Mark 6:1-13 "Ouch! Rejected"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!

         Christian evangelist and author Josh McDowell once wrote: ““People refuse to believe that which they don't want to believe, in spite of evidence.”  He goes on to describe a startling discovery made by English scientists in 1797. 

         “When explorers first went to Australia (he writes) they found a mammal which laid eggs; spent some time in water, some on land; had a broad, flat tail, webbed feet, and a bill similar to a duck. Upon their return to England, they told the populace of this, and (the entire scientific community) felt it was (an elaborate) hoax. They returned to Australia and found a pelt from this animal and took it back to England, but the people still felt it was a hoax. In spite of the evidence, they disbelieved because they didn't want to believe.”

         The animal, of course, was the duck-billed platypus, which is, as one blogger declared, “God’s ultimate practical joke.”  People refuse to believe that which they do not want to believe, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. 

        It is kind of like the time that I preached my first sermon in my home church in Montclair, NJ, shortly after I was ordained.  Some of you may know this story, especially if you have seen the needlepoint slogan commemorating it hanging over the door inside my office. 

         I stood up in the pulpit that morning.  It was one of those large and ornately carved ones that was situated somewhat above the congregation.  I am sure I was nervous, but I knew that I was supported by three years worth of prestigious Yale Divinity School professors as well as my peers assuring me that being a woman preacher was the greatest thing since sliced bread. 

         Little did I know that at least some folks in the congregation were more likely to be thinking, if not whispering to their neighbor:  “Isn’t that Nancy Allen who grew up in this church?  Isn’t that Barbara and Rich’s daughter, the skinny one who had those less-than-stylish, sharply cut bangs and big brown eyes?  How did she get so wise?  I mean, isn’t she the quiet little introverted thing who never liked to speak in front of anyone?  What is she doing up in that pulpit? 

        All this doubting and lack of trust in who I had become became clear to me, however, as the congregation filed out at the conclusion of the service, all of them dutifully shaking my hand and intoning the usual Sunday morning post-worship mantra:  “Nice sermon, Reverend.”  All, that is, except for one of the last people to file out.

         She was an elderly woman in a navy blue dress with large white polka dots.  She carried a shiny patent leather handbag over her arm.  She shook my hand and loudly proclaimed, “You know, dear, with girls like you up there, we don’t need ministers.” 

         Ouch!  Thumbs down in my own hometown!  At least no one tried to throw me off a cliff as they did Jesus in the Gospel writer Luke’s version of this story of rejection that we read this morning.

         Just like me, Jesus was under the impression that he was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  A real man about town!  After all, in the past two days, he had performed not one, not two, but three miracles.  He had calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee with a shout and a wave of his hand.  He had healed a nameless woman from a chronic bleeding disorder (and he did not even know that he was healing her), and he had raised a little girl from the dead.  Not bad!  Jesus was a heralded healer, a rabbi on a roll! 

         And now he walked confidently into his hometown synagogue on Friday evening, most likely believing that the congregation would hang on his every word.  He could say anything! 

         I suspect that the synagogue was packed because Jesus’ reputation preceded him.  As preaching professor Alyce McKenzie comments, “I picture Jesus' hometown family and friends squirming in their synagogue seats and craning their necks to see if he's coming up the center aisle as they wait for his arrival that day. The hometown boy is coming to bring the (weekly) message….As his family and former neighbors sit waiting, I bet they were preparing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

         Perhaps they were saying to each other, ‘Even if he's not that good a speaker, we need to encourage him, because he's just getting started.’ His home townies don't know who they're waiting for. They think they're waiting for the boy who knows how to make the best shelves in town. They think they're waiting for the familiar sibling of James, Joseph, Judas, Simon, and his sisters (unnamed!). They think they're waiting for the obedient son of Mary.”

         But it was not Mary’s kid up walking up the aisle.  It was not the Jesus who repaired a leaky roof and built some good sturdy furniture who was teaching them.  It was not the Jesus they had always known standing in front of them that evening as he elaborated on a passage from the prophet Isaiah (again, that is according to the Gospel writer Luke, who goes into way more detail than his counterpart, Mark, would ever think of doing), making a declaration about himself that could not possibly be true: “The Lord God has appointed me to preach good news to poor people, to heal the blind and sick, to set free those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

         What?  The effrontery!  Who did he think he was trying to be so high and mighty, fancying himself as a rabbi? “The Lord God appointed me…” 

         Hogwash!  After all, this was Jesus, Joe’s boy, who had been preparing to take over his father’s business (until he left so suddenly recently, left his family hook, line, and sinker. Can you believe it?).  He went off on his own just like those religious crazies you hear about. 

         Ouch!  Thumbs down in his own hometown!   However, Jesus seemed to take it all in stride.  As he and his followers continued their journey, he merely shrugged his shoulders and commented: “A prophet has little honor in his hometown, among his relatives, on the streets he played in as a child….A prophet is respected everywhere except where he grew up.”

         You know, when you think about it, this whole preaching business and the hometown crowd getting so upset with him might have come down differently if Jesus had given a bit more thought to what he was going to say.  Methodist bishop William Willimon speculates this way:

         “A friend of mine returned from an audience with His Holiness the Dali Lama. ‘When His Holiness speaks,’ my friend said, ‘everyone in the room becomes quiet, serene and peaceful.’ Not so with Jesus. Things were fine in Nazareth until Jesus opened his mouth and all hell broke loose.

        And this was only his first sermon! One might have thought that Jesus would have used a more effective rhetorical strategy, would have saved inflammatory speech until he had taken the time to build trust, to win people's affection, to contextualize his message -- as we are urged to do in (preaching) classes.

         No, instead he threw the book at them, hit them right between the eyes with Isaiah.”  Why, I wonder, did he have to sound so threatening?  No wonder he turned off the congregation!

         No wonder he left town, no doubt realizing that his words had threatened those folks he had grown up with, no doubt accompanied by his own feelings of rejection, perhaps even hurt by the lack of trust shown to him by those who knew him best.  It was at that point, however, that he did an interesting thing. 

         He gathered his twelve disciples about him, gave them some brief instructions, and sent them out to be like him, to be his hands and feet in the wider world.  He sent them out to preach and heal, to transform lives, to be boldly loved by some and rejected outright by others. 

        “’Don’t think you need a lot of extra equipment for this. You are the equipment. No special appeals for funds. Keep it simple.  And no luxury inns. Get a modest place and be content there until you leave. If you’re not welcomed, not listened to, quietly withdraw. Don’t make a scene. Shrug your shoulders and be on your way.’’

         Say what you need to say.  Do not pull any punches.  Know that you words and actions will threaten some folks.  You will be rejected outright by others – sometimes by the people you thought were your most ardent supporters, who had your back, sometimes even by your family.  But if you are speaking and living my message (Jesus said), and you are doing it in love, then there is nothing more you can do. 

         He might have continued:  “You can lead a horse (or a camel) to water, but you can not make it drink – which does not mean you should not make the attempt.  Just shake it off and keep trying.  Keep preaching, keep healing, keep forgiving, keep being a peacemaker and justice-seeker.  Keep being compassionate.  Nobody said that discipleship would be a Sunday School picnic.  Being one of my followers is risky business, risky business indeed.

         “Then they were on the road (the Scriptures continue). (The twelve) preached with joyful urgency that life can be radically different; right and left they sent the demons packing; they brought wellness to the sick, anointing their bodies, healing their spirits.”

         Being a follower of Jesus is risky business.  It is risky business indeed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that sometimes people disappoint us when we wish they had our back.  Sometimes the people we would expect to support us are just not engaged – or just not willing to go out on a limb with us.

         And when that happens, we have a choice.  We can figure it is just too hard and throw in the sponge, or we can stick to our principles, stick with the gospel message.   

         This story illustrates for us that, each day, we take a risk if we choose to live as the woman or man God calls us to be. After all, we may make others – even those close to us - feel threatened in their easy, cozy worlds.  We may face rejection. 

         Discipleship is not easy.  We take a risk when we choose to live as a follower of Jesus.  We take a risk when we choose to live as God wants us to live.  Each day we choose whether the return we get from living that way is worth the risk.

         We face that choice as individuals, but we also make that choice as a church – and what better day to talk a bit about that choice than on the day of our Annual Meeting when we look at who we are and who God has called us to be in the year to come.

         I read this quote somewhere this past week:  “We are at a grace-filled moment when we are able to choose our own future.”  And so it is for this church family.  We are indeed at a grace-filled moment, but it is a moment that is also incredibly risky.  The moderate church – and that would include us – is at a crossroads – and we must choose a direction.  Who are we?  What is our purpose?  What is our future here in Raymond?  Those are risky questions to ask – and even riskier questions to answer.  How are we – as a church – when it comes to taking risks?

         Let me end by reading you part of a blog post by Methodist pastor Ken Corder.  He writes:

         “Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God as a place where radical love, surprising grace, and over-the-top compassion spontaneously emerged in unexpected places.  It was a place of change, transformation, growth, pushing the envelope in order to see God’s kingdom unleashed in the world. He challenged social, cultural, economic and religious norms and traditions of his day with beautiful alternatives of grace, freedom and moving well-established fences to expand the breadth and reach of the kingdom of God.

         What too many churches have done in response to the great problems of the world today, and they are many, is to hunker down with a bunker mentality.  It is a weak position of insularity.  And after decades of insularity and hunkering down, if we are brave enough for a moment to look up and see what the world is up to, we find that in our insularity, we have become dangerously close to being irrelevant to a secular, unbelieving world.

         So what do we do?  Say it was a good ride while it lasted?  Say, well, let’s hang on as long as we can doing it the same old way, at least we’ll have our church until we’re gone?

         Jesus was not willing to let his beautiful, transformative message of the kingdom of God wither and die on the unfertile ground of people whose hearts were too hard or too disinterested in hearing the Gospel, so he took it to the streets, the hedge rows, the villages, the other side.  When the conservative, stagnant synagogues told him they had no use for his upsetting message he took it outside the establishment and formed a radical group of outcasts who took the message of the Good News to the people.  Oftentimes they found unfertile soil there as well – doubters, naysayers, people afraid of how Jesus’ message would effect their business, their pocketbook, their marriage, their way of life – so they told him and his ragtag disciples to move on down the road.  They did not want to hear it.

         But sometimes, every so often, one or two people, a small group – maybe one of ten healed lepers, maybe one tax collector, maybe one centurion or one dejected woman would hear Jesus’ message and be transformed, changed forever and would join the slowing growing band of disciplined followers – disciples of Jesus Christ.

        We must decide as a church (Corder blogs) if we are going to be with the stagnant naysayers, the staunchly comfortable, cautious traditionalists who look up one day and see they have become irrelevant to a world so in need of Jesus’ message of radical love, compassion, forgiveness, nonviolence and hospitality.  Or - if we are going get things done in the kingdom of God, if we are going to open our hearts, our minds and our doors to the Jesus who longs to transform this world.” Whew!  Talk about risky business, risky business indeed!  How are we as a church when it comes to taking risks?

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine

Mark 5:21-43 "Finding Healing in a Risky World"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!

         Grammatical errors bring out the English teacher (or E.B. White) in me – and that includes misspelled words, too much or too little punctuation, inappropriate paragraph divisions, and incorrect word choices.  I suppose it comes from diagramming a lot of sentences in 7^th and 8^th grade.  Diagramming is a lost art really, and those of you who managed to get through school without encountering that particular teaching fad need only find someone at coffee hour with a few gray hairs, and you can learn all about it.

         We spent a lot of time on grammar back then in school.  However, for all those English classes, I have never heard of a formal name for a grammatical structure such as we find in this passage from the Gospel of Mark.  That being said, I will just call it as I see it. 

         What we just finished reading, then, is a “sandwich story.”  It is two tales about Jesus healing highly unlikely (and unlikeable) people all mixed up together.  It is one story nestled in between the beginning and the ending of a second story.

         It is the story of a woman with no name who had bled uncontrollably (and impurely) for twelve years embedded smack in the middle of a story about a man with a name (That would be Jairus) and his young daughter who was dying. 

         Both Jairus and the nameless woman sought out the new and exceedingly popular healer who had recently blown into town (That would be Jesus.) because they were at their wits’ end.  They were desperate and would do just about anything (which they did) to catch Jesus’ eye and feel the touch of his healing hands. 

