July 16, 2017 – Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Good Soil – And Not So Good Soil
Lectionary 15 – July 16, 2017
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Anne and I went strawberry picking on Friday out at Grenkow’s U-Pick.
It was a beautiful day – the sun was shining and a breeze was blowing.
The strawberries were perfect.
We picked five baskets full and then headed toward the booth to pay the farmer.
I said to him the strawberries were great again this year, as they were last year.
He said they were, although last year was an extraordinary year for strawberries.
With this week’s reading in mind, I asked him how he goes about preparing the soil each year.
He said it’s a lot of work.
In the fall, they rototill between the rows of plants, ploughing under the plants on the edges.
Then they put down straw over everything for the winter.
In the spring they take up all the straw again.
And then comes the weeding.
Ah: the weeding.
You really have to weed every ten days, he says, or else you may as well just throw in the towel.
And it’s all done by hand.
A combination of family members and employees do the work.
It’s a lot of work in a large patch.
It’s a lot of work to prepare the soil.
And then, of course, there is all the stuff that the farmer doesn’t do that prepares the soil.
There is nature’s work.
First, you think, there are millions of years’ worth of stuff breaking down to make the soil,
the slow erosion of all that stuff that creates good, life-giving soil.
Then, of course, somebody did have to remove all the rocks from it at some point.
Then, too, the snow that falls in winter and the rain that falls in spring and summer do
their work in preparing the soil.
And other elements, too, have a hand in making the plants fruitful:
bees do the work of pollinating the strawberry plants and they are aided by the wind.
It’s a lot of work to prepare the soil and make the strawberry plants fruitful.
No wonder the farmer is retiring from the strawberry u-pick business after this year!
There is no summer holiday for you when you have a strawberry farm!
As Jesus tells it, there is a lot of seemingly unsuitable, unprepared soil about.
There is the rocky ground that no one has bothered to remove the rocks from –
which is a lot of work.
There are the weedy thorny bits that no one has gone to the trouble of weeding.
And of course there are the hard bits where people walk that are not suitable for cultivation.
Do you ever feel like your heart is not particularly good soil where the love of God can be sown?
I’m sure the crowds Jesus told his parable to that day long ago felt like
they were not particularly good soil.
These were, after all, by and large the people of no account in a very hierarchical society.
They were, as we know, the sick, the mentally ill, the outcast, the poor.
They felt themselves to be unsuitable soil.
We too often feel ourselves this way.
I mean, here is Jesus, telling the people that God’s kingdom is coming –
God’s long awaited and hoped for reign of fairness, of equity, of peace and of justice.
And here is Jesus telling them that it is going to come to them and through them to the world!
Well, they could easily be forgiven for thinking that Jesus is peddling a pipe dream.
But here’s the thing: even as Jesus sows this message among them,
he and his disciples are preparing them to be good soil.
It’s a lot of work, but Jesus throughout the Gospels shows how God
prepares good soil in which this message can be planted,
and in which it can take root and grow and be fruitful.
Jesus and his disciples feed the hungry, forgive the sinful, heal the sick, and include the outcast.
Certainly there are some things we can do in order to be good soil.
We can pray, we can take responsibility for our own spiritual lives.
We can discipline ourselves to be generous and we can learn to make sacrifices.
Only we can make the choice to engage in corporate worship every week where we are
nurtured to become the thing we were meant to be: loving likenesses of Jesus,
whose is himself the living image of the God of all love and compassion.
But then, too, there are those elements outside ourselves that have a hand in shaping us.
Others often have a role to play in removing the hard stones from the fields of our hearts,
those hard things that have hurt us and wounded us and made us feel we could not
possibly ever be good soil.
Others often have a role to play in removing the weeds that clutter our lives and
in reminding us that we were not made to be weeds that choke but
plants bearing fruit that feed and benefit others.
And still others tend to our hearts,
praying for us through the winters when our hearts are cold and unreceptive,
standing by us and waiting for time to work its healing magic.
All these things prepare us to be the good soil God intends us to be.
And when spring comes, the sower comes along and sows . . . everywhere!
The sower sows not just on the good soil but sows love and grace . . . absolutely everywhere!
It’s so interesting to me that Jesus’ parable today does talk about the importance of good soil.
But even more important, Jesus’ parable today talks about how the sower sows good seed
in both good soil and in not so good soil.
Seed was precious and expensive in Jesus’ day.
You wouldn’t sow where there were weeds that would choke and
where you hadn’t removed the rocks and where people walked.
But God does.
Jesus looks at the crowds and Jesus looks at the disciples –
and in doing so Jesus addresses people who were not yet perfectly good soil.
And he says to them: God’s reign is coming to you and through you to the world.
Some of you are good soil, and some of you are not yet the soil you could be.
Yet all of you are being tended in this community – by God, and by those who love you.
And you yourselves are taking responsibility for your spiritual lives by being here and
in other ways.
And you are not alone in this venture.
Together, our job is to encourage each other to be the best soil we can be.
See: like a good farmer, Jesus sees the potential in the thorny soil to be good soil.
And like a good farmer, he sees the potential in the rocky soil to be good soil.
He knows that on the first page of Genesis, God looked at everything God created and
named it good – everything! And that includes you!
You are good.
You are good soil.
You have it in you to bear really good, life-giving, nourishing fruit for those in need.
God’s reign of love will come to you, and God’s reign of love can come through you.
When you are feeling choked by distracting thorns, God is going to sow seeds of love in you,
because not only is that what you need, but you can bear good fruit anyway.
When your heart feels rocky and full of impossibility, God is going to sow seeds of love in you,
because God sees the potential in you now, today, in this very moment.
When your heart is frozen in the winter of grief, and loss,
God is going to sow seeds of love anyway, because our God is the God of spring,
who brings summer from winter and life from death.
And this morning, God is sowing yet again.
We are the crowds on the shore who feel themselves to be less than worthy of this love and
and of this great assignment that has been given to us.
We are the disciples who are not yet the perfect soil they can be.
And yet, God will sow, and sow, and sow divine love in us anyway,
because God has a neverending store of grace, because God is generous,
because God is hopeful, because God has faith in us –
that the love sown this morning, that the hope sown this morning will not go to waste.
But will bear good fruits of love and loving service in this community, in this neighbourhood,
and in this world.
God has faith that the kingdom will indeed come – through us.
So together, let us say, Amen.
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
