July 12, 2020 - Sixth Sunday after Pentecost - Soil Conditions

Pastor Janell preached about soil conditions in Sunday's sermon regarding her thoughts on the parable of The Sower, The Seed and The Soil. She observed it is a familiar parable. How can we truly listen and pat attention to this familiar parable? An answer to this question for this parable is to handle with prayer.

Obviously I can speak only for myself, someone who relies on translations... someone who reads commentaries and, as a result, knows what some consider important. From all that I normally choose what is most meaningful for me at a given moment. For example, there can be a focus on where Jesus is telling the parable opens with:

"Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach."

I read a commentary years ago which stressed the setting in which the parables are given. Jesus is on the sea. The crowd is on the land and this may signify different levels of understanding about the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes insights like this provide a deeper understanding. Other times the physical details alone are more meaningful in calling forth the scene into the listener's mind.

Or the significance of the numbers at the end:

As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."

Why do the numbers go from greatest to least? Is it because of what 30 represents in the Bible? The number 30 can symbolize dedication to a particular task or calling. Both Jesus and John the Baptist began their ministry at the age of 30. Perhaps this is only biblical trivia.

What is the purpose of this parable? Jesus says to the disciples "...it is given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven." So, has everyone been given this gift or a chosen few?  Once the mysteries are known by this group, do they always know?

This may be at the center of my purpose for this blog. Is the heart of worship involved with knowing the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven? I would say yes and the ways we can learn are more than just modern, theological interpretations of scripture.

First is the communal understanding evoked at this particular day for this particular group. We can address a salvation that is available to us at this particular moment. What is preached and how we listen, pay attention and what wakes us to faith in something bigger. My wife and I often find ourselves in deep conversations after Sunday worship and much of what I have written in today's blog came from her insights into the sermon and the gospel.

Also, The Parable of the Sower is as familiar as any well-known hymn or piece of music presented in worship. One can delight in what is inspired in the soul when encountering these words at each opportunity that comes to us, Dearly loved and intuitively understood .
Let's realize there are literal versus literary interpretations at play here. No, I'm not using literal to substitute for historical here. We will always tell stories and, perhaps, even write poems about Biblical passages. Pastor Michelle once wrote a poem one year and presented it to Creator at the end of a sermon on the Parable of the Sower:

It’s All Good:  The Parable of the Sower

I close my eyes and see
the Sower,
head thrown back,
face shining like the sun,
eyes closed in ecstasy,
twirling in wild abandon
flinging God seeds
wantonly and wastefully
every which way.

“Let the seeds fall where they may….
It’s all good,” he thinks.
“Ah yes,” he smiles.
“Indeed, it’s all very good….
Some seeds will fall
only to be eaten—
but my sparrows need to eat
so that they will not fall.
Some seed will spring up
only to wither and die—
but in dying it gives new life
to otherwise rocky soil.
Some seed will sprout
only to be choked by thorns—
but I can root out ‘thorny problems….’
Just ask my Son, who rose above
the crown of thorns set upon his head.

In the end it’s all good,
for the seeds I scatter
are not barren hulls,
but empty tombs full of life,
and in time—
in my time—
they will yield a harvest
for all my children to share....

You, who are good soil,
and you, who are
less-than-perfect soil,
close your eyes and see:
Catch the vision of what can be!
Come twirl with me in wild abandon.
Let’s fling God seeds
every which way,
wantonly and wastefully!
Let them fall like rain
upon all my children
and upon the whole creation,
because in the eyes of the Sower,
‘It’s all good!’

I could read the parable as an allegory and try to completely understand everything that is presented. I could attempt to identify who the sower represents and what the seed is. Each variation might move the meaning in another direction.

In Pastor Michelle's poem the sower appears to be God in the ecstasy of creation. In the parable there is no such description, just a sower going out to sow. The bareness what is presented does not immediately call to mind abundance.  That seems to be a quality we bring into and build up in the parable to unleash a passion that we can feel that is not in the words of Matthew.

Is the seed an understanding of God - a teaching - Jesus himself (the word of God) - or simply physical seeds? In the poem what happens to each seed is finally a good, and a good that God intends. Again, I would be hard pressed to relate that meaning back to the original parable.

And the ground, are the different conditions where the seed falls the varied understandings of a individual's soul or the environment that surrounds that soul? Is this a permanent condition or soul that one is born with or into?  Has the seed always been sown or are there constant various and unique times when the seed is sown?

This is where I yearn for and come back to the simplicity of the parable itself without answering all these questions. Today, Jesus is saying do not to judge the state of who and what is around you and know that there is no reason to be bitter or envious as one encounters those states in the world.

I am thankful to my wife for providing a direction to reach back to an older, deeper meaning of this parable for me.