Sower, Soil, Seeds
Each year around the first of February, my husband starts to work on his crop of tomatoes.
He begins in our basement or garage, when the days are still dark, short, and cold, with trays of small pots or soil pods alongside jars and vials and baggies of meticulously saved, fermented, dried and stored tomato seeds. Many of them come from prior years’ harvest of heirloom varieties he’s grown. Or sometimes they come from a fellow lover of heirloom breeds. (The way that one saves seeds is a whole sermon illustration by itself for another day.) Favorites at our house include the Cherokee Purple, the Purple Bumble Bee, the Sunny Boy, the Yellow Pear, and the Russian Black. (need a picture)
He may start as many as 120 plants. Once seeds are set into soil, they are transferred to a custom-built planting shed, the size of an industrial refrigerator with grow lights, warming pads, insulation, weather sealing, radiant heat sources, thermostats and timers. (need a picture)
Over weeks, in timed cycles of light and dark, sprouts emerge and grow. He meticulously culls leggy sprouts from each pot or pod so that only the strongest get a chance to flourish.
By mid-April, he’ll put plants outside on the lawn on warm sunny days so that they begin to harden off – which means they learn to cope with wind and sunshine and maybe even raindrops bit by bit. They don’t go in the ground until the days begin to hit 80 with regularity, generally after Mother’s Day but before Memorial Day.
Getting them into the ground is its own process. Of the 120 starts, he may end up with as many as 80 plants worthy of planting in the ground. He typically puts 30 plants in our garden (giving the rest away to our kids, friends, co-workers, neighbors – and maybe this year to our community garden). Using a post-hole digger, he aims for a 12 – 18 deep hole that is then amended with fish meal, bone meal, store-bought garden soil, manure and topsoil. Tender green leaves are stripped from the length of the plants stem, leaving only two mature leaf sets at the top, and the plant is set as deep in the soil as one’s heart can bear…it’s hard to have cultivated these plants to 12 – 18 inches in height only to strip most of their precious leaves and set that gangly and bare stem deep into the soil – but that is what creates a strong root system for the plant. And a strong root system means a strong plant and a solid harvest…much of the time.
Matt’s plants are spoiled – we have a drip irrigation system that he dutifully repairs each spring. The garden is surrounded by fencing that (mostly) keeps the deer away. He plants enough to share with the occasional bunny or squirrel. It turns out that both of these critters LOVE tomatoes.
In the hot days of the summer, there is no greater joy than going out to prune plants and train them to their trellises and cages. The smell of tomato plants is summer perfume. If there are 30 plants in the ground, maybe 25 of them will be healthy and viable for the length of the season. In a good year, we’ll harvest hundreds of pounds of tomatoes – giving away lots and freezing lots for chili and soup and curry throughout the winter. Oh…and Matt will harvest seeds from the most beautiful and productive plants in the dying days of the season when nights are becoming cold.
This has been going on for about 15 years. It is a huge part of Matt’s home life for a solid 6 months of the year. It is life-giving, nourishing, rewarding. It is also time consuming, hard, and at times, disappointing.
He is a sower of a very specific kind of seed in very well-kept soil. And the fruits of his work are mouthwatering and precious.
In today’s scripture, we are introduced to the story-telling form of parables used so often by Jesus. Mark’s fourth chapter contains several related parables about plants.
In a parable, the storyteller uses commonly understood images to illustrate more abstract ideas. And in the story, there is often some kind of surprising turn.
In this text, Jesus not only uses parables to teach a gathered crowd, he also explains why he is teaching with parables and suggests that these stories aren’t easily accessible to everyone.
This morning, you heard Eugene Peterson’s interpretation of this text from The Message. Let’s put on our bible geek hats for a moment – every translation of the bible involves the translator’s interpretation. It involves their choice of words and sentence structure. And Peterson’s message has a very specific lens on this text – AND it is infinitely easier to hear and understand.
Jesus begins sitting in a boat offshore teaching to a huge crowd on the shore. He tells about a sower who sows seeds on four different kinds of soil. In that story, the seed sown on good soil produces an abundant harvest. That public teaching ends with words like, “If you have ears to hear, then listen.”
After the public teaching, Jesus is with the disciples and closest followers. He explains that these stories are not easily understood by ALL the people, so he unpacks the meaning behind the story:
· The seed is the Word of God.
· The bird that snatches the Word from the hardened soil of the road is Satan.
· The Word sown on the rocky gravel springs up, but doesn’t have solid roots and so it withers fast.
· The Word sown amidst the weeds, the competing priorities in life, is choked out by other things clamoring for attention.
· But some of the ground is ready for the Word. And the Word planted there is fruitful beyond belief.
We could say he is amending the disciples’ soil so that they might be good ground for the Word of God.
Jesus goes on to offer the example of hiding a light under a bed – we don’t do that – light is meant to be seen. It is meant to light up a space, it is meant to shine. He seems to be suggesting that these teachings, this understanding of God should not be hidden – it should shine.
But…didn’t Jesus just say these stories wouldn’t be easily understood? In the NRSV, the text says that the disciples have been given the SECRET of the Kingdom of God. That implies some sort of special knowledge. A secret is something one might hide.
But there is a disagreement about that word SECRET…in some translations (and in the Greek), it is the MYSTERY (mysterion) of the Kingdom of God.
In bible study this week, we agreed that there was a pretty big difference between a SECRET and a MYSTERY. A secret is kept. A mystery might be understood, unraveled, revealed as circumstances evolve, right?
Last week, I shared my ponderings and the Spirit’s nudging about what it means to know Jesus rather than to merely know about Jesus. It seems to me that these stories – these hard-to-understand parables which feel like riddles that draw us in and sometimes create more questions than answers and more dialogue than certitude – are meant to live in us and with us.
We are meant to wrestle with them, be confounded in seasons, and return to them with different life experiences and world views. We are meant to say, ah-ha in moments of epiphany and meant to turn them like a frustrating Rubik’s cube at other times.
It feels a little bit like sitting with these stories is one way that we get to know Jesus, who is the Word made flesh.
And, here’s the thing…the Kingdom of God probably doesn’t depend on OUR understanding.
If we read past our text for today, this is what comes next (again from The Message):
26-29 Then Jesus said, “God’s kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows—he has no idea how it happens. The earth does it all without his help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. When the grain is fully formed, he reaps—harvest time!
So… The harvest is going to happen. Here is one of those reversals – Jesus has taught about all kinds of soil, and NOW he teaches that without any tending of soil, the seed will grow. The seed will bear fruit.
Because God’s Kingdom can use us…but doesn’t depend on us.
AND…God’s Word can be wildly and generously shared and sown and it is not dependent on us to make it grow!!!
Sit with that.
Let’s ponder some “what ifs” here.
What if our understanding of God’s Word, and what if our connection to Jesus as God’s Word made flesh doesn’t have an end point? What if it is evolving and growing season after season? Sometimes dying because of natural cycles of birth, growth, stagnation, death and birth?
What if we didn’t have to be ready, we didn’t have to know we had the right interpretation, the right understanding, the right plan, we didn’t have to know how it all worked in order to share the Good News of God’s love lavishly all over the place?
What if listening was the real work – day in and day out?
What if we lavishly share and then go rest our heads on our pillows and God keeps doing what God does? Loving people. Nudging people. Shaping hearts?
Are you really listening?
May those who have ears to hear, listen!
Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment