Your life is good soil
A homily based on the following Book of Common Prayer daily office reading:
Matthew 13:1-9 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”
The parable of the seeds and the sower is the one of the only ones that the Scriptures record Jesus explaining himself—probably because it’s actually a parable that describes why Jesus speaks in parables. His disciples ask him why this is his chosen teaching format, to which Jesus essentially replies: because most people who hear me teaching won’t understand anyway, so I may as well make sure they know they don’t understand.
Jesus is well aware that he’s proclaiming a kingdom—a reality—that is backwards, inside-out, and upside down to the ways that humans have made sense of the world. He knows that the life and freedom and faith that he’s preaching are inconceivable to most of the people in the crowds who follow him around. So he intentionally speaks in vague mysteries, knowing that to most people, it’ll bounce off. But to the one who sees with eyes of faith—to the one who looks for possibility and is open to greater realities than the tangible life here in front of them—to that person his words will reveal the truth of the present, active, here-and-now kingdom of God. She’ll see the Kingdom with her own eyes, precisely because she’s looking.
This parable is about how people encounter and receive the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is like a seed—a tiny capsule with the potential for abundant life inside: the kingdom is the dozen towering trees inside a single bite of a fig, the vine of pumpkins inside of one flat tear drop. Its potential is incomprehensible to the human eye, and what lies inside is beyond human formula or creation.
The parable describes four outcomes for these seeds, based on where they fall. For some, Jesus’s teaching about the Kingdom of God bounces right off the surface, and they never understand. For others, the justice of God’s Kingdom sounds exciting and joyful—but when life inevitably brings pain and hard questions, rather than finding their faith deepening and strengthening, they find their faith has no root, and it fades altogether. Another group of people taste the freedom of eternal life in God’s Presence—but before long they get swept up in the concerns for worldly success and accomplishments, and their focus on temporary pleasures chokes out the true and eternal life that they had once tasted.
A life focused on survival and acquiring can rarely embrace thriving and abundance.
A life focused on individualism can rarely receive a role in the greater story.
A life focused on independence can rarely open up to union with others.
A life spent protecting itself can rarely bring healing to others.
A life indebted to systems and obligations can rarely allow the freedom of the kingdom of God.
A life that defaults to the clear answers of the finite world, can rarely open up to the infinite wisdom of God.
The ones who have ears to hear, though? Well, they hear the good news—they hear that God has invited them into a full, abundant life of Love and faith and mystery, now—they hear that there is a greater reality than what is right in front of them and they lose themselves in it. They hear that the Universe is Love unfolding and creating and expanding, and they give their lives to the Greater Story. And their lives grow into fruitful crops—vines and trees and stalks of grain—and the flow of Love in and through them continues and expands as their own seeds scatter to bring about more life.
The good soil, then, makes the difference. What is the good soil? The kind of soil that has been broken up enough to allow a seed to plant, that’s soft enough to allow for deep roots, and that’s open enough to give space for something powerful to grow.
What would a life of good soil be like? What is the life in which the kingdom of God grows and flourishes? Perhaps a life touched by enough struggle to crack open the surface, enough doubt to break up the rocks and hardness in the soil, and enough de-weeding to quiet the voices of the culture and ego that tell them who they “ought” to be.
Perhaps the very frustrations and pains that make it seem like your old ways of thinking and being aren’t working for you anymore—perhaps those are the very things spaces where you’ve opened up to receive the backwards, mysterious, adventure of the eternal life of God.