         In these stores, one tale unceremoniously breaks in and gets in the way of the other story - as our readers this morning so aptly dramatized.  These stories are ones where interruptions abound, and boundaries are crossed, and, in the interrupting and the crossing, healing and wholeness are found.

         Jesus had been surrounded by loads of people since he healed that first madman in the synagogue.  Word had rapidly spread, and he and his disciples had shuttled themselves back and forth across the Galilean Lake several times trying to move forward and cover more territory, but they were constantly being interrupted. Each time the shoreline came into view there were more crowds impeding their progress – more of the sick, the blind, the deaf, the lame, more of the just plain curious.  This time was certainly no different. 

         As Jesus disembarked and felt the first of hundreds of hands reaching out to him, as he was jostled by folks who were being nudged by others who were pushing and pulling their friends and colleagues and mothers and brothers, most of whom were on crutches or walked with canes or were carried on litters, all jockeying for position, all awaiting a medical miracle, amidst grunting and groaning, “tsk tsk’ing” and noises of disapproval, Jairus, who was an official at the synagogue, not particularly well-liked because of his status as one of the religious hierarchy, but a man of some consequence nonetheless, budged his way through the peasant crowd and elbowed himself right up to Jesus, the masses melting away until he had room enough to kneel and set forth his plea:  “My dear daughter is at death’s door. Come and lay hands on her so she will get well and live.”

        And Jesus began to follow Jairus, and the crowd merrily came along because, well, because Jesus was the newest thing in town, and, besides, they really had nothing better to do, and, OK, they did want to know if this healer was all he had been cracked up to be. 

         Now, if we were filming this scenario, we would see Jesus and Jairus walking off into the sunset – Casablanca style - their budding friendship setting off an explosion of questions.  What is this Jairus up to?  What gives with a religious uppity-up approaching the itinerant and illiterate rabbi?  Would Jesus save the little girl?   

         The camera would then pan the crowds and linger on a particularly pale and haggard-looking peasant, a desperate woman, just beginning to push her own way forward.  Who was she?  And what was she up to? 

         And then the screen would go black, and the credits would roll.  Like at the end of Downton Abbey where we are left wondering if Mary will find out in the next episode that Marigold is Edith’s child, and who will run the estate now that Branson has returned from America.

        The next scene opens with the nameless woman inching her way through the huddled masses.  No one is preparing the way for her though.  Not that anyone wanted to be in close contact with her if they recognized her for who she was – the village pariah who had been bleeding for over a decade now.  She had seen doctors galore, but all they had done was prescribe useless tinctures and exercise regimens and run up her copays until she was destitute.  She was the height of Jewish impurity – and now wandering around in broad daylight. – an untouchable just a notch or two up from the lepers.  No one was going to make way for the likes of her. 

         However, she moved ever closer even as Jesus moved farther down the road.  Sometimes she pushed.  Sometimes she was pushed over, and then she crawled until she could stand upright again.  She mumbled over and over to herself all the while – like a mantra:  “If I can put a finger on his robe, I can get well…If I can put a finger on his robe, I can get well.” 

         Oh, was she ever persistent!  And finally she got close enough so that she could sneak up behind Jesus and touch the hem of his robe.  And it was like an electric jolt went straight through her. And the blood that had oozed out between her legs for twelve years stopped and that which had dribbled out already that morning got sticky and hardened.  And she was healed.

         And Jesus was shocked – because he knew she was healed too.  And he stopped, and Jairus gave him a funny look because the synagogue official did not understand why they should tarry with his daughter so sick and all. 

         And Jesus asked, “Who touched my robe?”  And there was silence until his disciples answered, “You have got to be kidding?  What are you talking about? With this crowd pushing and jostling you, you’re asking, ‘Who touched me?’ Dozens have touched you!”

         It was then that the woman stepped forward – in fear and trembling – and told her story.  And Jesus smiled because the woman got it, and he said, “Daughter, you took a risk, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed!”  End of story:  “You engaged in the risky business of interruptions and crossing boundaries.  You’re healed and whole.  Live well.  Live blessed.”  Nice!  Cut!  Roll the credits.

