Homily for Sunday, July 16, 2017 Good Shepherd of the Hills
Lessons:
Isaiah 55: 10-13
Psalm 65: 1-14
Romans 8: 1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
For those of us
who come from Graves Mill, today’s words from Isaiah and Psalm 65 share images of God’s
creation that we can readily understand.
The prophet Isaiah speaks of rain that falls and causes seeds to sprout
and bring forth food for humans, of mountains that burst into song and trees
that “clap their hands,” and of humans that shout for sheer joy at the beauty
and bounty of creation. The psalmist sings of mountains girded about with might,
of fields rich for grazing and hills clothed with joy. Hearing these words and
witnessing the beauty of the world around us, it is easy to understand why God
stood back at the close of the sixth day of creation, looked around at all that
he had wrought, and decided it was all very good indeed.
Christ’s parable
of the sower, the seeds, and the different kinds of ground upon which the seeds
fall is also a familiar story for anyone who grew up in farming country. I had
to move very far away from home in order to comprehend what it means to be
truly deprived of the natural beauty we take for granted every day.
Growing up in
Madison County and making my way through Madison’s public schools, I was truly
blessed to receive a scholarship to attend Brown University in Providence, RI.
When my parents drove me north that long-ago September to begin my college
life, I had barely ever crossed the Mason-Dixon line, and I had certainly never
lived in a large city. (Providence is the second largest city in New England,
after only Boston.) It was a very exciting adventure!
I was fortunate to
carry with me the values of my upbringing, including a sense that I was called
to serve others. Two favorite aunts, one from each side of my family, were
elementary school teachers, and that was a kind of service I understood and admired.
So, one of the first things I did when I arrived at Brown was to sign up to be
part of a group of students who tutored children in inner-city Providence.
The child assigned
to me for weekly tutoring was a second grader named Lelina. I rode a bus with the other college students
once a week to Lelina’s elementary school, where I met with her and helped her
with her homework. One day, Lelina shared with me a picture she had drawn and
colored, a picture of the world she lived in. At the top of the sheet of paper,
up above some tall, dark buildings, Lelina had colored a thin, blue strip to
represent the sky. I praised her artwork, but I found myself inwardly shocked. My
sense of the sky—and my childhood drawings of it—connected the sky to the
earth. The deep blue of the mountains I inevitably drew shaded into the paler
blue of the sky. Sometimes, I would
color the sun setting behind the mountains, and the sky was there, too, in
brilliant shades of pink and orange. Poor
Lelina’s skinny little sky was unreachable and anemic. Even so, it was
important to her to include it in her picture. Hers was more like a dream of a
sky than a real sky, or so it seemed to me.
For the first
time, I began to understand what the term deprivation truly meant. Lelina’s
drawing reflected the circumstances of her life. She lived in a tall building
among other tall buildings in a poor neighborhood in a big city. She rarely if ever left the neighborhood in
which she lived, so the beautiful natural world we take for granted was completely
unfamiliar to Lelina. So many children in our world are equally deprived,
whether they live in an American inner city or among the war-destroyed rubble
of Mosul, Iraq, or Aleppo, Syria. These smallest and most vulnerable of God’s
people never interact with the majesty and glory of God’s creation and are not
prepared to comprehend the meaning of Jesus’s words about the sower and the
seed.
Isn’t the usual
interpretation of this parable that we as Christians are the seeds, and where
we land when we are sown, either by chance or choice, will determine the
trajectory of our lives? Don’t we feel
it is somehow our fault if we land on the rocky ground or among the
thorns? (Maybe those thorns are the
badly behaving youth we used to hang out with as teenagers, to our eternal
detriment.) Don’t we hear a tone of admonition in Jesus’s voice as he tells
this parable, as if we poor seeds have a choice as we fall to the ground, and
some of us just are compelled to dive onto the path instead of into the good soil? I don’t know about you, but I feel a bit of
envy for those lucky seeds who fall on good soil and produce “a
hundredfold.” My life doesn’t seem to
have added up to that standard!
As I pondered all
these things, it occurred to me that there is a different way to look at this
parable. As he explains the meaning of this parable, Jesus calls it “the
parable of the sower,” and we understand that by sower, he means God. We know that God loves us and intends nothing
but good for us, so imagining that the sower allows the seeds to fall in
the wrong places, with bad results, doesn’t seem to match our understanding of
God’s love for us and for creation.
So, what if we
looked at the ground where the seeds fall in each case, the role of the
earth itself? What if we see each seed as Jesus seems to see it, as a human
life with potential? The seed responds to the ground on which it lands, and
Jesus lets us know in his interpretation of the parable that it is this interaction
of the seed with the ground on which it falls that makes the
difference. Keeping this perspective in
mind, that it is the ground itself that makes the difference, listen again to
Jesus’s interpretation of the parable:
“When anyone hears the word of
the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away
what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was
sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives
it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and
when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person
immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who
hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the
word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the
one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields,
in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
If each seed represents a person
sown lovingly by God, then in the first case of the seed sown on the path, the
person fails due to a lack of understanding. The seed person sown on rocky
ground encounters trouble and persecution, while the one sown among thorns is
overcome by worldly things and led astray. When Jesus speaks of those sown on
good soil, he says they have understanding and the ability to bear good fruit.
Does it not sound as if it is the good soil that makes the difference for those
who live worthy, productive lives? As an example, are American children born
into inner cities, like Lelina, born on rocky ground? If so, do we as
Christians have a responsibility to smooth a way for such children?
What if, instead of sower or
bystander or even seeds, we can see ourselves as fulfilling the role of the
ground? After all, if the seeds represent people who are in need of
membership in Christ’s kingdom, and we as Christians consider that kingdom our
home, wouldn’t we be responsible for inviting and receiving new members into
the fold? That would mean that our role
as Christians is to prepare a place where everyone is welcome, where everyone
can thrive, where even those who lack in understanding can learn what Christ
has to offer.
Farmers and gardeners understand
very well the importance of preparing the ground for the seeds we sow. Soil
preparation is serious business. If a plant of mine doesn’t thrive, I understand
pretty quickly that it is because I didn’t take the necessary time to prepare
the ground for it. (Unfortunately, this happens more often than I would like to
admit.)
Jesus reminds us in this parable
that the role of committed Christians is not simply to sit back and receive the
nourishment of the Word and the community.
We are not called to be passive in our faith, Sunday-morning Christians
only. We are called to live our faith in such a way that our very lives
represent Christ in the world, so that others who are struggling can see by the
lantern we hold up what a blessing our faith can be. We are called to welcome
others into the fold, to accept them as they are in Christ’s name. We are
called to make the goodness of God’s creation a reality for those who are less
fortunate.
I am reminded once again of the
words of St. Teresa of Avila, from the 16th Century. What was true
in her day is still true in ours:
Christ
has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Christ
has no body now on earth but yours.
As I think of all the ways I fall short of being God’s
gardener, I need to speak Teresa’s words in the first person: Christ has no
body now on earth but MINE!
AMEN.
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