Sermon for July 12, 2020 - The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 10A - The Rev'd Elise A. Feyerherm

Isaiah 55:10-13 – Psalm 65:1-14 – Romans 8:1-11 – Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Jesus’ parable of the sower comes around every three years, and always in the summer. Although I know there is a deeper, spiritual meaning to this story of seeds and their various fates, I love that in our context, there is a convergence between the agricultural imagery of Jesus and the burgeoning summer harvest in New England.

Many of Jesus’ parables rely on experiences that are less familiar to us – shepherds and sheepgates, mustard seeds and bushes, lords and servants and winepresses, and all that. But even the most urban among us have probably played around with herbs in our windowsills or container gardens on the balcony; even if we haven’t done these things ourselves, they have become part of our culture in recent years. Farmer’s markets are not just for Vermont anymore; they have managed to reach even Copley Square. Even we urbanites know what it is like to wash spinach that is still sandy from the soil in which it was rooted. Yesterday I brought home from the Roslindale farmer’s market beautiful bunches of chard and arugula and beets and even some early tomatoes. When seeds fall on good soil, they bear fruit, thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold.

I am always amazed at the power of creation to be fruitful and multiply. No matter how much I might learn about the biological processes that turn a tiny seed into a plant, it still seems miraculous to me. Imagine: every maple tree in my back yard began as one of those whirligig seeds with the little wings that we used to love to twirl and send flying into the air.

My own efforts at gardening, at nurturing seeds and plants, have had mixed results. I don’t know enough and am not persistent enough to have developed much of a green thumb. My mother, on the other hand, has always had her hands in the dirt ever since she was growing up during the Depression in rural Iowa, with six siblings and a Lutheran minister for a father, who sometimes received chickens instead of money for payment. Under my mother’s careful ministrations, any plot of earth could bear fruit a hundredfold.

 Since last week Jeff shared a photo during his sermon, I figure it’s now tradition, so let me illustrate with a picture of my mother and one of her successes (don’t worry, I got her permission first):

My mother is a little shorter than I am, so that makes these sunflowers about 10 or 11 feet tall. These sunflowers are rooted in the soil of southern New Jersey – still known with good reason as the Garden State. Nevertheless, not bad for a farm girl from Iowa turned children’s librarian.

My point, however, is not really my mother’s agricultural prowess. It’s the extravagant exuberance of God’s creation. It was the scripture readings for today that got me to this photograph. The lesson from Isaiah and the psalm evoke the joy and playfulness of creation – metaphors, yes, but sunflowers remind us that the metaphor rests on real experience. We understand, don’t we, the idea of trees clapping their hands, and the mountains bursting into song, as Isaiah writes. If you have ever spent time among the trees or the mountains, you will know this is true. Creation is full of rejoicing, if you know how to look and listen for it. Just look at this sunflower, and the woman who grew it.

Jesus’ parable of the sower, in all its various meanings, also rests on the miracle that is nature’s abundance. Whether it is a kernel of wheat or a seed of love in the human heart, God’s earth is made for new life – all it requires is good soil. We can prepare the ground, but it is God who gives the growth, not returning empty but accomplishing that which God purposes and succeeding in the thing for which God sent it. Jesus’ parable itself is planted in the soil of Genesis, in which God’s good earth brings forth “vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it” (Genesis 1:12). It is in the very essence of creation to continue to be creative, to renew itself and follow God’s lead in self-giving. Creation’s continuous renewal is a sign of God’s faithfulness; it is a sign of the efficacy of God’s Word and intention for the world.

It is good to be reminded of this, of God’s faithfulness, especially when we’ve been rightly preoccupied with the coronavirus and the evils of racism. Immediate threats like COVID and racism have filled the viewfinder, and less imminent – though not less serious – dangers like climate change have drifted from view. Not entirely, of course, but certainly in terms of public attention in the media. And I worry about that. I wonder if God worries about that, if God can worry.

God’s creation is resilient, we know. Look at what happened when human beings were stuck at home for months and not able to drive or fly anywhere – the skies cleared, and wild animals reclaimed the space that was rightfully theirs. Nature is resilient, and no doubt, if we humans disappeared for good, it would blossom once more abundantly, healing the wounds we have inflicted on it. Thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold.

God’s creation is resilient – but it is also so vulnerable, and so much in danger. When I was in New Hampshire for a few days, I spent some time gazing out at the lake on whose shores our cottage stood. Every morning a pair of loon would come to feed, play, swim, and dive. We would hear them calling to each other, usually in the evenings. As I watched the loons, it hit me like an arrow to the heart that we humans are the only animals on earth who, in pursuit of our needs and desires, wreak such destruction as to potentially destroy the earth as we know it. No other creature takes or gives more than the earth can handle. But we do.

 Why, I wonder? What is it in the soil of our being that is capable of killing the seeds of the earth’s capacity for renewal? At our best, we humans are self-giving, visionary, humble, creative. And yet we get caught in patterns of behavior that have unintended – and disastrous – consequences. Our soil is perhaps more often shallow than it is actually rocky, but that may be the problem. We tend to see only the surface of things, missing the hard, poisonous bedrock underneath. We see the convenience and power of using fossil fuel and then become, essentially, addicted to it regardless of the damage it does to the climate. We have gotten accustomed to purchasing cheap, disposable goods, and find it easy to ignore the plastic islands floating so far away in the ocean, or the heavy yoke that lies upon the people that manufacture these goods on the other side of the globe.

My soil, I know, is full of thorns; cares of the world that choke the Word calling me to make real changes in my life to help restore our planet. My husband has just retired, and I fret about the cost of things like alternative energy and eco-friendly products on a reduced income. And if I am worried about these things, imagine the worry and helplessness of those who because of poverty or race or geography have much less than I do.

Jesus knew, and knows, how hard it is to persevere. He knows both the joy with which we hear his call to help heal the world and also our dismay at the enormity of what is being asked of us. He feels the rocks and thorns that choke our yearning to do what is best for our beautiful earth. Perhaps that is why he ends his parable not with a warning, but with words of hope, with the promise of what is possible with good, deep soil. Jesus reminds us that God has made this world, and us, for bearing fruit and showing the glory of God. Scripture bears witness to the exuberant persistence of all creation; this world is God’s, not ours.

And so it has been given to us to nurture, to revere as a sacrament of God’s creative power. In the midst of pandemic and strife, this is still God’s good earth, and we are called to love and care for it as God does, for we are the image and hands and hearts of God in this world. Let anyone with ears, listen.

Let us pray:

Divine sower,

scattering seed,

never hoarding,

wasting life – or so the world thinks:

give us the depth to receive

the gift so freely given

and the maturity to revel

in love’s abundant, reckless growth;

through Jesus Christ, the grain of life.

Amen.

(Collect based on Matthew 13 by Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church. New York: Church Publishing, 2009, p.30.)