the words your son gave us, saying…Our FAther