“Choosing Your Soil”
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 13 July, 2008
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
----
 As you know, I am a proud North Dakotan. I grew up in the city, but I would spend summers playing on my ancestral farm near Enderlin, about an hour’s drive from Fargo. My grandmother grew up there, my father spent summers playing on The Farm as a child, and now the farmhouse is occupied by cousins. I feel a closeness to that place, in the spirits of relatives I have never met and in the swaying prairie grasses and sky as far as the eye can see. It is a sanctuary more beautiful than any created by an earthly architect, a cathedral without walls.
My experience of the prairie and my agricultural roots have deeply influenced the way I read this morning’s scripture about the sowing of seeds. While I realize that first century farming in the Middle East was a tad different than twentieth century farming in North Dakota, the agricultural thread that connects my Biblical ancestors with my familial ancestors runs deep.
During a family reunion on The Farm several years ago, we held a church service on that farmhouse deck. I preached beneath the rustling trees, and my cousins sang a duet from Godspell that is based on the scripture we heard this morning. When they sang, “We plow the seeds and scatter the good seed on the soil,” I cried, thinking both of the lesson from Matthew that we have just heard, and of my ancestors “plowing the seeds and scattering the good seed” on the North Dakota soil that surrounded us. I felt that connection to the soil that was an important part of Jesus’ lessons and that was daily life for those who came before me.
But what can we get from all this talk of seeds and soil, aside from this heartwarming sense of connection to God’s Creation and the hard work of our farming ancestors (if we have them)? What can we get from Jesus’ words, aside from a sense that farming must be awfully hard and often discouraging work, if so many of the seeds just wither and die? While the agricultural life was important to Jesus, who lived in an agricultural society, most of us realize that this scripture is not just about the hopes and frustrations of farming. But what is Jesus talking about, if not just seeds and soil?
This morning’s parable is often understood as an allegory. An allegory is, according to Webster’s Dictionary, “a literary (or other) device in which one thing is used to symbolically illustrate an idea or principle.”1 In the case of this parable, the seeds are said to represent people of varying degrees of faith. The “seeds that fell on the path” are those without faith. Those which “fell on rocky ground” are said to be people whose faith is fickle, and who turn from their faith the moment things get rough. Their faith “has no roots,” as it were. The seeds that fell among thorns are said to be those who fall to sin, or who are brought away from their faith by temptations. And, of course, the “seeds that fell on good soil and brought forth grain” are said to be those whose faith is strong and fruitful. I have heard different versions of the allegory, but they always have something to do with the seeds of the parable representing people or situations that lead to varying degrees of faith.
Yes, the scripture itself “explains” the parable as just such an allegory. However, most modern scholars believe that these words of explanation were not spoken by Jesus himself but were added later by the author of Matthew. Maybe, just maybe, Matthew’s explanation is what Jesus had in mind. However, I don’t think so.
There are several reasons why the traditional allegorical interpretation bothers me. First of all, as one scholar puts it, “this allegorical interpretation is dissatisfying, because it suggests that those who are sown in the good soil are simply lucky; they produce fruit because they have not had to struggle with the temptations of this world or face tribulation and persecution.”2 Grace is sort of left out of the picture, and faith becomes something flimsy and prone to the whim of the wind. Those who “fall on rocky ground” but are able to dig deep roots of faith are not considered, nor are the ones who escaped the thorns of temptation -- or whatever thorns were choking them. The strength of humankind -- and God -- to pry and to pray our way out of those “agricultural difficulties” life tosses us are not visible in the allegorical understanding of this parable. But if this is not what the story means, what is Jesus’ point?
The job of the preacher is not to get into Jesus’ head, and I can’t even pretend to do that. I can only tell you the Word of God that I see in the words of Jesus, the interpretation that I see amidst the puzzle of the scripture. And in this scripture I find much aside from the time-honored interpretation.
What if the seeds and/or the different soils are different times in the lives of each one of us? Few, if any of us have always “fallen among good soil” and lived the easy life (or constantly faithful life) at every moment. Just so, few, if any of us, have faced rocks or thorns at every moment -- even if we sometimes believe that our lives consist of nothing but hardship.
I know from my own experience that my faith can falter when I am in the midst of that rocky soil, or the thorns of life. “Where is God?” I wonder. “Is God even there?” Most of us, if we admit it, have had periods of doubt amidst those rocks and thorns. Many of us have felt the thorns of temptation -- and not always resisted them. As human beings, we are not perfect. We fall along the path, we choke among the thorns, we are buried under the rocks sometimes. But this does not mean that we’re dead and done for. It is by the grace of God that we emerge from those times and are once again planted on that good soil.
I return to The Farm of my ancestors. As my cousin Emmy opened our worship service on that summer day, she spoke of how my great-grandfather would begin every day in the fields with prayer. He would stand amidst the waist high wheat and turn his heart toward God. Although my great-grandfather was a man of great faith, he, too, had times of rocks and thorns. Farming, itself, is difficult, and while his farming methods were different, and one might say, more advanced than those of Jesus’ time, he faced the same difficulties of the parable on the fields that he cultivated. His life outside farming was not easy either, and there were times when he faced depression, hardship. But by the grace of God he emerged from those times. He was the sower, but so, too, was he the seed, and in his 90-odd years he faced birds, thorns, rocks... and fruitful soil.
Perhaps this morning’s scripture is about each one of us -- not so much about the discouragement of the thorns and rocks, but about the grace of God that gets us through those times. So now, as my great-grandfather did no matter what his crops were yielding or no matter where his faith was, let us pray.
--
1. “Allegory,” Webster’s II New College Dictionary, 2001 ed.
2. Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew (Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993) 153.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment