Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
July 13, 2014
I have some good news and some bad
news. I’ll start with the bad news: The bad new is, there is no good news. Those who would like to leave are welcome to
go have a nice brunch.
You see, the thing is, if we take
the parable today seriously at all, it looks like about 75% of us don’t
understand what God is saying to us. And
depending on who the “us” is, there’s a chance that the 25% are all outside
these walls.
In the parable of the sower, the
seed that the sower scatters, Jesus tells the disciples, is the word of the
realm of God. That’s kind of an odd turn
of phrase I know, but it’s really saying the seed is the truth…the truth about
the realm of God; what it is, who is there, and how it works. It is the truth about what God intends for
this world.
And the parable says that word –
that truth – is scattered about generously.
But, most people won’t get it. Most
people.
I certainly have to admit that I
can quickly come up with ways I identify with the first three types of land in
the parable. Times I have been like the
path and not listened to the word at all – “Love your enemy?” I’m sorry, I didn’t have my hearing aid
turned up. Times I have been rocky and
only listened to the stuff I could handle, but when things challenged my faith,
I let it go in one ear and out the other.
“The Lord is my shepherd?” Then
why haven’t you led us out of this broken mess we call war. And, like the weedy soil, there are many
comforts in my life that choke out the truth of the gospel message: “Sell all you have and give it to the
poor.” Um, no thanks. I’m pretty happy with my wealth and security,
thank you very much.
I have been all of them at one time
or another. I’m guessing you all can
resonate with one or two of these as well.
We’re all arid, rocky, or weedy at some point.
Now, this is the part where I’m
supposed to talk about how we can become the good soil, right? Three steps to weeding the soil of your
heart. For those of you who are out
there wishing that just once in nine years it would be nice to have a sermon
with three steps to anything, your waiting days are not over.
I’m not sure there are three steps,
or thirty-three steps, that will move us from where we are to being the soil
that, planted with God’s word, will bring forth fruit that yields 100-fold. I’m not sure Jesus did either. In the verses that we skipped over, he pretty
much writes off the people who just don’t get it. This parable is not about helping people like
you and me change – it’s merely describing what we are like. Jesus only explains it to the disciples. The rest of us are left wondering what in the
world he was talking about. In fact –
again in the part we skipped – Jesus says he speaks in parables so that most
people won’t understand. So, like I said, kind of bad news – at least
for the 75%.
I have to admit, when something in
the bible seems to me, at first glance, like bad news, my habit is to fall back
on my belief that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is, by definition,
good news…always, no matter what. That’s
the whole point, right. In fact, it’s my
job: proclaim the good news! So even if it’s not immediately apparent,
when a passage seems a bit hopeless to me, I think and think, study and study
until I find something in the passage…some
kind of good news that will speak to us all.
But maybe I need a new habit. I still need to look for good news, but maybe
the question needs to be: what is the
good news in this passage…for the poor; for the vulnerable; for the oppressed?
We’re talking about God’s word
after all, Yahweh…the God of the enslaved
Hebrew people, the God of the prophets who
cried out for justice, the God who came as
a poor man. Our God is prejudice. We don’t like to think of that, but if you
read the scriptures – Hebrew bible and Christian scriptures both – this God is
constantly, primarily concerned with the poor and oppressed. Even when God is concerned with the folks of
relative status and wealth, it’s because they have power over the poor and
oppressed and need to learn how to treat them right.
And then there’s Jesus – God
incarnate. Jesus makes it painfully
clear what God’s word is and who it is for:
Jesus came to preach Good News to the poor. He came to proclaim the kingdom, or realm, of
God for those most in need. It doesn’t say that Jesus came to preach good
news to the poor, restore sight to the blind, release the captives, and ensure
wealth and prosperity for those who work hard.
In other words he, his life, brings
the word of the realm of God, but that word will only sound good to the poor,
the blind, the oppressed, the imprisoned, the despised and outcast – because
God’s realm will be incredible for them.
If I believe this at all – that
Jesus came for the poor and vulnerable – I have to at least entertain the
question of whether I, privileged…safe…secure, can ever be the good soil. Can I, oppressor…consumer…wealthy, ever be
the good soil? Can I really take in the
word of God - truth about the realm of God – and not distort it in some way in
order to protect who I am and what I have?
In the realm of God, I have everything to lose.
We hold the bible dearly. And we should. If we have chosen to seek a life that
reflects God as known in the life of Jesus, then we need the bible. Desperately.
We need to read it, study it, probably commit the whole stinking thing
to memory.
