THE SOWER They Have No Root

April 28, 2013 Luke 8:4-18 THE SOWER They Have No Root We will begin today by facing the fact that the symbolism of the parables is neither clear nor consistent in every aspect. That is always true of every parable, by the way. Trying to have birds, seeds, animals, or soil stand in for humans and human experiences will always fall short at some point. Humans have more dimensions to them than sheep or trees. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Nor can a good tree produce bad fruit. Are you a good tree or a bad tree? Actually, yes I am. Do you bear good fruit or bad fruit? Yes, I do. Shall we throw out this parable because of the flaws in its symbolism? Of course not. I am grateful to Jesus for telling it. It is important to me to remember that there are motives, attitudes, desires, even old assumptions inside of me that will never bear anything but bad fruit. Every time I let them come forth let them have their way bad fruit will follow. I cannot cut all of these things out of my self, but allegiance and love for Jesus does outrank them. Nevertheless, I am a human being, not a tree. And with the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit, there is much within me that can bear good fruit. Nevertheless, I am not, and neither is any other human I have ever known, incapable of bearing bad fruit. On that score, the parable is wrong which is one of the ways it teaches me. But that is a different parable, and we are not going to switch horses in the middle of the stream, as they used to say. We are simply acknowledging that a parable cannot use imagery that is accurate and consistent at every point. Jesus may be the Lamb of God, but He says more than baaaa. I have never found the pearl of great price. On the other hand, I have found the pearl of great price. The real question is, have I sold everything I have to obtain it? The pearl keeps bringing me more than I deserve or expected. Am I supposed to use this bounty for the Kingdom, or am I supposed to sell that too? I am simply saying that the imagery of a parable is exceedingly useful if I am willing to work with it. But it is not always clear, accurate, or unmistakable. Most certainly it is not rigid or wooden. As every Disciple Band knows, different people can get different benefit from the same parable. Frequently we ourselves return to a parable and find new meaning and help waiting there for us. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2013 All rights reserved. PAGE 1 OF 9

To stay with a parable we must bend the symbolism in places to keep from getting so rigid that we lose what the parable is trying to tell us. At the same time, we are cautious about playing too fast and loose with the imagery, lest we miss the truth the parable is revealing. One way to ruin a parable is to get so caught up in fancy allegorical meanings and innuendos that we are no longer applying the parable to our own lives. I want to be a fruitful servant and follower of Jesus. Now, you can point out that fruit, servant, follower, and even Jesus are words carrying many layers of symbolic meaning beyond any strict definitions. Nevertheless, I am unwilling to leave this all vague, symbolic, or theoretical. This translates into real-life efforts and choices on my part. For myself, whether another person mocks me or joins me, this is what my life is about. I am endlessly grateful to keep finding others who feel the same way about it. Christianity is a life to be lived. Parables, studying the Bible, and joining a church are only ways to enhance and help us to live that life. Okay, back to our parable. And we are way slowed down. We are not rushing to get to the next passage. Some of you are even learning to go on pondering and learning from this parable long after the sermon has ended. There is a really rich conversation going on about this parable in our Forum. If you haven t been following it, go to The New Church website (thenewchurch.org) and add what is being said there to your own thoughts and pondering. This has become a conversation between David Chrysler and Andy Cies. They complain about that a little, but the rest of us realized that the conversation was getting better and better and maybe we should just keep listening. I started to jump in a number of times, but realized I cannot go on preparing this sermon series and share everything I am thinking in the Forum at the same time. Anyway, try it if you are not already following it. You may discover that, at places, the Forum is better than the sermons. We are not the Sower. The Sower is God. We all have a desire to play God from time to time, but we are not the Sower. The seed is the word of God. Jesus tells us that straight-out. So we are not the seed. We are the soil. But it is sentient soil. You see? Already we have to adjust the imagery a little or we cannot follow the parable. We are the soil, but we are sentient: awake, aware, conscious of being the caretakers and nurturers of the seed. If we do not know that the word of God is falling upon us, we cannot get into this parable. And yes, we remember that Jesus told us that most would neither see nor hear this parable. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2013 All rights reserved. PAGE 2 OF 9

