Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

I went to the Boundary Waters for my first time several years ago. Among the various skills I had to learn for the trip was how to read a map. I’m not talking about a road or trail map – that I already knew, of course. Instead, I learned to read a map of the various waterways and portages that we would be taking on our route. Studying the map beforehand, I knew which lakes connected, where each portage began, and how long it would take. But when we finally pushed the canoe into the water, I had no idea where I was going. I knew that somewhere in front of me was a small rocky beach where our first portage was located, but all I could see was a vast expanse of water and a long, nondescript shoreline stretching out across the horizon.

Thankfully, I was paddling with an experienced paddler who could read a shoreline and graciously taught me how to do it over the course of our multi-day trip. We didn’t get lost. But what lingered for me was just how different things look when you’re on the water. The horizon both collapses and expands. Distances become deceptive. The shoreline flattens so coves, bays, and headlands blend into a single wall of land. Water that looked gentle from shore suddenly reveals its power beneath the canoe. The uniform sheet of water takes on depth as it’s possible to peer below the surface, seeing submerged trees, plants and fish in an entire underwater ecosystem. Your perspective shifts when you’re out on the water, offering a new way of encountering the familiar.

I’ve always found it interesting that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew places Jesus out on the water as he tells a series of parables that are deeply connected with the land and life that is lived on it. Stories about a sower who went out to sow like we hear today; weeds and wheat growing together; a priceless treasure hidden in a field; a mustard seed that grows into a large shrub that provides shelter and sustenance for the birds of the air, and more. In addition to just getting away from the crowds, Jesus’ pedagogical cruise provides a change in perspective for the teller of these parables and for the ones with ears to hear.

Parables are stories that invite perspective shifts. We hold them up like jewels and examine their many facets. We till them like soil, turning them over and over to see what comes up from their loamy depths. They challenge ideas we’ve taken for granted. They unsettle us just enough to help us see the world differently. An irresponsible sower who tosses valuable seed with abandon into soils that are inhospitable to fruitful growth becomes a metaphor for the sheer graciousness of God’s activity in the world. Seeds become symbols of God’s word. Soil becomes a way of describing the optimal conditions for the abundant growth and spread of God’s reign in the world, while also explaining why it’s not exploding like a fertile garden everywhere, a question held by the first hearers of these stories and a wondering that we may hold today, as well.

We’re not supposed to hold fast to one set interpretation of a parable – that’s part of the point of a parable. But the gospel writer of Matthew bends the rules a bit here with the interpretation that’s provided. Thanks Matthew… Nothing is static; nothing is set in stone. The parable doesn’t flatten into a single lesson. Like light through a jewel, it refracts into countless stories that tell the truth about God, ourselves, and our world. We are invited to shift our perspectives to view the world as God sees it – saturated with God’s grace and teeming with God’s activity.

But these sightlines can get covered up. The stories may get distorted. While Jesus’ parables invite us into expansive ways of things, there are a lot of really loud voices nowadays that claim to speak on behalf of God and what God is doing in the world in a narrow way. Instead of wondering at God’s reckless generosity, they promote an individualistic faith and an individualistic God. Voices that sort people into the categories of good soil vs. bad soil, diagnosing soil conditions to predicate the possibility of receiving and growing in God’s grace. Good soil is tied to particular locations, nationalities, professions of faith, while bad soil is everything else outside of this. While I’m over-simplifying things here, this either-or description lacks depth; it lacks nuance; it lacks the very substance of what makes soil what it is.

Soil is one of the most biodiverse habitats on Earth. I recently read that a single teaspoon of healthy soil can contain over 50 billion microbes. It feeds us, stores carbon, filters water, and teems with bacteria and fungi that sustain life. Beneath our feet is one of the most dynamic ecosystems on earth.

We simply have to look to nature to witness that soil is anything but static. Just as good soil can be depleted through overuse, it can be fed with compost and other nutrients to nurse it back into good health. Stony paths can crack and break and tenacious plants can grow up in their cracks – they may not look pretty, but they’re survivors. The desert blooms after a rainstorm. Weeds and plants co-exist in pollinator gardens, both providing sustenance to the bees and butterflies of the sky. What appears static and set at first glance is alive with possibility for transformation, with some tending and care on our part.

No wonder the sower in the parable scattered seed everywhere. She acted in hope that some of these seeds would find their way into this incredible soil and produce abundantly. She considered the facts: She knew the odds. Many seeds would never grow. Yet she scattered them anyway. Her action entrusted the seed to the soil, having faith that the seeds will do what they will do, in whatever conditions, hopefully taking root and producing fruit beyond themselves.

Of course, we want to be that good soil that receives God’s word and grows, speaking words of hope and participating in God’s grace beyond ourselves. So we tend our own soil as a congregation: showered in the waters of baptism; fed by God’s word and at the table; participating in truth-telling, healing and repair of the land that we gather upon; planting pollinator gardens to heal the earth and provide places of refuge for winged creatures; growing produce in the Giving Garden to feed neighbors who hunger. And we partner with others beyond our plot of land to nurture the seeds of healing, community, and restoration that are growing all around us.

We are planted, we gather, we grow, we look for places to join God in caring for what God has planted in hope.

Our text from Isaiah, originally written for people in exile who felt distant from God’s presence and grace, reminds us that God’s word never returns empty. It bears fruit and travels beyond itself. Just as God watered the earth and made it fruitful, God’s word will bear fruit among God’s people. It will multiply and bear witness to God’s grace, much like the milkweed in my yard, which began as one plant and has become nine flowering refuges for butterflies. The rough, rocky places will be made into a plain that makes a way for those who seek the Lord. God is at work, bringing about God’s purposes of life and abundance.

I recently read Anxious People by Swedish author Fredrik Backman. It tells the story of a group of strangers who are held hostage in an apartment by a bank robber after a bank heist gone awry. Without giving too much away, each person is haunted by the ghosts of a mistake or difficult experience in their lives that comes to bear on the present. Each hostage initially appears difficult, even unlikeable. But as their stories unfold, compassion takes root. Grace changes how they see one another, and that new perspective opens the possibility of a different future. The story culminates in an act of grace for someone who started down a path of destruction out of desperation, but through the kindness of strangers, now has a new path forward.

Central to the story is a quote often attributed to Martin Luther, “Even if I knew the world were going to end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today.” One character sees this as a way of saying that no one is ever lost. We try our best to support the ones we can, offering grace when we are able, acting in hope that something will take root that will transform even the stoniest path into a garden where life will flourish.

This is the perspective we are invited into. The perspective of the sower. One of hope. Seeds are sown, we tend what was planted to the best of our ability, we rely on grace as we hope and pray that we may bear fruit that bears witness to God’s presence in our lives and the world around us.

This perspective is at work in the garden that is now growing at the Renee Good memorial site, planted by a woman who wanted to bring beauty and life to a street corner marked by death and loss.

It’s present in the group of apple trees that are planted at the end of our parking lot near the rain gardens.

This is what poet Wendall Berry writes of when he implores us to “invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias…Be joyful though you have considered the facts…Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, many in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.”

This is the hope that is painted on the mural in the hallway created by the pre-K participants at this year’s Vacation Bible School. A series of growing handprint flowers accompanied by the message “we worked together to fill the garden with steadfast, humble blooms!”

Amen.