farm equipment. My husband s favorite is Kenny Chesney s She thinks my tractor s sexy. He

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1 Pecking at the side view mirror Rev. Lynn James, LMHC Matthew 13: 1-9, (the parable of the Sower) Tractors are very cool. There are several country music songs celebrating the beauty of farm equipment. My husband s favorite is Kenny Chesney s She thinks my tractor s sexy. He liked to sing it while his father s old Ford 8 N tractor sat proudly in the driveway of our home in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago instead of being sold to strangers when his father retired from farming. The city council had banned bird feeders years earlier, because they didn t want to attract birds to town and have them poo on city property, but luckily no-one had anticipated the need for a zoning law prohibiting the display of farm equipment in quiet suburban neighborhoods. Then there s Rodney Atkin s title track A Man and his Tractor where simply watching a farmer on a tractor gives him hope for his life as he sings: Oh what I wouldn t give if I could just live, like a man on a tractor with a dog in a field. And my favorite is Craig Morgan s International Harvestor. I m a God fearin hard workin combine driver Hoggin up the road on my p-p-p-p-plower Chug a lug a luggin 5 miles an hour On my International Harvester There were 2 barns and a shed on the farm where I grew up that housed our combines, tractors, and planters. I was reminded of that scene from my childhood when I visited Tom and Nancy Telgemeyer, back in the spring. They had their planting equipment out in front of the shed at the end of the driveway and I could see a combine inside, waiting its turn to harvest what the planter began. In my mind, I could hear my little brother yelling Bino Bino like he did every time he saw a combine when he was a child.

2 I wonder what it would sound like if Jesus told this parable today. I don t think there are many farmers now who scatter seeds by hand. Even back yard gardeners would not be so wasteful as to throw seeds around willy nilly not paying attention to whether they are landing on the concrete sidewalk or into the rose bushes, or on the wooden deck where they fall through the cracks and end up in the dark and hidden places beneath it. Maybe Jesus would describe a driver out on a narrow 2 lane road like 42, in a hurry to get Terre Haute for an appointment stuck behind one of those enormous planters pulled by a tractor worthy of writing a song about. The yellow buckets on the green metal arms stretch 4 times the width of the tractor on both sides, way over the yellow line in the middle of the road. There is no passing this one any time soon. Suddenly, the driver veers off the road its right wheels riding the edge of the ditch. Seed scatters across the black top so that the car runs over it, making crackly sounds, and on the other side is lost into the fox tails and milk weeds and the water that has collected along the center of the ditch. Just ahead is a drive way; the tractor turns and the planter spills its contents all over the gravel and the driver just keeps moving, apparently oblivious to the wasted grain that has escaped. Will there be any left when it gets to the field? We would probably be wondering if that this farmer was drinking from a little brown bag in his cab. What is the message Jesus wanted to communicate through this parable? How does this message impact our lives today? In the story, who is the sower? What does the seed represent? What are the four kinds of soil symbolic of? This passage does conclude by answering these questions for us: Jesus is the sower the word of God is the seed

3 Some kinds of people are more like rocks than soil, hard headed, their hearts impenetrable, and the seed cannot settle into their lives and take root. They cannot even receive or absorb the word, so it just bounces off of and is picked up by the birds. Some people look like they are growing spiritually, but it is a shallow faith that withers as soon as conditions get tough. Some kinds of people are thorny and choke out the good news as soon as it lands Then, there are those who follow Jesus, allowing the word of God to grow within their lives. These people represent the fertile soul into which Jesus has planted the gospel and who are growing it into an abundant harvest for the sake of the world. We all know people who are thorny don t we? People who are hard headed? People who are like dry cracked parched earth that a seed would just bounce off of. Or, we know the opposite, people who are flooded, muddy, overwhelmed like the fields surrounding the Eel river, the good topsoil washing away along with the seeds and new sprouts that had started to grow there. We also know what it is like to plant something in good soil that is enriched and fertilized, not too damp from the rains and not too scorched by the sun, soil that would put a Miracle Gro user to shame! Or maybe it is like soil that was covered with horse poo last fall and then left to soak up the nutrients from its organic breakdown helped along by the snow, the freezing the thawing, the warming sunshine transforming ice into water, all winter long. (We also know those who are full of this sort of organic matter :-)

4 So, there we go, we have solved the parable of the sower. We are to be the kind of people who are good soil and we are to let the word of God grow in our lives. The parable also implies that the Gospel is wasted on others-the hard headed, stony, thorny folks, right? Well, for those of you who are hoping the sermon is over early, I m sorry but I just can t leave it here. Every time I find myself making negative or critical generalizations about other people I think of this red male cardinal that shows up in our drive way sometimes. We couldn t figure out why the side view mirror on the passenger side of the car kept having smears all over it, and then we noticed that there was bird poo on the car door. Then, one day, we heard this peck, peck, peck. We looked out the window to see this brilliant red cardinal attacking its reflection in our red car s side view mirror. He did this on and off for hours. We moved the car, he followed it. His poor little beak must have been so sore! He was fierce-relentless, and it was his own reflection, his own rage that he was seeing in the mirror, that was making him madder and madder. The harder he fought, the harder his reflection fought-he was stuck in a vicious cycle, fighting himself, wearing himself out for nothing. I think that often, what we see that annoys us, what causes criticism and condemnation to arise within us toward other people, is not just about them, but about the mirror they hold up exposing those things that we wish weren t true about us as well. We have to condemn it in them to reassure ourselves that it is not also in us. We are like cardinals pecking away at what we think is an enemy, while in reality, it is our own reflection we are fighting, and it is wearing us out, making our beaks sore, and wasting our time. So, with that in mind, I had to ask myself, honestly, if there are any rocky thorny places within me. I didn t really like the answer. You see, I can be a thorny kind of person sometimes,

