July 10, 2005: Good Seed After Bad
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23; Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:1-12, 23-24
Springwater Presbyterian Church - Eileen Parfrey - Pastor.

The problem with being an adult is that we think too much and going to seminary only gives you more to think about. Take, for instance, today's two scripture passages. The story about God scandalously opting for the younger son isn't good news if you're the firstborn, as I am. The story about the seeds is easier if we stick to the Sunday School thing about being good disciples. But as it is, when you combine the stories of God giving Esau the shove since before birth, with a story about the soil on which seed falls-well, I alternate between the poles of blaming God and feeling like a bad Christian.

Two seed stories. Barren Rebekah, the embodiment of how fertility belongs to God, finds her twins begin lives of rivalry before birth. When she despairs of the situation to God, God's answer sets up the family for millennia of heartache. Mother favors God's favorite, and Mama's boy, profits from his brother. Didn't God see this coming?

Jesus' story tells of sower, seeds and soil. When Jesus launches his explanation, he claims it's a parable about the sower, but his explanation is about the soil on which the seed falls. So that my Sunday School classes taught that we were supposed to learn about being a good disciple from this. Maybe it's too obvious to say, but let's take Jesus at his word and focus on the sower, even though his interpretation is about what happens to the seed. We know Matthew's schtick is that Jesus is the Messiah through whom the kingdom is coming-not "has come," but "is coming"-so we can deduce that the "seed" is news of the coming of the kingdom and that the sower is God. All of this means that, rather than feeling guilty when we read this story, we can let ourselves off the hook for what is clearly the sower's work. Forget what you used to know about this story. Forget about trying to figure out what the rocky soil or pathway or birds signify in our modern culture. That's guaranteed to make us feel guilty, and we might miss out on the real focus, God's abundance. A God so determined that everyone at least get a chance for kingdom life, that seeds of possibility are flung hither and yon, willy-nilly, abundantly.

One of my lectionary group colleagues and his wife are transitioning to retirement life at the beach. They're fixing a run-down cottage and, in an effort to live with the sand dune on which it's built, they bought a package of wildflower seed a couple of years ago and flung the seeds on the dune. Nothing much happened. A few scraggly plants sprouted that may or may not have been what they threw on the dune, so they mentally wrote off the $6.95 and went back to scraping and painting. This spring, they discovered the whole face of the dune covered in wildflowers. Flinging had borne fruit, reminding them in a significant way, seeds will work in their own time, not ours.

But back to the sower. Back to God's grace extravagantly offered whenever and wherever on the chance that it will be accepted. Because, according to today's two stories, the consequence of where the seed falls is up to God. The coming of the kingdom, the means of its coming, who it comes to-it's all up to God. We can't box it up, tie it in a bow, believing we've explained and understood it, made it manageable. It's still mystery. That's where Jesus says cryptically, "Let anyone with ears listen." The seed doesn't get to choose where it will land, nor can the soil's response be anything but what it was created to be.

How I read this story is colored by this week's immersion in Parker Palmer's book, Let Your Life Speak. Palmer points out that, how we think of our life determines how we live it. By how we think of our life, he's thinking of organizing metaphor. People who "make time" or "make friends" are using a manufacturing metaphor. Their personal characteristics and gifts are raw materials to "make something" of themselves. Folks who "spend energy" on a project or "use time wisely" are thinking like consumers. They themselves are commodities to use up or replace. Other folks might "take a gamble" or are "victims of fate." Their lives are games of chance in which there are winners and losers. We shouldn't be surprised that people who go through life using "strategies" or employing "tactics" see life as a battlefield where they face their enemies.

Palmer suggests employing the metaphor of seasons to understand ourselves. Imitating nature's ecology, this metaphor is community-oriented, and it may help us be receptive soil for the gospel seed of God's kingdom. As long as we can live with some paradox. Paradox, you recall, is when opposites are both true. The opposites don't cancel each other out, but need each other for the whole truth to be reflected. As I describe Palmer's interpretation of the seasons, don't think of whole life spans, but of repeated seasonal cycles through life.

Autumn's paradox is both dying and seeding. Oregon's huge fruit, nut, and berry harvests remind us that in the midst of autumn's die-back is fall's harvest, the basis of new life. But Jesus reminds us that the seeds die in order to bear more fruit, just as we lose our lives to save them. What seems a needlessly abundant and superfluous annual harvest of maple helicopters reminds us to give away our lives as extravagantly as the sower does the seed.

Winter's paradox seems to be death, but it is also arguably rest. Our Jewish ancestors referred to this as "Sabbath." Winter is not, as Roy Blount Jr would have it, retribution for something really bad that someone once did. The "winters" of our lives might look like failure, betrayal, depression, death. But in God's time we can see these in light of redemption if we adopt a Minnesotan's attitude toward winter. You can't fight it, so learn to ski, take up ice skating, and dress warmly.

Who doesn't like spring? Wisconsin farmers. This season is not referred to in Wisconsin as "spring." It is called "mud season." Spring's combination of chaos and new life is a true paradox. Nature does the opposite of hoarding and gives itself completely away for the sake of new life. "If you receive a gift," Palmer says, "you keep it alive not by clinging to it but by passing it along." When I was a little girl, trying to hoard goodbye kisses, my Uncle Doug told me that the more you give them away, the more you have to give.

Which brings us to the abundance of summer. The embarrassment of Oregon's summertime plenty reminds us that there is a reliable cycle of scarcity and abundance. Autumn and winter's times of deprivation merely foreshadow summer's return to bounty. When we hoard, it means we think there isn't enough to go around. The irony is that, by acting out of scarcity, we actually create the very thing we fear. "Here is a summertime truth:" Palmer writes, "abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole and, in return, is sustained by the whole. Community doesn't just create abundance-community is abundance. . . Summer is the season when all the promissory notes of autumn and winter and spring come due, and each year the debts are repaid with compound interest. In summer, it is hard to remember that we had ever doubted the natural process, had ever ceded death the last word, had ever lost faith in the powers of new life. Summer is a reminder that our faith is not nearly as strong as the things we profess to have faith in-a reminder that for this single season, at least, we might cease our anxious machinations and give ourselves to the abiding and abundant grace of our common life."

Let anyone with ears listen. Trust the sower, not where the seed falls or whether the soil is doing its job properly. Trust the sower. Simply receive the seed of the coming kingdom with the hospitality in which you were created to receive it.