Pentecost VI

This week we have Matthew's version of the Parable of the Sower.  This is one of my favorite texts -- perhaps because I was in a version of the musical 'Godspell' as a teenager, and the parable is told there; perhaps because of the seeming obviousness of the imagery (various types of soil - get it?!); perhaps because Jesus uses one of his classic admonitions after telling it: 'those who have ears, let them hear!'  I mean, we all have ears...

So many types of soil; which one am I?  From day to day, how am I listening? Classic questions. Who wants to feel like rocky, barren soil?

As I have aged, though, what I have come to appreciate in this parable is not the different types of soil, or our impulses to sort people into various taxonomies of abilities-to-hear, but rather the simple fact - unremarked in the Matthean text - that the Sower is apparently continually sowing seed.  Continually.  

And, while I may feel on some days as if I am made only of rocky ground, or as if my neighbors and the world, or the president, et c., are shallow soil, the truth is that you and I do contain within us bits of good soil: good soil where the life-enlivening Word may take root and bring a harvest theretofore unguessed.  The Sower is graciousness, itself, and is continually sowing seed.  Those who have ears, let them hear this truth about themselves and about the world.

In our lectionary, one of the texts paired with this parable in Matthew is another favorite piece of scripture, from Isaiah chapter 55 (from which chapter we read at the Easter Vigil).  The water cycle is used as a metaphor for divine presence, being, and action in the world. Here, all created things join together in harmony and in praise -- other creatures know how to listen and receive this grace; we humans seem to need to learn it slowly:

"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

In this holy economy, nothing is without use - not even death.  Nothing shall return to the Lord empty, without achieving that which it was intended to do, or be, or become.  Who can say what word of grace is growing and taking shape in you, today? 

Let us learn to join with the trees of the field, as they clap their hands.