        Oh, wait a minute!  Where did we leave Jairus, the man of consequence whose innocent daughter lay dying, where did we leave him before we were so rudely interrupted by the no name woman who had been bleeding for 12 years?  Oh yes, we were on our way to Jairus’ house with Jesus.

         But alas!  It seems that the two men are too late.  As Jesus is talking with the nameless woman, some folks from Jairus’ home interrupt him.  “She’s dead.  The little girl is dead.”

         But Jesus goes anyway, his arm about a now sobbing Jairus, consoling him by saying that the little girl is not dead but only sleeping.  The crowd snickers and whispers that he clearly does not know what he is talking about, and what sort of a healer does that make him anyway?

         Well, we all know that Jesus enters the house and takes only Peter, James, and John with him into the child’s room.  He sits by her bed and takes her lifeless hand in his and commands her.  “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, get up.”  And she does. 

         And the Gospel writer includes an exquisite detail here, telling us that she runs off to the kitchen to get something to eat – because perhaps being sick and then dead works up an appetite.

         A sandwich narrative – one story budging into the middle of another story - neither story seeming to have much of anything in common:  a nameless and impoverished peasant woman, a named man of consequence; a man who perhaps had an iota of faith, enough to plead for a healing anyway; a woman who had neither the strength nor the faith to plead at all; a chronic sickness that had hung on for over a decade, a sudden virulent disease; an old woman with maybe a year or two of fertility left, a young girl with all her womanhood ahead of her. 

         “How could these stories be any different in circumstance and setting?” we ask.  But then, right at the end of the passage, the gospel writer includes another detail, almost as an afterthought:  “Oh, by the way, the little girl was twelve years old.”

         A twelve year old child.  A twelve year disease.  Twelve:  A number that had much significance in a first century Jewish community - what with the twelve tribes of Israel and all – significance enough to make any good Jew stand up and take notice. 

         Maybe then, we ought to take notice as well - because these two seemingly unrelated stories really have more in common than we might first surmise. 

Together they end up telling us a lot about the Good News of Jesus and about our role in ushering in the Kingdom of God. 

         First, these stories remind us that God’s healing grace is meant for all of us – from the nameless ones to those of consequence – though most of the time you would never know it if we are the ones dispensing that grace.  As Presbyterian pastor Lewis Galloway notes, “In Jesus, there is hope, life and community for all. Meanwhile, we tend to let the Gospel out in dribs and drabs. We are stingy with what God so lavishly gives. We worry about who deserves our help, our food, our time, our money and our attention. We carefully calculate the conditions under which we will stoop to forgive someone.” 

         It is risky business indeed to throw away the scarcity factor and live our lives abundantly – to ignore everything from town lines when it comes to financial assistance to our own fears and prejudices when it comes to living compassionately.  It is risky business to unclench our fists and open our hands and offer a healing touch to those in need – especially when it means venturing into places and circumstances where we do not feel so safe and insulated.  But, as Galloway pointed out, “In Jesus, there is hope, life and community for all.”

         Second, these two tales tell us that the call of the Gospel – the call to peace-making and justice-seeking and compassion-giving - is perhaps most effectively done and experienced through interruptions.  Jesus was always interrupted, as our two stories today point out.  He was always on his way to doing something else when he was confronted with people in need – with opportunities to feed the hungry and heal the sick and touch the untouchable. 

         Methodist Bishop Bevel Jones noted that: “The late Henri Nouwen, great Catholic teacher, minister, said in the prime of his career that he became frustrated by the many interruptions to his work. He was teaching at Notre Dame. He had a heavy agenda each day and didn't like to be disturbed. Then one day it dawned on him that his interruptions were his work. Someone has said, ‘Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans!’ Often we find that the interruption, however, is of greater consequence than what we were doing.”  It is risky business to not live our lives on auto-pilot, to forego our best-laid plans and live as the servants Jesus called us to be.

      And finally, these stories exemplify that our calling to be a follower of Jesus is a calling to cross boundaries.  After all, Jesus did it.  He ignored religious barriers and embraced the impure and touched the untouchable.  He did not hang back, but rather thrust himself smack in the midst of those who were most in need of healing and wholeness, those who had been marginalized and cast aside, those who had been ignored and forgotten. 

