When I was just out of college I spent a year volunteering with Habitat for Humanity at its headquarters in the rural south. I was mostly doing construction work outside, so the pervasive Georgia red dirt found its way into every pore. But I was young and hopeful, so I was kind of proud of the grime that was my second skin that summer. All soil is good when you’re building houses for people who need them, right? I was optimistic about everything… until the Duncan family moved into the house we were building.
They were a complicated family with multigenerational patterns of dysfunction that were quite beyond my prior knowledge and experience. Suffice to say that Child Protective Services was a frequent visitor to the Duncan home. So naturally we well-meaning volunteers were beside ourselves with worry, wondering how we could fix the family.
The one person who didn’t seem worried though, was their immediate neighbor, Miss Rose. Although she and her children were likely the most directly affected by the Duncan family foibles, Miss Rose was a woman of deep faith who had seen everything the deep south could do to poor black families. Don’t y’all worry, she’d scold us. We’re going to love them Duncans right into the kingdom.
And so today, as we hear Jesus teaching about seeds and soil, I find myself wanting to say “don’t y’all worry about it.” Just listen with the ears of your hearts, and love whatever’s growing right next to you into the kingdom.
Today’s parable tends to evoke anxiety in contemporary Christians. We wonder what kind of soil we are, and whether we are bringing forth sufficient grain. That worry echoes the dominant voice of our culture speaking, reminding us that our worth is based on our productivity. More return on investment is always better, right? But a parable, which literally means the story set alongside or against the story, is never meant to be understood only in its literal sense. When you think you’ve figured out the meaning of a parable, its probably high time to have ears—as Jesus instructs us—and listen again.
On second listening, one of the striking things I notice about this parable is that the sower is not much concerned about the efficiency of his planting technique. He seems to be scattering seeds with a kind of reckless abandon, irrespective of soil conditions. I’m guessing that the birds, who were well-fed along the path the sower walked, were pleased about this. But I’m wondering if whomever was counting the hundredfold, sixty and thirty of the previous grain harvest was equally happy to see so much of it being willfully tossed among rocks and thorns. Whatever that sower had in mind—while he was tossing seeds into soil any decent farmer would know they could not grow in—it was not maximizing return on seed investment.
Y’know, what made the volunteer work I did with Habitat so demanding was not just the heat and the red-dirtiness of it all, but also the fact that we had to do so much prep work even before we built anything. Even before would could start digging the foundations, we had to spend days clearing brush and digging rocks out of neglected plots of land. That was challenging for an impatient 22 year old, eager for return on volunteer labor as I was. But I think I was still reading parables—and life, for that matter—in the literal sense. I hadn’t yet learned to listen to the teaching of Jesus, which sometimes comes to us through the voice of someone like Miss Rose, reminding me to love the soil I and my neighbors are already planted in. Rocks and thorns notwithstanding.
I’d like to think that I’m receptive to the word of God, but I honestly don’t know what kind of soil I would be by the standards of this parable. I don’t know about you, either. I am, however, pretty confident that Jesus never calls us to judge each other. And I also know that we always can work to remove the rocks and thorns that we encounter. From within our own hearts, and from the lives of others. So for example, I’m watching clashes with police and Black Lives Matter activists, but I also see them deliberately planning a picnic together in Wichita. And I’m watching a bitter political discourse, but I’m also seeing people choose to listen to each other across race and class, sexual orientation and political party.
In these troubling times, when the national family seems about as dysfunctional as the Duncans, let us entrust to the sower his shameless generosity. He will continue to sow Good News in all types of soil, because that’s what God does. May we be equally be brave to clear the rocks and thorns as we are able, and help each other grow and thrive in every type of soil.
