Parable of the Sower

The parable of the sower which we heard in the Gospel acclamation today is one of the most familiar of Jesus’ parables. Many of us know the story by heart and understand what it means to our individual spiritual lives as Christians. The farmer sowing the seeds is Jesus – teaching us the word of God. The word is the seed and the seed is always good. It can always take root and sprout but is conditioned on the ground it which it falls upon. The different types of ground Jesus describes in the parable represent us as humans and our receptivity to God’s word.

Some of us are like the harden path – our hearts are hardened to the words of God. We hear them but we ignore them. They are then snatched away by the evil one – think distractions, temptations, and excuses we make for not being open to the word.

Others are like the rocky ground. We receive the word well. We might be enamored by the message of Jesus. It is enlightening. But we are not consistent in receiving the word. Therefore, it does not really take root and withers away quickly. When we are faced with setbacks when it comes to our faith – troubles or doubts, we don’t preserve and lose faith in the word. Faith seems to be sustained only by skin-deep emotions. When the going gets tough, the tough does not get going.
Then, there is the third soil with thorns. We receive the word of God but it is choked out of us by the ways of the world – wealth, comfort, desires – and even things which are not inherently sinful – responsibilities and societal pressure. These draw us away from the deep spirituality of Christ’s message because it runs counter to what we are taught to believe in or brought up with – values we might consider good.

Finally, Jesus speaks of the good soil – the heart that hears the word, understands it, and bears fruit. The good soil is not perfect soil. It is receptive soil. It is soil which preservers regardless of the weather conditions. It allows the seed to sink deep, to take root, and to grow. We all want to be the good soil.

It is interesting when we read this text because today’s Gospel reading takes these two parts: the parable and Jesus explanation of it and puts them together. They do not actually follow one another in the Gospel itself. In my opinion, the lectionary authors wanted to put these together to show us Christians who listened to this proclamation that we are like Jesus’ disciples. We are privy to the deeper meaning of the parable. We are reminded in Matthew 13:10-17 that the secrets of Jesus’ spiritual teachings are not for the crowds. They are not for the world. They are only revealed to the disciples – the ones who are genuinely interested and who follow Jesus. Because we are here in church, we want to follow Jesus. We want to read the Bible and if we do so, we hear the message of the parable explained to us like Jesus did to his disciples. And because we hear this explanation today, we are reminded that we are God’s elect because we first chose to follow Jesus. The seeds of God’s word are plentiful. The farmer will continue to sow seeds if there is ground to be developed. And the seed is always good. We just need to be receptive and preserve as we receive the seed so it can take root in us.

But I wonder if Jesus is not just talking to individuals receiving his word but to his church as well. After all, soil is plentiful. The word soil used in this context is meant to be understood in its plural form and not its singular. Could Jesus be talking to his people as a whole? To us not just as individuals but if we come together as a church as a whole? The different types of soil here can represent different groups of Christians gathered in Christ.

Because the sower continues to sow day after day, God approaches us through Jesus day after day as well. We are not just bound by one interpretation of the bible or one interpretation of God’s word. After all, the Holy Spirit was sent to be with us so that we could continue to discern God’s word as it changes throughout time – to discern God’s small, quiet voice as our life progresses. Are we as the church still open to hearing God’s continuing word? Or are we like the hardened path refusing to listen to God and just continue to do the same things church is supposed to do and be? Like the good old days when it worked for us. Why should we change and be open? Why should we be humble and admit that our previous ways do not work anymore?

Are we like the rocky ground? Excited when something new comes around to make church exciting again but then get tired when we the new thing loses its flavor. Or when a setback occurs and we lose faith in the newness and freshness of change we once embraced, falling back to our old ways?

Are we like the thorny soil? Only responding to the ways of the world when doing church? Thinking solely about numbers in our pews or the money we have in our bank account? Or thinking about how progressive we are in our voice that we fail to realize that we are just virtue signalers – that we say and not do? While all those are important and not necessarily bad, do we miss the point of what church should be in and for the world?

Or are we like the good soil? Always open to change, discerning God’s word carefully and even in difficult times being steadfast and strong, allowing the seed to take root and flourish in our community?