The word (logos) has always referred to the mind the thought patterns, the design. We think before we act. At least some of us do. The truth is, our actions come from the way we think, even more than we realize. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. So the word is the intention or purpose of God, even before it has come into being. In the beginning was the word. Even before God started creating, God had a plan and purpose in mind. The word became flesh, and dwelt among us. Jesus is the plan and purpose of God being acted out before our very eyes. All of this you know and have been familiar with for years. So while some may think the parable vague or elusive, much of it is clear to you. The seed is the word of God. The seed is the plans and purposes of God, now applied specifically to you. God is always sowing the seed: always throwing to us our true purpose, destiny, vocatio; always inviting us into some way we can each help and be part of the coming Kingdom. God is always sending this call this opportunity to everyone who is willing to receive it, to take it in, to protect it, nurture it, and let it grow within. Even though we begin to hear and love this parable more and more, we now hit a slight glitch. I think it is a very small glitch, but we can move past it more easily if we simply acknowledge that it is there. Some seed falls on rock. And that is the verse verse thirteen we are paying special attention to today. Some soil is rock? Rock is not soil. If I am rock, the seed has no chance: no chance to get to me; no chance to grow in me. End of story. End of any meaning in this parable, if I insist on being too literal. If I am rock, there is no need for Satan to steal the seed from me (as in last week s verse). If I am rock, the seed never had a chance to get to me to begin with. But the parable is not closed down. Do I know some people who remind me of rock? Sadly, yes I do. But the real question is: Are there places in me that are rock places where the seed has no chance to reach me, find purchase, grow in me? Most of you have figured out long ago that we are not just one kind of soil. All of us are all the different kinds of soil. Moreover, it is not just that we go through phases or stages of life, though that is true too. It is that the seed is encountering all the different kinds of soil within us all the time. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2013 All rights reserved. PAGE 3 OF 9

We are not as well integrated as we wish we were certainly not as integrated as we try to pretend. When the word of God falls on us, some part of us is eager and receptive; some part of us is resistant and rebellious; some part of us is frightened or angry. Do we still want to think this is a turkey shoot? Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and it s all over? Shall we be ridiculous, or shall we be real? Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and the real warfare begins at least the spiritual warfare does. Who runs my life, me or Jesus? That s not a simple, true-or-false quiz. That question dogs the steps of every authentic Christian every single day for the rest of our time here. That does not mean we find no joy or love, or that we never smile in growing awareness. In this spiritual warfare, life opens up, and we see more and more of the dimensions of God s love and forgiveness and humor and playfulness. And we see more and more of the games and ploys that the people around us are immersed in. Some of them don t even know what they are running from, and they never stop to wonder why they are running so hard. Most of the people who are running are running from God. You don t have to quiet down and pay attention for very long to realize that. It was Augustine, actually, who first mentioned it to me: Our hearts can find no rest, until they rest in Thee. He knew because he himself had been such a great runner. Anyway, we get a little shift of imagery here. The seed falls on rock, so it gets no chance no purchase. But Jesus cheats just slightly in His explanation. They have no root, He says. Soil doesn t have roots. Rock doesn t have roots. Seed has roots; at least it must take root in order to grow. But it is a small adjustment. The seed puts down roots in the soil, so in that sense the soil has roots within it. It does if it accepts and nurtures the seed. Anyway, Jesus only shifts to what we need to ponder. Verse thirteen does tell us about one of the major experiences we have when the word of God falls on us: The seed sown on rock stands for those who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root; they are believers for a while, but in the time of testing they give up. Rock is hard. There is no way for the seed to get in. The message remains superficial. It never means anything to some people beyond their own shallow, outer desires. It never reaches the heart. We would say that it never becomes truly important to them. They ask: Will God get me what I want? Make my life better, easier, more fun? If not, what good is God? It never occurs to the rock that God is truly important way beyond anything I am or ever will be. So it doesn t take much to BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2013 All rights reserved. PAGE 4 OF 9

