What Kind of Soil? 

Preached at First Presbyterian Church

Based on Matthew 13

I grew up in a rural community, but it wasn’t a farming community. We were the kind of family who went hunting and worked construction and hauling jobs. 

The place you’re from shapes the kind of stories you tell. My stories growing up involved the woods and hunting. The Philadelphia Phillies and cheesesteaks. 

Stories can serve to unite us. They give us a sense of place and pride. They help us to understand our history so we can move forward into a new future. 

But stories can also be used to confound someone! You start talking about Neewollah to someone not from Kansas and see how they react! 

You can also use a shared language that keeps other people on the outside. Sometimes it’s intentional: speaking in code, trying to make sure you’re not understood, but more often than not it’s unintentional. You are simply using the language familiar to you and others aren’t understanding it. 

Our friend group here has an on-going debate about whether or not something is kitty corner or catty corner. There are strong feelings on both sides as to which expression is correct. Underneath, though, is a sense of home and place. Where we’re from shaping our language even down to our expressions.

Can you think of time when a story you told was misunderstood by someone else? Or a time when you were left on the outside as people exchanged inside jokes and stories you weren’t a part of? How did it make you feel? 

What about a time when a group shared with you what the story meant? How the shared language came to be? Maybe you still didn’t find the inside joke funny because you weren’t there, but you understood where it came from. Did that change how you interacted with this friend group? How you felt around them? Did it make you feel more a part of the group?

Today’s Gospel is all about stories. The stories Jesus uses the teach. The stories the people heard and understood, the stories people heard and didn’t understand. It’s about insiders and outsiders. It’s about stories that stem from and are anchored in a particular time and place. 

Once again, we’re in occupied Rome. Jesus is starting a movement. He’s gathering people. Crowds are beginning to follow him. And in this movement there are two sets of folks: the inner circle; the disciples. The ones who have a front seat view to all of it and who get more time, attention, and teaching. And the outsiders. The ones who are following and listening but haven’t yet decided to become disciples. 

This distinction is important. The invitation to become an insider was open, but it involved risk. It involved giving things up. It involved putting your life on the line. See, in occupied Rome joining a movement could be seen as an act of treason. 

So often when Jesus speaks in public he speaks in what churchy folks like to call parables, but really he’s telling stories. And these stories have multiple meanings. But they are also, on the surface at least, innocuous. If anyone questions him he can simply say “I’m telling a story about a farmer! Where’s the harm in that?” The story is a way to speak in code. To stay under the radar. 

Think about the ways that fiction and literature have been used in hostile regimes. Think about theatre that is also political satire. Think about all of the ways that we say the thing without saying the thing.

So Jesus tells a story about sowing seeds soil. He’s talking to people who understood farming. He’s telling this story to day laborers who are trying to eke out an existence. He’s talking to poor folks who are seeing more and more landowners making tons of money while they struggle to feed their families. 

And honestly, we can understand this audience! We live in farm country. We understand the plight of the famers who are going in to debt. Who need to buy new equipment and can’t afford it. Who are at the mercy of huge corporations who make it so they can’t fix their own equipment like they used to. We understand worrying about the weather. The rain or lack thereof, the drought. We understand the market not cooperating and the need to grow and sell even more just to break even.

Rob Bell, a preacher and pastor, talks about paying attention in Scripture to when things are close and when they are distant. In some ways this is a story that’s closer to us because we understand the nature of farming.

In other places it’s distant because we don’t understand what it’s like to live in an occupied land and have to fear for our safety. This juxtaposition is important in understanding the stories Jesus is telling.  

So to the larger crowd following Jesus he tells stories of seed falling on different types of ground. He speaks of rain and sun. Of seed going to waste and of birds coming and plucking it away. And he leaves it at that. For those on the outside it’s an innocuous message. One they would have understood on the surface. 

But then later on his followers come and ask him a series of questions:

Why do you speak in stories? It’s one that lots of people reading the Bible have asked, too! Come on Jesus, can’t you just say it plain? Why do you have to confuse everyone?

