Proper 10 – Romans 8:1-11/Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Timothy's School for Girls
“…You are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.”
- Romans 8:
9
We don’t often think of it, but of all the New Testament
literature, Saint Paul ’s
letters are the oldest sources we have about Jesus – pre-dating the Gospels by
a couple of decades. And Paul writes that for those who are “in Christ,” and
“Christ is in them,” “the Spirit of God
dwells in you.” This ought to strike us as an astonishing assertion. Not
something we should take for granted. And we might ask, just how does this
“Spirit of God, this Christ, come to dwell in us?
And “us” is the
operant word here, since Saint Paul
writes in the plural (something the English translation cannot indicate) – Paul
rarely speaks of an individual’s relationship to Christ. He speaks almost
exclusively of the individual in the context of the faith community – the
community of Christ’s Body, the priesthood of all believers. How does Christ
and the Spirit of God come to “dwell in
us?”
Along comes the Parable of the Sower rich with varied depths
of meanings to help us to see just what things, as our collect for the day
urges, we “ought to do,” and just how we might find ourselves equipped with the
“grace and power to accomplish them,” which things very well may prepare
ourselves as a community to receive Christ and the Spirit of God into our midst
– so that God’s spirit might “dwell” among us, a technical word in the Greek for
pitching a tent, setting up shop, move into our neighborhood.
And the first thing we might notice is the repetition, “A
sower went out to sow, and as he sowed…” That is, this is no random person
scattering seed hoping gravity and good luck will take care of the rest. This
sower is sowing, which points to a practiced skill. This seed goes where it is
supposed to go. No soil is left bare. No soil is overplanted. Yet, even with
such a sower, some seed lands on the road, or on stones, or among thorns.
Vincent Van Gogh, the 19th Century Dutch artist
understood this. He understood that the seeds were God’s Word of the Kingdom –
and Gogh knew as we all know that Christ is God’s Word of the Kingdom. Christ,
the Word of God’s Kingdom, came to proclaim a message: I will set you free, I
won’t let you be anything but holy, good and free.
Now what most people do not know is that the young Gogh set
off to follow in his Protestant Pastor father’s footsteps – and spent some
years evangelizing, bring this good news of God’s Word, to the poor, beginning
with mine workers in Borinage. During this time he was able to identify with
the miners, their families, and their lifestyles. His religious beliefs made
him want to alleviate spiritual and physical suffering.
Only later did he turn to painting as another way to express
his desire to bring people closer to God, closer to each other and closer to
themselves. In 1888 he painted The
Sower, a pivotal work in the
history of art, and surely a scene related to our story here in Matthew. One
sees the sower, practiced in the art of sowing, deliberately planting the seed
in the soil. For Gogh the color yellow symbolized faith, triumph and love. The
color blue represented the Divine – and so he combines these colors so they
seem to move together showing the relationship of all living things. And there
is something holy, good and free in the figure of The Sower – who in the parable of course is God in Christ planting
the Good News of God’s kingdom in the soil of our hearts.
And the very thought that this seed, the Word of God, could
yield a hundredfold would be heard by the farmers and fishermen Jesus addresses
as simply fantastic! No seed known yields such bounty! Maybe ten, twenty or
even thirty fold, but sixty or one hundred is unprecedented, unknown, simply unimaginable!
We are meant to respond with awe that God’s Word possesses such grace and power
– we are meant to want this Word planted in the soil of our own hearts, where
we can tend to it, hear it, and be transformed a hundred fold ourselves. What a
truly awesome gift from an awesome God.
Of course, the dangers of not tending to it are outlined. It
is a parable of self-analysis: Are we fertile, well tilled, deeply mulched
soil? Or, are we rocky ground? Do we welcome and make opportunities to tend to
God’s word every day? Or, do we spend more time tending to the thorns of wealth
and the cares of the world, such that the Word yields nothing?
Many who first heard Jesus tell this story figured out its
meaning: we are the soil, the seed of God’s Word comes to rest in us, and for
those who till and water and mulch and care for God’s word, we become sowers of
the Word ourselves – like the young Vincent Van Gogh, like Saint Paul, like the
fishermen, tenant farmers, soldiers and others who first heard this story.
In Maine lives a truly wonderful singer/songwriter by the
name of David Mallet who wrote Garden
Song, a song that speaks to what Jesus is calling us to do and be, and
at the same time addresses the ecological crisis we face on the Earth, this
fragile, island home of ours. As one sings it, or listens to it, perhaps it
will move us to become more disciplined disciples of Christ – like the skilled
Sower may we become more practiced in letting the Word take root in our lives
so we might begin to feel and to know that what Saint Paul says is true: we are
in the Spirit, God’s Spirit dwells in us. God’s son Jesus desires to pitch his
tent and plant his Word in our hearts and minds and souls so that we might
truly become holy, good and free!
Garden Song
by David Mallett
CHORUS:
Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
Gonna mulch it deep and low
Gonna make it fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Please bless these seeds I sow
Please keep them safe below
'Till the rain comes tumbling down
Pullin' weeds and pickin' stones
We are made of dreams and bones
Need a place to call my own
'Cause the time is close at hand
Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature's chain
Till my body and my brain
Tell the music of the land
CHORUS
Plant your rows straight and long
Season with a prayer and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her loving care
An old crow watching hungrily
From his perch in yonder tree,
In my garden I'm as free
As that feathered thief up there.
CHORUS
©Cherry Lane Music Co (ASCAP)
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