But sometimes we hold it dearly
only because of what it can do for us…for how it speaks to us. We hold it dearly because it gives us
comfort, or shows us what to do when we’re confused, or touches us with its
beautiful poetry. But the truth is, it
is not always speaking equally to everyone.
Jesus has different audiences and he doesn’t say the same thing to everyone. The one thing we know for sure is that when
he is speaking about good news, he is speaking to the poor.
Every so often, we have to stop and
remember that the authors of our gospels were not writing to the Romans about
how to be a Christian. They were writing
to the early church community: small,
scared, oppressed. If the gospel writers
had any message for Rome at all it was not:
Here’s how to become a Christian.
It was: Our God desires all power
like yours to cease. This was not good
news for the Romans.
And every so often, we have to stop
and remember that, for the most part, most of the time, we are probably the
Romans. Sometimes the good news God has
for the poor is not such great news for us.
Of course obviously I’m over
simplifying. Sometimes we are the hurting ones, the suffering
ones, the outcasts, the ones who can identify with those Jesus healed, ate
with, fed, and protected. Being in this
church does not mean we aren’t or never will be poor. Being in the United States does not protect
us from oppression or grief, illness or death. I know what many of you have been through, and
wealth, freedom, health are not words I would use to describe some of those
experiences.
But I think that this parable is a
chance for us to admit that, as a group – from a bird’s eye point of view, the
highest likelihood is that we are not the good soil. That we cannot be the good soil.
Now, old habits die hard. The tape that plays over and over in my head
– that tells me all are loved, all are invited to be part of God’s realm, grace
is a gift for all of humanity – really can’t be shut off, and I hope it never
does. So, I did try to ask what the good
news is for us in this.
And I wonder if maybe the answer
lies in making a shift from figuring out what kind of soil we are to wondering
if we can be seeds. That probably sounds
arrogant: how can I go from saying we are not the target audience of Jesus, to
claiming we are capable of being the very word of God? Well, to start with I have, once or twice
been accused of being arrogant.
But the thing is we are who we are...this
is where we start…and we do have some choices.
If we want any part in this endeavor of bringing about the realm of God
– of making the field produce abundant harvest for everyone – then we have to
jump in somewhere – otherwise we might as well just give up.
Jesus, our faith tradition asserts,
is the living word of God – and he calls the disciples to follow his way. To live as he does in order to scatter that
word…to take the good news to the poor.
So, maybe we can jump in as would-be disciples and try to become not the
good soil, at least at first, but the seed itself. And there are three steps to becoming a
seed. Just kidding.
Though there probably is a
necessary first step: accepting the bad
news that comes with becoming a seed.
The world Jesus imagines reverses everything – top becomes bottom,
bottom becomes top. So if we’re at the
top, we need to hop on the escalator and go down a few floors.
Now if we’re going to be seeds, we
have to get a couple of things clear: The
word of God is not just a bunch empty feel-good words. And we’re not
talking about scattering ourselves around the world to go save the souls of the
poor with God’s word. No. God’s word, as the author of Matthew points
out, is the word of the realm of God. It
is the word that the last will be first, the powerful will become least, and
peace is won through nonviolence. It is
that God, in Jesus, is bringing a revolution that will turn the current
systems, values, and assumptions on their head.
And we know that revolution isn’t
finished…at least not everywhere. So, if
Jesus is the one who shows us what the realm of God looks like – who shows us
how to live so that it might be real – then we do need to become messengers of
that revolution. Our lives, by how we
live and what values we espouse, need to speak the ideals of the realm of God.
So really, I lied before. There is good news…it’s just not necessarily
for us – at least as we might think of it.
We should see the good news of God not as a personal letter delivered to
our doorstep telling us everything will be okay, but as the possibility of an
entirely new world, regardless of what that new world requires of us; regardless of how our lives will be
changed in the new order of things…in God’s order of things.
But if we have to sacrifice, if it
might be bad/unsettling news for us, why would we do it? Because this world is broken. War is seen as an acceptable route to
peace. Poverty and hunger kill every
day. Children are amassed at the border
seeking a better life and unlikely to get it.
And our hearts break. I know you
all – I’ve seen it….your hearts break.
We are people whose hearts are stamped with the image of the divine…our
hearts break because the very heart of the divine breaks. And we know that this all isn’t just about
us. It’s about becoming a part of
something so much larger than ourselves – becoming a part of the divine
movement toward wholeness.
If we can desire that new world as
much as God does, I think we can be seeds.
I think we can give over our comforts, our wealth, our fears, our
privilege in service of creating a new world – creating the realm of God. And that’s good news…for the poor. In fact, that’s good news… for all of
creation. Amen.
