July 13, 2008
Edwards (Knox) United Church
Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
Genesis 25:19-34
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson
Our church is surrounded by farm land so that experience ought to make both texts seem a bit strange. We ought to wonder about the skill of the sower. No preparation. No concern where the seeds will fall. The sower just goes out and scatters the seeds willy nilly.
Then good old Esau. The New English bible put it this way: “went away without much ado.” Gave up his birthright for a bowl of soup. Gave the farm away on a whim. No care for tomorrow.
Very human stories. Characters we can identify with and in some sense we can be. The sower thinks the term for weed is another name for a flower. You know those purple plants everywhere, well at our house they are welcomed as flowers.
Still, this sower would be seen as careless. Just as those have manicured lawns see weeds as dangerous. Those peasant farmers who heard the story first would have wondered how this could be about God? Jesus said the kingdom of God is like the sower. Note it is about the sower not the soil.
The prior question was, show me God, and Jesus says, let me tell you a story of a sower. As with many of these stories, the hearers were not pleased with what they heard. So they quickly tried to clean up the stories, a little censorship. And the church down through the ages has allegorized the parables. Which is to clean them up and make them more acceptable.
To remind you, allegory has the actors in the story being symbolic of some deeper and hidden meaning. As well, not only are human actors representing something other than themselves, all the images mean something beyond ordinary understanding ... a rock is more than a rock. Thus, to allegorize, the hard ground was considered a hard heart, which became symbolic of those who reject the message, and in the case of Matthew, the Jewish community. The danger here is we create anti-Semitism from this reading. The danger with allegory is one has to have a secret code to unpack the story.
The problem with allegory is the person or group who have the secret code can use the story to achieve control over others. Thus, those who are different are considered the enemy, become the hard ground. So the story has been used to justify all sorts of violence against those different.
Allegory has been used to justify the perspective of the group in control. It allows one to perceive ones group to be the good guy, your group to be the good earth. Such a reading tears our relational world apart. Think of the term of Axis of Evil as a symbol of hard ground and how that justifies violence. This is was also the case in Ireland, where the Orange saw themselves as the good ground and the IRA saw themselves as the good ground.
We can use such a reading in family or friendship networks. We can structure our relationships based on rocky ground and good ground. The rocky ground people have no hope; they will always be that way; while we, the good ground people deserve what we have.
The reading of evil choking out the truth has been used to repress others, to condemn, because they think differently from us. We have the truth and those others have hard hearts and that is why they are different. This moves from a disagreement about how we see the world to those others are completely without any truth, wrong and thus need not be listened to. It stops mutual transformation that is possible in a pluralistic world, and creates fundamentalism.
A better read, and to hear any story, is not to look for hidden or esoteric meanings in the story. Sometimes the story is just about a sower who goes out to sow. Sometimes it is about a widow who loses a coin. A parable gives us “an imaginary garden with real toads in it.” The parable gives a story that is possible with real characters in it. However, the twist challenges the status quo and the common sense we have accepted.
Jesus told stories to shatter our perspective and to make us think again. The Bible is full of ironic images to call into question taken for granted views. Good comedy and good drama does that, for they can challenge us, because like the parable they are subversive. Parables challenge us at foundational levels. What really is at stake in life? How do we deal with diversity and difference? What is compassionate behavior?
The sower gives us an unexpected answer. Remember the opening line is - the kingdom of God is like - a sower. The sower is careless. Seems to have an abundance of seed. Doesn’t check out whether the recipient is worthy of the seed, just tosses it out. The parable teaches that the nature of God is one of abundance, more Grace than we can conceive.
The story speaks of a God who trusts and allows for change. To add to this insight, here is a possible response. It is to make new our response and meaning. Beginning in the abundance of Grace we can be honest about ourselves. We don’t have to fake spirituality or goodness to receive God’s love. We are every type of ground in this parable. Some days we are the rocky ground. Other days we have no depth in our spiritual self. We have not watered our souls by attending to a spiritual discipline and practicing it faithfully. Then there are days when we are thorny and no one can touch us because we are too prickly. Then there are days where things are right with the world and our yield even surprises us.
This type of reading reminds us we share the characteristics of being human. Our life is a struggle for balance. To achieve balance is to be self critical, to apply constructive criticism to our motives and intentions. It is to be open to the aim of God that works with us, to lure us to more possibilities of living well for the sake of others.
It is a world of abundance of Grace that gives us and others a second, a third chance. We know we share the mixture of motives that creates the world as it is. By critical examination we overcome the negative tendencies we have and work with the positive. As I said last week, this does not do away with the reality of the world, with its suffering, grief, and destruction. What it means is that with the perspective of abundance we can learn to spot the good notes of life, and nurture them into more beauty. It is to no longer divide the world into weeds and flowers, it is to find the flowering in the weeds and the weeds in the flowers. We will till our garden of life with an attitude of looking for growth in unexpected places. With care we sow love and hope. And we leave the judging to God.
George Hermanson
www.georgehermanson.com
