Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 10, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

There’s a lot we don’t know about Jesus of Nazareth; but there is one thing of which we can be pretty certain: Jesus spoke in parables. He didn’t write carefully crafted essays on theological themes that would get him As at Yale Divinity School. He didn’t deliver concise laws of how we are to live and what we are to believe. No, instead he used parables, those pithy, usually short, often maddeningly obscure little stories that pepper the Gospels. Especially in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus taught in parables. If you want to understand what he has to say, you’ve got to decipher the parables.

One thing about Jesus’ parables is that they are open-ended. They invite us into the story. They invite us to find ourselves in the story, to identify ourselves with one or more of its characters, to make the story our story. That’s what makes Jesus’ parables so powerful, what keeps them alive for Christians generation after generation, what keeps them alive for us as we encounter them anew at different times in our lives. That’s a very good thing about them; but it is also the reason for a great spiritual danger that lurks in the parables, or not so much in the parables themselves as in the way we encounter them, the way we enter into them.

Jesus’ parables always have a point, and they often have characters or images of which Jesus clearly approves and characters or images of which Jesus clearly disapproves. They have good guys and bad guys, good ways of being and bad ways of being. The problem with them is that when we accept their invitation to enter into the story, we always want to associate ourselves with the good guys, with the good ways of being. We easily see ourselves as the person or way of being of which Jesus approves in the story, and we resist seeing ourselves as a person of way of being of which Jesus disapproves.

Be honest now. How many of you, hearing the parable of the Good Samaritan, identify with the priest and the Levite who pass by the beaten man on the side of the road? I don’t know about you, but until I stop to think about it I always identify myself with the Good Samaritan who helps the beaten man and not with the self-righteous religious officials who do not. And how many of you, hearing the parable of the Prodigal Son, identify with the older son who resents the father’s grace toward the prodigal? I don’t. And I don’t see myself as the prodigal either, at least not until I stop really to think about it. No. I want to be the gracious father of whom Jesus so clearly approves.

And that’s just not right. It’s not right because if we identify ourselves with the good characters, with the good way of being in a parable, we "deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us," to steal a line from 1 John only slightly out of context. If I’m honest with myself, I know that I don’t live like the Good Samaritan. Far from it. I know I’d be like the prodigal’s older brother, resenting our father’s grace and resenting the fact that my loyalty-ultimately self-serving as it may be-was not rewarded. Jesus parables call us to deep self-examination; but we usually refuse that invitation, or at least I do, and we glibly assume that we’re the hero of the story.

When we do that, we destroy all the meaning the parable may hold for us. If we already get it, if we already live the way the parables call us to live, then we have no use of them. They have nothing to say to us. But worse than that: If we identify with the good guys in the stories, Jesus’ parables can actually have a spiritually damaging effect on us rather than an edifying one. If we deceive ourselves into seeing ourselves as the good guys, the parables act to affirm our self-congratulatory stance. They affirm and even increase our spiritual arrogance. They foster a judgmental attitude toward all those other people who don’t get it like we do. All of that is spiritually stultifying. All of that builds barriers between us and God rather than draw us closer to God as Jesus intended. For Jesus’ parables to open us up to God’s grace, we have to stop seeing ourselves as the good guys.

I’m telling you all of this because I’ve always made this same mistake with the parable we have this morning. It isn’t about people, not expressly. It’s about seeds, but the same danger lurks within it. Jesus tells of a sower whose seed fell on different types of ground. Some fell on the path, and the birds quickly ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground with little soil. These sprang up quickly but were soon scorched by the sun. Other seed fell among thorns (around here I suppose they’d be blackberries), and the thorns chocked it. (I’ve always admired morning glories actually, because they seem to be the one thing blackberries can’t choke out, but I digress.) Other seed fell on good soil and produced abundantly.

