Last weekend I attended the Virginia Synod Assembly. The big topic was reaching out into our neighborhoods, redefining community, and addressing evangelism through missional work. Many perspectives were proposed and discussed. One speaker asked how we could best present the beauty within the walls of the church so the world outside could see it.
The analogy left me a little cold. I couldn’t help but picture the church as it stands today as a stale jelly donut. Tasteless and dry on the outside with a sweet hidden filling. While I understood the concerns shared by many of the voices, I was concerned about the central issue that was being indirectly addressed.
The central issue has been expressed through articles found in religious publications and blogs such as “How to win back millennials” and “What young people really want from the Church”. Regardless of one’s religious affiliation, hip new age preachers and pastors seem to have all the solutions. If not the new hip clergy than certainly stadium seating, rock bands, and big screens give us the most viable options for outreach. I have to admit, despite proposals from articles and discussions, Jesus’ advice in today’s Gospel has rarely been cited, if at all.
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The Gospel for today gives us some very peculiar advice concerning horticulture. You could call it the “Plant it and forget it” strategy. I am not sure how well this would work in our neck of the woods. Last summer I inadvertently gave this a shot, I ended up with a window planter full of dead begonias and a miniature maple tree began to sprout up in their place.
So, how does the sower do it?
We can over analyze this text and discount the parable as a parable inspired by the lush land surrounding the sea of Galilee, where Jesus is sharing this parable in today’s Gospel. We could also consider the lush farmland just outside of Jerusalem as the inspiration for this parable. But even in these lands, “plant it and forget” methods of farming were not successful. There are specific methods of farming found in Deuteronomy that were enforced for not only religious reasons but as methods to sustain an agrarian economy. So apparently, Jesus is going to end up with a window planter like mine, huh? Perhaps our misinterpretation of this text is why the window planter we call the church is growing a tiny maple tree instead of lush begonias?
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In Jesus’ third parable, our first in the Gospel today, it points to a sower that we all too often picture as ourselves. Especially among those in ministry; and we seminarians? Oh boy, do we think we know how to farm this here church? Corner a young pastor or seminarian and we will tell you, the church has a problem and I am THE solution!
But that’s not the case in this parable for today.
We talked about John 3:16 the last Sunday I was here, if you can recall.
Pastor N recited the verse with the congregation; “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
What kind of farmer could ever have that kind of confidence in their planting with any certainty?
After working on a farm and killing numerous plants since, I honestly could only see THE Creator as the Sower in this parable. But that doesn’t really give us much control now, does it?
What about our tractors, our big screen tv’s, our pesticides, our stadium seating, our specially formulated soil, our rock bands, our specialized irrigation systems, and of course; our hip preachers?But that doesn’t seem to be the way here in the Gospel today.
The recipe for success is THE Sower and THE Seed.
THE Seed of THE Word made flesh
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In 1854 the Bishop of Zealand, Denmark; Bishop Jacob Peter Mynster died. At his funeral, the new Bishop, Hans Lassen Martensen proclaimed that Mynster was “one of the most authentic witnesses to the truth of Christianity since Apostolic times”
The renowned Danish Theologian, Søren Kierkegaard, criticized Martensen’s assessment publicly, to which Martensen replied by more or less asking Kierkegaard if he thought that he himself was the truest example of a Christian. Kierkegaard responded by proclaiming that one can never claim to be a Christian but only aspire to become one.
You see? For Kierkegaard it is clear that humanity is the most infertile soil for such seed.
We, sisters and brothers are the tainted soil, upon which the Sower scatters the Seed of Christ, the Seed of God’s Word. It is for this very reason that we cannot look in the mirror for the “solution” to our dilemma of the “missional church”. Because it is not in our gimmicks and plans that the Seed grows, it is in our willingness to grow ourselves from the Seed sown in us. The Kingdom of God is not in some far often distant cloud but it is here and now in each of us. That seed was planted in you today because of the Word that has been read, the story that has been shared, in the Body and Blood that will be shared at the altar, the confession we make, the absolution received, the hymns we sing, the prayers we raise, and the creed we confess. This is how the soil of our lives is tilled, this is how that Seed is planted, and it is in your response to the Sower and the Seed that the Seed continues to be spread far and wide.
It’s a great parable.
It really is.
There is one problem with it, though.
I don’t get credit…….
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Yep, you heard me right. The new vicar with his brand new seminary education, fresh views, and full head of flowing hair…..
It’s not me, it’s not Pastor N, it’s not you, it’s not the Bishop, the Pope, the hip TV preacher, or the brand new multiplex church with the big screens and stadium seating. It’s God. God is the Sower, the Missional Leader as we say in the ELCA these days, God is the substance of the message and with that kind of substance who needs gimmicks? We have the Seed, the Word, Jesus THE Christ. But we love to get credit, yes, even in the church. We love to be recognized, we want to be seen for the success we have gained. The unseen rather than the seen, as Paul says and even alludes to in the second lesson today.
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Back when I played Little League one of my favorite movies was Field of Dreams. In the movie, Kevin Costner plays a farmer by the name of Ray. One day Ray hears a voice in the fields on his farm that tells him “If you build it, he will come”. Ray mows down half his field of corn and builds a baseball field, subjecting himself to financial ruin.
Everyone in the town thinks he is crazy, even his family begins to ridicule him. But he keeps his faith in the word he has heard. As the plot moves forward he finds that the deceased baseball players from his beloved 1919 Chicago White Sox team he admired in his childhood, step out of the cornfields and onto his baseball field for one more game. Oddly enough no one else can see them except those who start to believe what Ray claims he sees.
At the end of the movie, Ray’s unintended but new friend; Terence Mann - who has done nothing more than accompany Ray by force on his journeys - is invited by Shoeless Joe Jackson to disappear into the cornfields with Shoeless Joe, Buck Weaver, and other ghost-like baseball players from the past.
Ray protests his friend’s invitation frustrated by what he has sacrificed, proclaiming “Wait a minute, why him? I built this field, you wouldn’t be here if it weren't for me!”
To which Shoeless Joe Jackson calmly responds by saying simply “But you’re not invited”
Prompting Ray to question; “Not invited? What do you mean, not invited?! That’s my corn out there, you guys are guests in my corn! I’ve done everything I’ve been asked to do, now I didn’t understand it but I did it and I never asked once what’s in it for me!”
So Shoeless Joe responds by asking “What are you saying Ray?” and receives Ray’s response
“I’m saying……. Whats in it for me!?”
Wisely, Shoeless Joe redirects Ray asking him honestly; “Is that why you did this; for you?”
The question shames Ray into silence.
It’s the same question that should shame us into silence when we plan and plot our new age of Christianity.
Sisters and brothers, following Christ is not about how we package our faith, who gets credit for our development, who brings the millennials back. It is about the Seed, the Seed that has been sown in us by THE best Farmer in all of creation; The Sower, The Seed, and The Holy Ghost. It’s God’s farm not ours, we are just the soil, so let’s truly take in the Seed of God’s Word into the soil of our lives today and everyday.
It’s not about us, it’s about sharing the Seed we receive; the Word, Jesus the Christ.
Amen
Sources
Kierkegaard, Soren, and Howard
A. Johnson. Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon “Christendom” 1854-1855.
Translated by Walter Lowrie. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968.
Robinson,
Phil Alden. Field of Dreams. Universal Studios, 2012.