         And it was not just Jesus who crossed the barriers.  Maybe if it was just Jesus, we could say, “Well, that was Jesus.  That was different.” 

         However, in our stories, both the nameless woman and Jairus crossed boundaries to reach Jesus – the woman throwing herself past all the purity laws of Judaism and Jairus defying the religious hierarchy that proclaimed Jesus to be just another nutcase. 

         It is risky business to say yes to the Way of Jesus when our culture and our politicians set forth other boundaries and barriers they tell us are designed to keep us safe and secure – a petroleum-based economy that harms our planet as well as the nameless ones who live in nameless places in its farthest reaches, a weapons-based safety net in our schools and bedside tables and the glove compartments of our cars. 

         Yes – being a follower of Jesus involves our being engaged in risky business.  It is risky business to embrace – really embrace - that there is enough of God’s grace to go around.  It is risky business to thrive on the interruptions and opportunities to follow Jesus that call us out of our ruts and comfort zones.  It is risky business to cross boundaries and break down barriers in the name of the Gospel message.  Where are you when it comes to taking risks?

 by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond VIllage Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine

        

         

Mark 4:1-20 "Sacred Seeds"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!

         It was a gorgeous autumn Saturday.  It was the kind where the air is crisp, and the sky is ever so blue, and the leaves have turned their brilliant shades of yellow, red, and orange.  When you have a day in the fall like that here in Maine, it is not rocket science to know intuitively that it is also deer season.

         On this particular day, three men – friends they were - were going hunting together.  One was a doctor, one was a lawyer, and one was a preacher. They had not ventured far into the woods when an enormous and well-fed 12-point buck came into view, looked directly at them, and seemed to position itself for a perfect shot – its side exposed, and its head held high and still. 

         Each of the hunters took aim and fired at the big buck at exactly the same time. The deer fell to the ground like a stone – instantly dead.  Within a few minutes, the men had surrounded the carcass and were in the midst of a heated debate about whose shot actually had killed the deer.

        It was not long before a game warden came by and asked what the three men were arguing about.  The game warden listened carefully, took a look at the buck, and confidently announced that he knew whose shot had killed the animal.

         “It was the preacher who got the buck!” the game warden declared.

         “What? How do you know?!” the other two demanded.  

         The officer replied, “Easy. The bullet went in one ear and out the other.”

         “Listen!”  Jesus said.  “Those who have ears, let them hear.  Do not let what I am teaching you go ‘in one ear and out the other’.”

         That is how Jesus would often start his lesson.  “Listen!  Those who have ears, let them hear.” And then he would, as the Gospel writer tells us, speak to the crowds in parables – in those little stories that always had big points. 

         Now, the word, “parable,” comes from a Greek word meaning “to throw or cast alongside.”  As Episcopal pastor Steve Pankey writes, “Parables are helpful because they take a hard-to-understand concept like the Kingdom of God and lay down alongside it something that is easily relatable from real life.  

Sometimes a parable is simply a simile, “the Kingdom of God is like…” Other times they are long, drawn out metaphors.”

         In other words, the parables Jesus told were supposed to help his listeners – the disciples, the crowds, or even us today – get a better handle on what the Kingdom of God was all about and, as a result, what was in fact the nature of the Almighty.  Not that the parables were always straightforward and easy to understand at first glance, however. 

         It is like in the movie “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”.  Lutheran pastor Luke Bouman notes that “Whoopie Goldberg’s character must solve a riddle to help a spy to come in. In order to communicate with the spy, she has to figure out a ‘code key’ in the Rolling Stones song, which gives the title to the movie. The problem is that she doesn’t have an internet search engine to direct her to the lyrics of the song. She listens in vain to try to figure out the words. At one point, exasperated, she cries, “Mick, Mick, speak English!” But to no avail. Mick Jagger’s words elude her.” 

         How like Jesus’ parables! Sometimes we just want to cry out:  “Speak plainly, Jesus. Give us some indication of what the ‘ kingdom of God’ is about. Don’t keep speaking in circles.”