I thought a lot about this because a few days ago, I chanced upon a post by Rev Lizzie, an Episcopal priest who pondered about why young people are no longer coming to our churches despite many of our churches being progressive and inclusive – churches where we preach openness, welcome and love. And she suggests the reason why – we claim to be diverse, to welcome all kinds of people because the body of Christ should not look like just one body. But when we look around at ourselves, we realize that we are that same, single, one kind of body. We have been doing church for ourselves only – the way we know how to. We fear change and doing something or trying something different.

Rev Lizzie then gives us an example of how it is so. She writes: my best friend from college — the one exception who was Christian and actively was looking for church — talked about how she tried every single Episcopal and Lutheran Church for a twenty-mile radius and felt nothing but iced out. But when she dipped her toe in the booming nondenominational church up the road, she left worship with five phone numbers of people her own age who were genuinely excited to hang out. She confided in me that only about half the people in said megachurch actually aligned with the church’s theological and political stances on women and LGBTQ people.

But it was the fact that (1) most of those young folks did not know there were any other options for church, and, (2) that the mainline churches around them were so sparse in demographic parity that kept me up at night.

Hear that again: the mainline churches around them were so sparse in demographic parity that kept her up at night.

The church needs to be ready for a changing world. The world out there hungry for spirituality and hungry for God does not look like us anymore. It does not see spirituality like we do anymore. Are we willing to hear God’s voice that we need to change for them so that they can come to know God too? Can the church be like the good soil, receptive to change and enduring in the face of difficulties, especially with letting go of the past? There might be difficulties at first. Even with change, we might not see the results we want. But could we be patient and wait on the Holy Spirit? After all, even in the good soil, the seed takes a while to sprout.

Nonetheless Rev Lizzie recommends the following. I thought her recommendations were so good that I should just repeat them here.

1. Your website is your front door. Explain what you do on Sundays EITHER without any church jargon (this includes “coffee hour” and “Eucharist” and “formation”) OR by explaining each church term in the best secular comparison you can.
2. Relatedly, most people will watch your livestream before they ever darken the door.
3. Greet first time guests warmly, but know they may need a little space. Have at least 3 points of contact for them to plug in: info in the bulletin or something they can take home to contact people, someone who greets them at the door, and someone in the pews looking out for newbies who are a bit overwhelmed.
4. Children are not the future of the church, they are the church. Make room for them, and their noise and their wiggles, in the worship space. Children will only grow up and go to church if they spent their growing up going to church.
5. Relatedly: working class families are shelling out mortgages for childcare, and we’re exhausted. But we also want time to simply enjoy our kids. The greatest gift the church can give families is space to enjoy our children, which means we don’t typically need or want a traditional nursery where we drop the kids and go away for hours — we’ve done that all week. Maybe we want a little break, but mostly we want people to help us with our kids — feed them, maybe help watch them and teach them during the sermon so we can hear it — and space for us to chit-chat with other grown ups after worship while our kiddos zoom around with their new little google-eyed crafts or play with the stack of Bible-y kids books set out for them.
6. Take God so seriously that you don’t take yourself too seriously. I don’t know about you, but I am not special or powerful enough to break a 2,000 year old prayer all by myself. So I’m not going to break this 2,000 year old tradition by being a human praying instead of a robot reciting.
7. Don’t try to gloss over how weird church is. Every week when we have Eucharist, it could be summed up as: “Behold: our dead God, now raised, let’s eat Him!” That is so strange, y’all. The mystery is the magic. Trust us to step into it with you.

I still believe that St Peter’s is where the good soil is. After all, you worked hard to keep this place going after the retirement of Padre Sid. I have never seen such a bunch of dedicated people before. I remember someone telling me that “we are all in our eighties now. We do not have enough energy anymore and are tired.” To my surprised I replied in my head “Are you? It doesn’t seem like it.” You have taken the first step in receiving God’s continual sowing of the seed. Now be steadfast and allow it to sprout and to grow.

I ask for your patience, your encouragement, and your love as we change church, our community, and the world together. We begin my changing ourselves. We need each other now more than ever before. Let us be the good soil for the world. Let us be the church God calls us to be. Amen.

the Rev. Dr. Ollie Lim