The Gospels rarely try to explain Jesus’ parables; but this one is so obscure, I guess, that Matthew felt compelled to give an explanation, which he reports as Jesus’ explanation. The seed, we’re told, is the word of the Kingdom of God, that is, Jesus’ message of God’s unconditional love for all people. If the one hearing it doesn’t understand it, the seed has fallen on the path and produces nothing. Maybe, however, another hears the word with joy but only superficially, and the plant of faith it produces quickly dies in the face of opposition. Then again, maybe in another the word takes root and begins to flourish, but it is soon choked out by thorns (our friendly, local blackberries), that is, by the cares of the world and the lure of wealth; and in the end it produces nothing. But another hears the word and understands it, tends it, nurtures it, and it bears much fruit. In this parable, then, different kinds of soil are different ways of receiving Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God.

And I have always deluded myself that I am the good soil where the word produces abundantly. After all, I’m a minister. I’m a professional at this faith stuff, right? Surely I understand the word. Surely I don’t jettison it in the face of opposition. Surely I’m not misled by the lure of wealth or distracted by the cares of the world. I’m the good soil, right? And so are you. You’re believers. You’re church people. You live good, decent lives, right? This room has had a load of rich loam dumped in it this morning, hasn’t it. We’re all good soil for the word of God, right? God couldn’t ask for better potting soil than us! Well, not so fast. See, that’s the danger in Jesus’ parables. That’s the danger in this parable. We make ourselves the good guys; and when we do, we destroy all of the parable’s meaning for us. So let’s try it again a little more honestly this time.

I don’t think we’re the path where the seed of the Kingdom takes no root at all. I mean, we are here this morning after all. We have all heard of God’s love in Christ Jesus and have at least some understanding of what it means for us and for the world. And I don’t think we’re really the rocky ground. I don’t think we abandon the word just because of a little opposition or because it causes us some trouble. If that’s who we were, we would surely, for example, have abandoned our Open and Affirming position by now or never would have taken it in the first place. No, I don’t think the first two examples in the parable get at who we are.

But let’s take a closer look at the seeds that fell among the thorns. The parable itself says the thorns grew up and choked them. (I guess they weren’t morning glory seeds.) The explanation says that the thorns are the cares of the world and the lure of wealth that choke the kingdom so that it yields nothing. I don’t know about you, but if I’m honest with myself I have to admit that this part of the parable describes me and my life with the word pretty well. I suspect that maybe the same is true of many of you.

After all, the cares of the world are very real. We all are concerned about having enough to eat and a place to live. We worry about our health. We worry about fitting in. We want other people to like us and to think well of us. If you’re like me, you spend a whole lot more time focused on the ordinary, mundane things of life than you do meditating on the word of the Kingdom. And speaking for myself, when I do spend time meditating on the word of the Kingdom it’s hardly out of a pure, disinterested passion for it. It’s because you pay me to have something to say about it up here every Sunday. So it’s as much out of a worldly care as it is out of love for God’s word.

And then there’s that lure of wealth bit. We all feel it, to one degree or another. We all seek security in savings and investments more than we do in the word of God’s Kingdom. I worry about money all the time. I resent not being able to do all the things I’d like to do and have all the things I’d like to have because I don’t have the money. I’m far from immune to the American myth that life would be wonderful if I just had more money. I suspect the same is true for at least many of you as well.

And just like Jesus’ parable says, all of those worldly cares and that lure of wealth keep the word of God’s kingdom from bearing abundant fruit in my life. I do not love extravagantly and without condition. I do not work tirelessly for peace and justice in the world. I do not strive to spread the good news of God’s love for all people to all people. All of those fruits of the Kingdom are stunted in me, and I know it. I invite you to consider whether they same may not be true of you.

Now, I don’t want my invitation to see ourselves as something less than the ideal expressed in this parable to lead to guilt and self-flagellation. We don’t need to rush out to the local hair shirt store. That’s not the point. God loves us any way. The point is that honestly seeing ourselves as something less than the parable’s ideal shines God’s light onto and into our lives. It helps us understand who are really are. It opens the possibility of transformation and beckons us on to greater faithfulness, to living as more faithful disciples of Christ. Honestly seeing ourselves as less than the parable’s ideal teaches us humility and makes us more charitable toward our fellow humans, all of whom fall short of Christ’s ideal. In that humility we can grow in the knowledge and love of God. Perhaps we won’t kill off the thorns, but maybe we can become morning glories among the blackberries. Amen.