Parable of the Sower
Proper 10A, July 10, 2005 , 8:45 a.m.
The Cathedral of St. Philip , Atlanta , GA
The Rev. William R. Payton, Priest Associate
When our boys were 6 and 7, we rented a 27 foot Winnebago and drove 3,000 miles through the west visiting the incredible beauty of the Painted Desert , the Grand Canyon , Native American settlements, on and on. One day we were touring an Indian village when the call came that all non Indians had to leave the area because of their celebration of St. Bartholomew’s day. Well, I was fairly delighted; I began to vision wonderful processions through the village, with banners, incense, native vestments, dancers with drumming, whistles, and all kinds of liturgical excess. But, it was very clear that we had to leave and not even picture taking would be allowed. We returned to our 27 foot home at the edge of town as the celebration began. Suddenly, 10 young Indian men came riding horses bare back across the plain whooping and shouting. Because of the ambiance of chaos, I decided if we stayed they wouldn’t notice. I grabbed my video camera and began taking video through the curtains of our mobile kitchen. The center of the action was a chicken suspended on a rope between two supporting poles. As the riders passed the chicken, the whooping and shouting grew louder. One of the members of the village past by and when I asked what they were doing he explained that they were in a contest to see who could grab the most feathers from the chicken. Wow!! I thought this must have some very special esoteric connection with St. Bartholomew’s life. Having risked enough video taking, I decided to go in search of the meaning of what I was seeing. I asked the same man what it all meant and he pointed me to a guy wearing a red bandanna and 10 gallon western hat, the chief of tribe, standing near us. I went over and tried to cozy up a conversation, by introducing my self as a priest on vacation, etc., and he just starred at me as if to say, “and so”. Then he glanced at Joan and the boys and gave me a knowing wink. I hastened to add the Episcopal modifier and he gave a solemn understanding nod. Not to be dismissed, I continued, “There’s not a lot to be known about St. Bartholomew, can you tell me about the connection with the chicken fathers and the riders on horses…..It’s a spectacular ritual, but what does it all mean?” After he spit a wad of tobacco juice just in front of my left foot, he shrugged and said profoundly, You know, I don’t have the slightest idea what that means.
Our Gospel begins the 13 chapter of Matthew, which we will be hearing for the next several Sundays. This chapter contains Matthew’s version of Jesus parables about the Kingdom of God . We begin today with the Parable of the Sower. First Jesus tells this very simple parable and when the disciples apparently ask him to explain he offers an allegorical interpretation, assigning an interpretation to each image in the parable. Throughout our tradition, interpreters, preachers, and teachers have added their own very elaborate interpretations to make this parable more relevant to the life and times of their hearers.
A wise teacher of parables says that the key to understanding a parable is to look for the point at which you are most offended. Look at where your sense of justice and what you think ought to be, is outraged and there you will find the good news Jesus means for you.
The parable of the sower is very familiar. It’s about a sower who casts seed on four kinds of ground: first on a footpath, then ground that is full of rocks, then on ground that is filled with thorns, and finally on good fertile ground. Depending on where they land, the seeds are eaten by birds, or they spring up quickly and then wither away, or get choked by thorns, while some of them…roughly a quarter of them…take root in good soil.
As I studied this parable last week, I began trying to let it connect with my life so that I could make meaningful suggestions for you to consider this morning. Almost immediately, I began to worry about what kind of ground I was on with God. Then, I worried about how many birds I had in my field and their allegorical identity, what exactly were the rocks and who were the thorns. I pondered about how I could clean it all up, how I could turn myself into a well-tilled, well-weeded, well-fertilized field for the sowing of God’s word. That’s my usual response to this parable and it can raise a crop of guilt in less time than it takes to scatter tiny seeds. I hear this parable as a challenge to improve my life so that the seeds would fall on rich fertile soil. But there’s something wrong with that reading of the parable, because if that were the message, it would probably be called the parable of the different kinds of ground.
We hear this story and think it is a story about us and the way we are living our lives mostly in terms of middle class American values and morality, but what if we’re wrong. What if it’s not about us at all? What if it’s about the sower? What if is not about our own successes and failures and birds and rock and thorns, but about the extravagance of a sower who does not seem to be worried about such concerns….a sower who flings seed everywhere, wasting it with a kind of glorious abandon….a sower who feeds the birds, and keeps on flinging the seed indiscriminately, confident that there’s enough seed to go around, that there is plenty, and that when the harvest comes at last, it will fill the biggest barn around.
The focus is then not on us and our petty shortfalls but on the abundant generosity of our creator, the sower who does not obsess about the condition of the fields, who cast the seed everywhere on good or bad soil, a sower who is not cautious or very practical, one who is willing to keep reaching into the seed bag, perhaps, even for all eternity, covering the whole creation with the fertile seed of really Good News.
If we were in charge, we wouldn’t do it that way, of course. We would find a way to a more efficient operation, something neater, cleaner more practically productive, one that did not waste seed on birds and rocks and thorns…….a method concentrated only on the good soil and what we could make it do. But, if this is the parable of the sower, then Jesus seems to be suggesting that there’s another way to go about things, a way that is less concerned with efficient productivity…a way concerned with generosity, abundance, and grace.
In this light, a friend of mine offers the parable in this parity: Once upon a time a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds ate it. So he put down his seed pouch and spent an hour stringing aluminum foil all around his filed. He put up a fake owl he ordered from LL Bean.
When he returned to sowing, he noticed that some seeds were falling on rocky ground so he put down his pouch and went to work for several hours digging up the rocks and thinking of how he might find a good use for the rocks later. As he went back to sowing, he noticed a briar patch which was sure to strangle the little seedlings. So he put down his pouch again and after he couldn’t find any Round-Up he went back to the house to look everywhere for his gloves.
Buy the time he got started on the briars it was getting dark so he decided to call it a day. That night, the sower fell asleep reading seed catalogs. When he woke the next morning he walked back to the field and found two big crows sitting on top of his fake owl. He found rocks he had not seen the day before and he found new little leaves on the roots of the briars that had broken off in his hands. The sower considered all of this and then he did a strange thing; he began to laugh, just a chuck le at first and then a full guffaw that turned into a wheeze at the end when his breath ran out.
Still laughing and wheezing he went after his seed pouch and began flinging seeds everywhere: into roots of trees, onto the roof of the fallen-in garage, across his fences, even into his neighbors’ field. He shook seeds at his cows and offered a handful to the dog; he even tossed a fistful into the creek, thinking they might take root downstream. The more he sowed, the more he seemed to have. None of it made any sense to him, but for once that did not seem to matter and he had to admit that he had never been happier in all his life.
Let those who have ears to hear, hear, which is another way of saying let the Spirit help you make those connections which may seem helpful for you. Glory to God! Amen.
Comments? Contact Bill Payton at: BPayton@stphilipscathedral.org