Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 13, 2008

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.

I’ve long had a fondness for morning glories. You know morning glories, those lovely, white, bell-shaped flowers that grow wild around here? Oh, I know that for gardeners morning glories can be a nuisance. They are aggressive and invasive plants that can be hard to control. But their flowers are so pretty! And here’s the thing I like best about them: They seem to be about the only plants that can stand up to blackberries. That’s where I mostly see them, defiantly thrusting their lovely white flowers out of a threatening mass of thorny, belligerent blackberries. Blackberries are the imperialists of our local flora. They really are out to take over the world. But the morning glories push back. They say: We might not be able to stop you, but you can’t defeat us. We won’t give in. We will thrive right in the midst of your stabbing thorns and your strangling tentacles. And I say: You go, morning glories! Right on!

Which brings us to Jesus’ parable of the sower and the seeds, although just how it brings us to that parable may be far from obvious. The parable of the sower and the seeds famously tells of a sower who went out to sow seed. The seed fell in various places, and its fate depended on where it fell. Some fell onto the road and was quickly eaten by birds. Some fell on rocky ground. It sprouted but could not survive the heat of the day and quickly died. Some fell among the thorns and was choked out. Some fell on fertile ground and produced abundantly. Matthew, speaking through Jesus, then gives an explanation of the parable that equates the seed with the word of God’s kingdom that either bears fruit in the people who hear it or doesn’t, depending on how different people receive it.

And we’d all like to think that we’re the good ground that received the seed, nurtured it, and in which it produced an abundant harvest, wouldn’t we? We like to think that we are the good ground, but let’s be honest. Are we really? Now, I don’t think that we’re the road, the people who hear the word and don’t understand it at all so that it quickly disappears. And I don’t think that we’re the rocky ground, the people who receive the word with joy but who abandon it when they run into opposition or resistance. Yet I have doubts that we can honestly say that we are the fertile ground either. Can we honestly say that the word of God produces abundant fruit in us? Maybe you can. That’s for you to say, but I know that I can’t say it. Oh, sure, the word of God produces some fruit in my life. I think I can honestly say that. It gives me some peace, some comfort, some courage. I do some good things in the world. I try to be a faithful pastor to you all. I do some service in the community. I do some things to proclaim Christ’s gospel of unconditional grace in the world. The word of God produces some fruit in me.

But can I honestly say that it produces a hundredfold, or sixtyfold, or even thirtyfold? No, I can’t. Even a thirtyfold return on the word of God would look very different from my life. It would be a life much richer in the fruits of the Spirit than mine is. It would be a life much richer in good works than mine is. It would be a life much fuller in proclamation than mine is. It would be a person much saintlier than I am. My purpose here is not to beat up on myself. My purpose is rather to be honest and to invite you to consider whether the same things might be true of you as well.

So where does that leave me, and perhaps you, with regard to Jesus’ great parable of the sower and the seed? It leaves us with the seed that fell among the thorns. In the parable itself Jesus says that the thorns grew up and choked the seed. In the explanation that Matthew gives the thorns become “the cares of the world and the lure of wealth.” Some people receive the word of God, it sprouts in their souls, grows, and begins to produce fruit. Yet this person, like all of us, lives among the cares of the world and the lure of wealth. There are all those bills to pay, and the money never seems to stretch to the end of the month. There’s all that housework, and there’s always something else to dust or put away. Those weeds just won’t stop growing in the garden. The kids don’t come home on time or don’t obey the way they should. The car needs service; but if I take it in, how can I get Junior to soccer practice? The boss just won’t get off my case about that problem with the Jones account. And that blankety-blank church keeps asking for more money—this time it’s something about a budget deficit and a leaky roof. And by the way: I just know that my life would be fine if I just had more money. Another $10,000 a year would do it, I think. Or better make that $20,000 just to be safe.

Now be honest. Aren’t those the kinds of things that occupy your mind most of the time? They sure are the kinds of things that occupy mine most of the time. Your list of worldly cares is certainly different from this one in its details, but I’m willing to bet that it’s not different in kind. We are all consumed most of the time by worldly cares like these, and with even bigger things. Things like our deteriorating environment and war overseas. And none of us is immune to the lure of wealth. These things are the thorns of Jesus’ parable. In the midst of all of these thorns, what chance does the word of God have to take root, to grow, and to flourish in us? Not much.

Which brings us back to blackberries and morning glories. When I hear Jesus talk about thorns that grow up and strangle other plants, I think of blackberries. Those things are invincible. Sure, they produce tasty berries; and I like a good blackberry cobbler as much as the next guy. But the plants themselves can be a real pain in the neck. I used to have a house in Edmonds where I spent what seemed like years trying to control the blackberries in the back yard and never made any noticeable progress against them. I couldn’t grow anything else in the places the blackberries had taken over. I couldn’t even dig through them to get to the dirt underneath to plant anything. Those blackberries were a very good metaphor indeed for the cares of the world in my life. Battle them as I might, I could never defeat them. And if I ever succeeded in clearing them from a small patch of ground, almost over night they’d come back as aggressive and tenacious as ever. Just like those earthly cares that never go away.

But there were always the morning glories. The blackberries defeated me, but they never defeated the morning glories. The blackberries choked out everything else, but they couldn’t choke out the morning glories. There they were, coming through the thorny vines, bright, white, and cheery. Poking their defiant heads up to catch the sun. Living and thriving in an environment that killed everything else. They didn’t kill off the blackberries of course, but they found a way to live and thrive in the midst of them.

Jesus’ parable of the sower and the seed calls us to be morning glories amidst the blackberries. It simply isn’t realistic for us to think that we can so take in and nurture the word of God in our souls that the cares of the world and the lure of wealth are just going to go away. That’s not going to happen. So we need to introduce a nuance into Jesus’ parable. He won’t mind. He knew that parables were deceptively simple stories that people had to grapple with to find meaning for their lives. Our call is to take the word of God into our souls and let it turn us into morning glories amidst the blackberries, to let it turn us into people who can live amidst the cares of the world without being defeated by them. Our call is to push our way through them and to offer to the world a morning glory flower, a bright, cheery word of hope and peace, a word that says the thorns don’t have the final say, a word that says that real life is possible despite the cares and indeed in the midst of them.

Doing that isn’t easy. It takes care and attention to the word of God. It requires us to be intentional about spending time with God and God’s word. That’s what you’re doing by being here this morning. It’s a good start, but it isn’t enough. We need to set aside time every day for prayer, as some of us have been trying to do lately under Shari’s good guidance. We need to spend time with Scripture. The morning glory seed that is the word of God won’t grow on its own. We must care for it regularly and often. But if we will do that, it will grow. It will grow up through the thorns, pushing aside the cares of the world and the lure of wealth, bearing fruit in our lives and in the world.

So let us all praise the morning glory. It is a symbol of how the word of God can thrive in us. The word of God can thrive in us not because the cares of the world and the lure of wealth aren’t present, as the thorns weren’t present in the good soil of Jesus’ parable. That’s not how it is with us, ever. The word of God can thrive in us despite the thorns, despite those cares and that lure of wealth. And for that we can truly give God our thanks and praise. Amen.