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A Sermon Preached at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, Oak Park, IL
on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 13, 2008, (Proper 10, Year A, RCL)
by the Rev. J. Paris Coffey

Readings: Isaiah 55:10-13; Psalm 65: 9-14; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

In today's Gospel we hear a parable about seed and soil as Jesus told it to a crowd of people by the Sea of Galilee some 2,000 years ago. A parable is usually a simple story told to illustrate a spiritual truth, but in this case it's more than just a story. It's an act of sowing seed as well, for as Jesus speaks, his words take root - or not - depending on the openness of those who listen. "Let anyone with ears listen," Jesus says to the crowd at Galilee . . . and to us, for we are his intended audience as well.

Without doubt, a lot of time has past - some 2,000 years - but seed can remain fertile for a long time, as archeologists discovered when they found a handful of grain in a 5,000-year-old Egyptian tomb. Some of these ancient seeds were planted and came to life, much to everyone's surprise. Everyone, that is, except Jesuit priest and author Anthony de Mello who saw seeds the way he saw words. Writing in his book The Song of the Bird de Mello says, "When a person is enlightened his or her words become like seeds, full of life and energy, (and) . . . can remain in seed form for centuries until they are sown in a receptive, fertile heart. I used to think," de Mello continues, "that the words of Scripture were dead and dry (but) I know now that they are full of energy and life . . . It was my heart that was stony and dead, so how could anything grow there?"

De Mello sees the seed as essential, but no more so than the soil. Jesus agrees, telling a parable that is less about the sower than seed and soil. Perhaps this is the reason the sower is so extravagant with his seed in today's Gospel, trusting that at least some of it will fall on fertile ground. As scholar John Dominic Crossan' writes in his book The Essential Jesus, "To sow is to trust the soil; to parable is to trust the audience." Crossan believes that neither seed nor sower is decisive here, but "soil," adding that "it is far easier to explain what makes bad soil bad than good soil good."

Today's parable would seem to concur, referencing bad soil more times than good. What's more, this parable seems to beg the question, "Which soil are we? Are we the hard-packed dirt of the road, the shallow soil of rocky ground, the thistle-laden bed that chokes new growth, or the rich, receptive earth that nurtures life? Before we decide let me recap these four soil-types, or kinds of hearts that the soil represents.

The first is the hard-packed soil of the road - the hardened heart where the seed is easily snatched away. "The word has been sown in this heart," says Jesus. "It has been heard, but not understood, and so is easily pilfered." Such hearts are common today, often in the Church, where "right" thinking supersedes right living. By "right" thinking I mean those who take literally in Scripture everything that can be taken literally, condemning anyone who thinks otherwise. Their hearts are closed to new understandings of God that accompany our expanding knowledge of the universe, as well as to those who embrace such understandings. This was the case with Galileo whom the Church renounced in 1633 for asserting that the earth revolved around the sun. In similar ways, though, others renounce God and the Church, condemning people who trust in God as gullible, foolish or just plain stupid. Galileo was hardly such a person; he was a man of deep faith. The truth, though, is that both kinds of hearts - fundamentalist believers and fundamentalist non-believers - stop listening, closing their hearts and minds to anything beyond their hardened thinking.

The second type of heart is the shallow heart or surface soil that barely covers the bedrock underneath. Such hearts receive the hope of the Gospel with joy but are unable to grow under its accompanying demands. This can happen to people who understand God only as a giver of gifts - as the great Santa Claus in the sky. Consequently they feel betrayed when life gets tough, lamenting, "How could God let this happen?" They don't want a reciprocal relationship with God - the hard work that partnership requires. After all, life is hard enough as it is. Many of us need two jobs to make ends meet and keep pace with social pressures, which means we're busy and our kids are busy. There's little time to eat together, much less time for God, and so our souls - lacking nourishment - whither in the scorching stress of life.

The third type of soil is soil infested with thorns or weeds - the heart whose life has been choked by self absorption. This includes those, says Jesus, "Who hear the word, but allow the cares of the world and lure of wealth to choke the word so that it yields nothing." Yielding fruit/generating new life is part of what it means to be human. Self absorption, on the other hand, generates nothing but the fulfillment of our own wants. It's blind to the needs of others, leading us to use God's gifts for self alone and not for the betterment of the world. Sadly, this, too, can be true of the Church, which at times can be so absorbed in its own small world that it ignores the outsider for whom Christ came.

Obviously, the Church is not perfect, but then neither are ANY of us - those within the Church or those without - and so before we talk about the fourth type of heart, the good soil that allows us to hear God's voice and respond, I want to suggest that we are all a mixed bag. Jesus' parable may indeed sound like a multiple choice quiz, but the real answer to the question, "What kind of soil are we: "A, B, C or D?" is "E" - all of the above. We are "God's All Purpose Potting Soil Plus," which may be the reason that the Sower in today's parable is so lavish, reckless even, with his seed. My grandfather, who raised flowers for a living, always told me not to waste seed. "Prepare your soil properly," he insisted, "then plant your seed in the prepared soil." Never would he have thrown seed on the path, in the rocks, or among the weeds. Jesus' sower, on the other hand, throws seed to kingdom come, apparently knowing that at least some of it will fall on good soil and take root.

If so, perhaps the real question, then, is not, "What kind of soil are we?" but "What must we do for God's seed to take root?" The answer isn't easy, but it's simple. We must listen! "Let anyone with ears listen," Jesus says - to the crowd beside the Sea of Galilee, to the people of St. Christopher's, in Oak Park and to those beyond our time and place. Listen . . . for in listening - to God's Word in Scripture, to the still small voice within, to our expanding knowledge of the universe, to our needs AND the needs of the world, to the mountains and hills, fields and trees, at work and home, in Church and at prayer - listen, and we will hear and come to know the Living God, and in so doing, generate new life in the Church and in the world.

Amen.