Jesus answers with a bit of mystery. He talks about secrets and people not understanding. Really he’s saying: I’m trying to figure out who really wants to be a part of this new movement. I’m trying to figure out who really can discern the truth of the message. Who’s willing to give up everything and join us? Who can be trusted not to turn us in to the authorities? Who’s really about the mission like we are?

And then they ask him to explain what the story meant. And he does. 

There are some people who hear the invitation: The invitation to join the mission of God, to bring about the reconciliation of all things, to bring us back to place of justice and harmony with creation and with each other, to bring us to a time when everyone has enough and no one goes hungry… there are some who hear the invitation to be a part of that moment and they don’t get it. They don’t understand why anyone would want that. They say things are fine as they are. They say that maybe some people should just work harder or not love who they love. They say we shouldn’t take care of creation and we’re not responsible for our neighbor. They hear the invitation and they refuse to understand it. 

Others hear the invitation and are immediately filled with joy. Yes! I want to be part of the movement! I want to join! But then, because they aren’t rooted in spiritual practices, because they aren’t surrounded by a community who’s trying to do the same, when they face hardship: when someone leaves the church because of the stand they made, when someone stops being their friend, when they get protested or made fun of, when they get thrown in jail for standing up for a righteous cause, when it simply gets hard, because make no mistake, working for the reconciliation of all things is HARD WORK, these people quit. They walk away. 

The next person hears the invitation, but they aren’t interested. They’d rather take care of themselves. They want to make a lot of money no matter who else it costs. They want safety above all else. So they yield nothing. 

But there are a few: They hear the invitation. They really, truly get it. They root themselves in community and in spiritual practices. They go all in. And they yield an incredible harvest. Of souls and lives saved. Of communities changed. Of people fed and children cared for. Of justice and peace. 

Jesus was inviting his listeners, and us today, to choose what kind of soil we want to be. The invitation to the work still remains:

Will you be apart of the reconciliation of all things? Will you work for what one scholar calls “The anticipated renewal of the Garden of Eden when God’s empire is established in full?” Will you work to make sure that everyone is cared for? Everyone has enough? Everyone is welcomed and accepted and loved? 

These stories are a word of hope. A word of assurance. They are an invitation to be a part of a new way of being. 

If following Jesus isn’t shaping your whole life: the way you treat your family and your neighbors, how you spend your money, the way you’re involved in your community, the way you care for those who are most in need, then you haven’t accepted the call to discipleship. 

Now this isn’t then saying that if you haven’t accepted the call that you’re going to Hell. Or that God hates you. Or that you are condemned. But it is saying that you’re missing out on the joy of being a part of something incredible. You’re missing out on being a part of the harvest. You’re missing out on the mission. 

And so each of us have a choice to make: What kind of soil will we be? How will we respond to the invitation to be a part of bringing about the Kingdom of God? Will we join the disciples or will we stay outside on the edges of the crowd?

Each one of us has to make the choice for ourselves. The good news is the invitation remains open. Even if you’ve not gotten it in the past, even if you’ve walked away when things got hard, even if you chose yourself over community, that isn’t the final word. The invitation to be good soil always remains. 

Knowing what kind of soil you’ve been and choosing what kind of soil you want to be is the first step to accepting the invitation to joining the movement. 

But just imagine what would happen if more of us chose to be good soil? If we are promised that even a small amount of seed on good soil leads to an abundant harvest, then the promise is that every small contribution we make can have a massive impact. 

Every meal we serve to someone who is hungry. Every time we welcome a stranger or someone who has been rejected. Every time we stand up and say “no more” when someone says something hateful or harmful. Every time we fight back against injustice in our town and our state and our country. Every small action to reconcile people to the mission of God has a tremendous impact. 

What if we, as churches, as followers of Jesus, were known for being people on a mission of reconciliation? What if we were known for our love and compassion instead of our anger and division? What kind of harvest would we see? 

What kind of soil will you be? 

Amen.