Jesus spoke to them at length in parables, saying, ‘A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path and birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it. But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. Whoever has ears ought to hear.” (Matthew 13.3-9)
One of the most famous cowboy songs of all time is “Home on the Range,” the lyrics written in the late 19th century, and almost every famous singer of the early to mid-20th century singing it. Bing Crosby recorded it in 1933, an ironic twist if there ever was one since the Great Depression was roaring across the Great Plains and thousands of farmers were abandoning their home on the range for a better life in California.
Yet, there was something nostalgic and idyllic about the lyrics, imagining a world long gone “where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.” It is difficult to imagine a weather-worn and beaten down farmer in the midwest looking out his window at black clouds of dirt swirling around his house singing those words to himself.
Nevertheless, it evoked some sentiment of a better place and a better time, perhaps in this way giving hope to people running low on hope, and offering a landscape far removed from the one that they stared at every day. In fact, in 1947, “Home on the Range” became the state song of Kansas, the place still standing despite the Dust Bowl and the Wizard of Oz.
I often think of one of my aunts, marooned on the empty landscape of far off West Texas, who accepted the barrenness of the place with her usual aplomb and lived by the motto, “You’ve got to bloom where you’re planted.” Clear-eyed about her circumstances, knowing full well that the deer and the antelope didn’t play in her backyard, and more than a few discouraging words were heard on the flat ranges of West Texas, she refused to let her spirit be beaten down by the high winds and the thick dust storms that surrounded her, instead finding ways she could bloom where she was planted, even if the only sign of life she saw was a tumbleweed rolling across her backyard.
Whenever I hear the parable of the sower and the seed, as we do today in the scriptures selected for this Sunday, I think of her because, if anyone should know, she understood what the Good Lord meant when he talked about seed falling on rocky ground where it had little soil, the sun scorching the small stalks as soon as they stuck their heads above ground. And yet, she persisted in her belief that you had to bloom wherever you were planted, which, on the surface, seems to contradict the parable that Rabbi Jesus tells the crowds.
After all, he begins his story of the sower with a steady progression of bad scenarios, the seed falling on hardened pathways, some on rocky ground, more among the thorns, none of which provide suitable soil for the seed to sprout, and only then moves on to talk about seed that fell on rich soil, producing fruit “a hundred or sixty or thirty fold.” If anything, his story makes the strong case that you can’t necessarily bloom where you’re planted.
And yet, maybe he does. Or, anyway as I choose to interpret the story. I like to look at it from a different angle, more like my aunt would, accepting that not all ground is receptive to green growth, but still someone doing his or her best in the restrictive environment, and not giving up just because life gets hard.
If anybody understood this point, it was Rabbi Jesus. The last several chapters that precede this one has shown a cascade of criticism directed at him from the scribes and Pharisees who miss no chance to put it down and to put him in his place. If there was hard dirt without a prayer of something growing on it, that would be the Pharisees who were as closed off and as hard-hearted about Rabbi Jesus’ message as the West Texas landscape where, if you’re lucky, the Texas sage will burst into bloom every other year.
And yet, Rabbi Jesus continued to preach and to teach, fully aware that many of the people who heard him were not receptive to his words or to his ideas. He didn’t pack up, move away, and try his luck in another place where the soil was rich. No, he stayed in West Texas, and if nothing else bloomed, he did, refusing to turn his back on his mission, instead continuing on the path he was on, even if it led to the rocky hill called Golgotha.
Almost every sermon that uses this story as its foundation wants to browbeat the listener into changing their ways, that is, giving up the rocky pathways of their soul for fruit-bearing dirt. And all that is good and fine. There’s nothing better than a call to conversion and an old-fashioned altar call. Matthew has Jesus give much the same interpretation, with the Rabbi concluding, “The seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.” Not all scholars agree that Jesus gave the interpretation; he rarely explained his parables. So, some believe Matthew offered his own understanding. Regardless, it is an old and proven way of looking at the story.
However, it is not the only interpretation. What if we change the point of view from ourselves as the ground and instead become the seed in the story? Suddenly things look different and we’re offered another interpretation. Granted, the interpretation that Matthew offers us has the seed as the word of God, received by listeners in various ways. But could we not also be the word of God? As followers of Rabbi Jesus, are we not the word made flesh as he was? If we’re doing our job, surely we are the word of God.
When we take the part of the seed in the story, we see our efforts to share and to spread the word and ways of Rabbi Jesus as falling sometimes on open-minded people, but more often falling on deaf ears. We find ourselves living in a world that is sporadically open to hearing the good news, and just as stubbornly content to let it wither away.
The point is made clear to us everyday. And while it would be nice to have a receptive audience every time we spoke about living the life of Jesus, it just doesn’t happen with high frequency. And, like the farmer who finds himself in a field with rocks and with hard ground and with some good dirt mixed in between, and so casts the seed every which way, we also don’t get to choose where we’re thrown in the world. And like the farmer who recognizes that not every seed that leaves his hands is going to produce, but continues to cast the seeds, we also have to stay hopeful and prayerful that something good will come from our efforts.
The reality of the situation for us is that we live in a world where there are all kinds of soil, some good, some bad, some in between. The Christian believer finds him or herself in lots of situations that are not hospitable to what he or she says or does; in fact, often it is the opposite, the believer face to face with a hostile environment. So what are we to do?
I suppose we could choose to pack up and go where the soil is good, shake the dust off your sandals as Scripture says, but sometimes that option is not available and, besides, who said being a Christian was supposed to be easy living, every word out of his or her mouth sprouting lush stalks of green vegetation? It wasn’t that way for Rabbi Jesus, who squared off with the scribes and religious show-offs all the way to Jerusalem. But, unless I read it wrong, he never turned around.
In other words, nine out of ten times we have little control over where we land. The Almighty might cast us on a hardened pathway, or on rocky ground, or among prickly thorns. What we do control is what we do in such circumstances. And maybe that is what Rabbi Jesus is wanting to tell us in this story. He knew his way was difficult and his words were tough to swallow. He was not naive enough to think the life of his followers was going to be the dreamlike home on the range, complete with buffalo herds and blue skies.
No, he instructed them to take up their cross and follow him, the implication being that it would be a hard road ahead. And yet, fully aware of the hardships and setbacks of such a life, he urged them to stay on the path, to stay strong, and to stay with him all the way, whatever the place in which they would find themselves. Or, as my aunt would say, “Bloom where you’re planted.”
Looked at in this way, the story of the seed challenges us to do God’s work wherever we are, however good or bad the surroundings are. We accept our place in the world and we work the fields that we find ourselves in. We trust enough in the message that we have heard and that we pass on to believe that maybe, just maybe, it might find a receptive ear. When it does, we give praise to God. When it doesn’t, when instead we’re fighting what looks like a losing battle against hardened hearts and faint-hearted people, then we pray to God to give us the strength to stay in place and to do the job assigned to us.
I’ve seen many a flower bloom in the crack of a sidewalk and every time I see it I wonder at the tenacity and the resiliency of that tiny seed that fights all odds and was determined to bloom where it was planted, even in such an inhospitable and impossible setting. I never pull up a flower that blooms in the crack of a sidewalk because I believe it has earned its place in the world.
So, as we hear the story of the seed today, we can spend some time looking inside ourselves to see what kind of soil we offer to God to do his work. But we also can take a few minutes to look outside ourselves to see where our feet are planted. Whatever the type of soil we find them in, we may want to remind ourselves that this is where God wants us to be. With that sure knowledge, we can get to work doing what he has asked us to do, regardless of whether we have a home on the range or a home in the wilderness.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 