turn the rock people away. There is no passion, gratitude, worship, or awareness in them to begin with not on the inside where it matters. Whether we follow the imagery or not, the message is clear. Some seed falls on rock people. We have seen the principle working out in real life all around us for as far back as we can remember. And we will go on seeing it too. My Sunday School teacher told us there was a layer of dirt covering the rock but that it was a very thin layer. The seed hit that thin layer of soil and said, Yippee! This is great! And because the soil was thin, it sprang up really fast and thought it had the whole thing figured out. It didn t have to worry about putting down roots, so things started to sprout right away. But a thin layer of soil cannot hold much moisture for very long, and the rock underneath does not allow the seed to send down roots. So at the first sign of trouble when any struggle, temptation, or trial comes along it is quickly over. This is no fun for me. I quit! End of story. The seed on the rock represents people who quit or give up really fast. But Jesus suggests that it represents people who have no root. Do any of us have trouble imagining that there are people who have no roots? Do any of us have memories of times when we ourselves felt or acted rootless? We have all known quitters. I would hate to see myself as a quitter when it comes to Jesus or His Kingdom. I find it hard to have respect or appreciation for the quitters. But every church knows such people and has experience with them. I nevertheless caution myself. Sometimes a person is pruning, not quitting. We prune to become more productive to bear more fruit. I have huge respect for people who prune. But in the initial stages, it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between a quitter and a pruner. Since we are into the details: Sometimes people do not prune as much as they should because they think it will make them look like quitters. I also know situations and people who are so stubborn that they hang in and hang on to situations, to jobs, to people long after they should have quit, called it off, called it a day. I even suspect that at times we need to quit in order to get back to Jesus back to the Life He wants for us. But with such difficult decisions, only the Holy Spirit can guide the Way. What is it that we need to learn and know most of all from verse thirteen? They have no root. The rock cannot help it. The soil cannot help it. But the parable implies that we can help it. Maybe we have no root, but we could have root. We could let the seed in. We do not have BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2013 All rights reserved. PAGE 5 OF 9

to spend our whole lives giving up at the first sign of trouble, folding whenever things get tough. We do not have to be the kind of soil (like rock) that the parable is talking about in verse thirteen. If that is true, then I want to know about the roots. What are the roots? And the first thing I realize is that the whole world around me does not think the roots are the same thing Jesus thinks they are. Oops! Time to be careful. The parable is coming from a very different understanding of life and truth. Who would have imagined that? Only those of us who remember that it is Jesus who is telling this parable. What does the world around me think about roots? Normally people think of things like family. The impact of our immediate family is probably beyond calculation. Beyond that, hordes of folk in our time are spending lots of time and money looking into their genealogy. They try to sort out the family tree, gaze at old photographs, read diaries and letters if they can find them. They are looking for roots: Where did I come from? And some of them end up with some pride about their ancestry. I certainly have no issue with this. Nevertheless, I suspect that in most cases this would not be the sort of roots that would help people to stand fast in the kind of testing our parable is talking about. There may be exceptions. Some people do seem to take courage from being descended from role models who were courageous in their own time. I do often take comfort from remembering how Jesus, Paul, Luther, Jeremiah, and some of my other heroes faced the trials of their lives. Still, I hope I am noticing their roots along with their stories. In any case, we all know people who are proud of being Irish or Indian or American. And not to drag it out too much, but some people think roots are traditions, or a code of morality, or a family business to maintain, or a heritage of freedom. All my brothers and I were Eagle Scouts. I come from a long line of men who served with honor and distinguished themselves in the Marines. No mockery here at all. I m just saying that this is the sort of thing most people around us mean when they think or talk about roots. Yet I doubt very much that this is what Jesus meant by roots when He told this parable. Why not? Because Judaism in Jesus day was full of traditions, heritage, heroes of the past. Keeping Torah, being children of Abraham, honoring Moses, being heirs of the promises, belonging to God s chosen people these were the roots of Judaism. And people who claimed these roots, especially the Sadducees and Pharisees, were Jesus fiercest opposition. They are the ones who saw to it that Jesus was crucified. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2013 All rights reserved. PAGE 6 OF 9