5 prickly and grumpy and resentful. I am pretty good at not behaving that way, but I know if I m not taking responsibility for these parts of me, they will leak out unconsciously. I also, sometimes, of course not very often, can be as hard headed and closed minded and dry and disappointing as an Indiana field in July that hasn t had rain for months. I can also be like a flooded field overwhelmed by commitments, worries, time crunches, chores I have put off and I can feel all the good stuff disappearing with the muddy currents and taking what had just started to grow along with it. How about you? It would be easier if the parable would stay put within the interpretation that the writer helpfully put alongside Jesus words. It is especially cute, I think, that in the passage Jesus has just explained why he speaks in stories, in riddles, and does not lecture or explain: he wants to leave room for the listener s life to join in, for God to fill in the open places in the narrative with insights that might apply personally to each listener. Jesus is always about freedom, and telling stories is always about inviting those with ears to hear, to bring their own experiences along with them in relationship to the experiences detailed in the story. There is freedom to think, to have a conversation with the story, to ask questions, led by the Spirit to discover its gifts and challenges and unique meanings for our lives. The good news here is that God knows we are all of these things-rocky, thorny, messy, inhospitable to the Spirit, too lazy to till our spiritual gardens, too busy to take the time to prepare to receive the gifts God faithfully showers upon us, so angry or hurting or worried or defensive that nothing gets through that might touch our hearts and our souls. But our God is a God who will not be dissuaded, whose love and generosity is abundant, extravagant, even foolish. Our God is a God who invests Godself in all the parts of our lives, our flawed and

6 broken and unhealthy and sinful parts as well as those parts that like fertile fields represent our best selves. In the story, if the seed falls on the path, well then birds will be fed by it. Perhaps they will then spread the seeds far and wide as they digest it and deposit the processed seeds farther than the sower could reach. I am sure we all know of someone whose childhood was lived on rocky ground, thorny, painful, and lacking in what they needed to grow. But they grew anyway. They grew like a dandelion pushing up through the cracks in the sidewalk. They grew like a corn stalk coming up in the ditch. They blossomed finally like a seed blown by the wind or carried by a bird far away from where they were planted. Perhaps this has been true for some moment of your life-when you had to leave in order to germinate. We all know of people who were drinking or drugging or gambling or shopping or fighting or otherwise turned away from God s call upon their lives but because the seed had fallen on them, over and over, apparently wasted, over and over, one day, for reasons that are seldom clear, they finally responded. They finally let it take root and begin to grow and their lives turned around. Haven t we all at times failed to allow God to work in us, to claim the gifts God kept scattering upon our lives, forgetting to notice, to appreciate the seeds that were poking up through the ground, trusting in the seeds that were breaking out of their husks but still below the soil, because we were only looking for, demanding full grown and ready to harvest plants? Haven t we all had times where we hardened our hearts and closed our ears and given up, allowing thorny patches of weeds to take over our lives? And what if it is not only Jesus who is the sower in the parable; what if we too are called to be extravagant and foolish, even wasteful, in loving, in living out the gospel? What if God

7 calls us to love even when their hearts or our hearts are hardened, to speak up, even when it looks like we will not be heard, to give even though it won t even come close to meeting the need, and to keep scattering seeds of hope, even when all around us is rocky or gravely or thorny ground. The truth is, in order to succeed we have to be willing to fail, over and over again. In order to write something meaningful, we have to be willing to write something, lots of somethings that are dumb and will just be erased. In order to paint something beautiful, we must be willing to paint many canvases filled with images that are embarrassing to look at because they just aren t that good. In order to not be alone, we must embrace others who annoy us sometimes, and who, unbelievable as it may sound, are annoyed BY us sometimes (gasp!) In order to grow, we must invite God into the parts of our lives that we would rather hide, that we would rather pretend are not true about us, that we would rather judge in others instead of dealing with in our own lives and relationships. The good news is that our God is a gracious and generous sower who is constantly, lavishly, unhindered and undeterred by what to our eyes seems an unlikely return on God s investments. Where we see hopelessness, God sees potential. Where we see flaws, God says, I can work with that. Where we see imperfection, God sees a place where something just might germinate if seeds are scattered there. Jesus kept showing up in unexpected, unlikely places. That is good, because these are the places where we live. God is not afraid to scatter promises, seeds of new life, and call us to grow, even there. Thanks be to God, amen. (copyright 2008, Lynn James, all rights reserved)