That gives me reason to doubt that what they considered their roots was what Jesus meant by roots. Bang in the face! A huge disconnect! What the world calls roots are of the world they are not roots of the seed. Of course! Seeing that, I have to turn from everything I have been taught everything I have known or trusted and start all over. Don t you hate it when that happens? I sure do. I am no less uneasy about what most people tell me are our rightful Christian roots. Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and their many sincere sister churches assure me that our roots are in the creeds; in the traditions of the institutional church; in the guidance we receive from ordained and carefully chosen leaders. But that is only Judaism reworked. The same blunder. The same earthbound dead end. Others assure me that the conservative wing of Protestantism has a better answer, an answer that came out of the very question about what our true and solid roots should be. These many sincere fundamentalist and evangelical churches say that the authority cannot be in mere human leaders or in creeds or traditions developed by humans. They say our roots are in the Bible, which comes directly from God. Everything we think or say must be supported by some biblical text (though never mind to biblical understanding). It could be admitted that these groups also have traditions of their own, which they cherish a lot like the Catholics or Orthodox cherish their traditions. Ways of doing evangelism, for instance; ways of bringing people to Christ. Only, the product does not always match the claim, to say the least. Behind the veil, it is a return to the same old, same old with but a slightly rearranged costume. Judaism was also waiting for Messiah to come. Tacking again on the end does not change things very much. Judaism was also the people of the Book. Scribes and Pharisees were endlessly reading and quoting their Bible as the final word on every subject and every decision. Jesus, we remember, did not always agree with their conclusions, and He often claimed an authority that they neither knew nor recognized. One way Jesus was doing this was to tell parables that did not come from their Bibles, as He is doing in this very passage. In this parable, some people had no roots and therefore they quickly gave up the seed, the word of God the invitation to live in the Kingdom. They gave up the Christian Life the moment it became inconvenient or scary or threatening or demanding. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2013 All rights reserved. PAGE 7 OF 9

So where were Jesus roots? A very interesting question. Most people assume that Jesus roots were in Judaism, in precisely the manner we were just mentioning. This may have been true in the beginning. Certainly Jesus is a product of Judaism on the human level. Only, Jesus switched to roots so different that Judaism could neither contain nor understand Him. Most Jews concluded that He was continually breaking Torah. They believed He was trying to overturn the traditions and teachings of Moses. They concluded that He was blaspheming the most sacred beliefs of Judaism. They thought (quite correctly) that Jesus did not have much respect for the temple, the High Priest, the King, or indeed the entire religious establishment. What then were Jesus roots? What kind of roots could preserve and nurture the seed, allow it to grow, and never give up? What sort of roots would never abandon the Kingdom no matter what kind of trials or testing or threats came down the road? When we put it that way, I start to catch on. Jesus roots were not in Torah; they were in His baptism. You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased. It all got very specific, very clear, very personal for Jesus. That is a whole different thing to live by a different Way to live. That is a different kind of roots. The roots were in God. The roots were in His relationship with God. Why do we suppose that Jesus came to reconcile us to God to restore the love-bond between us and God? There is no other kind of root that can hold firm in any and every kind of testing the world can throw at us. Jesus was not content to have us become believers for only a little while, or to become believers in only outer forms of piety or human tradition. He played for keeps. He was in it for the long haul. Everything about this parable, no doubt because it was Jesus who told it, reeks of the larger plan. It speaks of the real purpose of God and of God s Kingdom. So that brings it back to me and to you, doesn t it? What about the seed falling on me? How do I receive it? How will I receive it? Every parable that Jesus tells ends up without an ending. We are the ones who tell the ending to every parable. Every parable is a story waiting for us to decide how the story will come out. We finish it we live it out. Only, this is not just if we decide to pay attention. I am the prodigal son, the elder brother, or the waiting father whether I ever hear that parable or not. I am the soil God s seed is falling on whether I ever hear this parable or not. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2013 All rights reserved. PAGE 8 OF 9

The truth is, I don t want to quit or give up when the testing comes. That means I better look to my roots and make sure they are real roots. The true roots are in my baptism too! I do not mean the outer ritual, of course. I mean the real baptism. I mean the encounters we have with the very real presence of the Holy Spirit: picking us out choosing us out for personal acceptance, forgiveness, attention, and specific assignments. It is deep in our stories, however shallow it is in our understanding. The Damascus Road; the Burning Bush; Jacob s ladder; the call of Samuel; the anointing of David; a theophany under a Pepper Tree. Do I know the love of God toward me personally? Am I one of God s beloved children? If the omniscient, omnipotent, eternal Creator of the universes has truly touched me sowed seed on me and for me what in this pitiful, confused, alienated, struggling little world is going to make me give up or turn away? But then, verse fourteen is for next week. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2013 All rights reserved. PAGE 9 OF 9