         However, those “circles” we accuse Jesus of speaking in were always grounded in ordinary, everyday pictures of life as his listeners would have experienced it.  For example, Jesus frequently used images from agriculture to describe the kingdom of God – wine grapes, mustard seeds, and, as in today’s parable, a sower – a farmer – scattering seed across the far reaches of his field.  Everyone would have understood the imagery.  That is a given. 

         You see, the peasants to whom he spoke – if they were not fishermen – were farmers.  After all, this was Galilee, and rising up from the shore of the Se of Galilee were fields stretching as far as the eye could take in.  The people who gathered about Jesus knew about productive land.  They knew about hard soil and rocky soil and weedy ground and the good earth.  They could all picture the farmer on the hillside, a heavy seed bag draped around his shoulder, walking up and down the length of the field, tossing handfuls of seed as he walked, ensuring that the entire acreage would be covered by the day’s end. 

         In this parable, Jesus tells us that there are four kinds of ground on which the farmer’s seed might fall.  There is hard ground – like the path circumnavigating the field – trampled on by countless feet over the ages.  Even the best of seeds could not possibly find a home there. Those seeds would go to the birds. 

         Then there was the rocky ground – like many a farmer’s field here in Maine.  In making our vegetable garden plot, we dug up more cobble – hen and goose egg sized rocks – wagon loads full that we hauled off – along with a couple of good-sized boulders as well.  Though seeds might sprout in rocky ground, in the long run, the soil is not deep enough to sustain them.  And with a dry start to the growing season, those seeds will soon shrivel up and die.

         And soil infested with weeds?  Do not tell me about weeds!  We have a constant battle with them!  They can overtake a garden row in no time flat.  They spread their leaves and dig in with their roots and seem to multiply overnight – depriving many a tiny beet or cucumber plant of needed sunlight and over time choking them out.

        What you need, Jesus teaches, is good soil, fertile soil – soil that is well-composted with lots of worms to break it down.  You need soil with the rocks removed, and the weeds overcome.  When you have that kind of soil, he says, your harvest will be thirty-fold, sixty-fold, a hundred-fold.

         Imagine a harvest like that!  What an unbelievable statement Jesus was making.  Surely it is the climax of the parable – the “Wow!” factor that would make everyone really listen up.  As the research of Church of Christ pastor John Marks Hicks indicates, “It is a bountiful, unexpected and wondrous harvest. Thirtyfold, sixtyfold and hundredfold yields are beyond the imagination of first century farmers. Yields of five or six were typical in Italy; Nile-irrigated fields in Egypt typically yielded seven. Yields of four or fivefold, however, were typical in Palestine; (in fact,) thirtyfold has only been achieved in modern Israel with good weather and improved technology.”

         Pretty impressive!  And, or course, following the logic that Jesus offers in his explanation of this parable, the hearts of people are like those different kinds of soil:  the hard hearts, the shallow hearts, the crowded hearts, and the good hearts. It sounds so neat and simple – little boxes – a place for everyone and everyone in his or her place. 

         And we generally put ourselves in the good soil category because it would be more than we could stomach to put ourselves anywhere else.  And other folks we divide between the other three boxes because there would be hardly room enough in the good soil box because we are already there.

         However, if we choose to interpret the parable only in that narrow way, we are selling both it and Jesus short.  In addition, we are making highly inappropriate and inaccurate assumptions about those farmers who first listened to Jesus telling this little story.  As Steve Pankey writes, “Any farmer worth his salt would know that you don’t turn on the seed spreader when you leave the barn and let it just fling seed all down the road, onto the shoulder, and into the drainage ditches.”  Surely Jesus knew more about farming than that.

         And I think he does – because I do not think he meant for this parable to be about the soil – or even about the seed.  If it was, then Jesus becomes the moral arbiter, expecting us to categorize ourselves as hard, rocky, weedy, or good soil. However, we cannot do that – and Jesus knows it too.  We cannot pigeon-hole ourselves as having hard, shallow, crowded, or good hearts – because none of us is one kind of soil.  None of us has exclusively one kind of heart.  Sometimes we are one, and sometimes another.

         So, you see, this parable is not about us.  It is not about dirt.  This parable is about the one who extravagantly throws the seed everywhere.  This parable is about the sower, and that is why it is titled such. 

         This parable is about a God who surely knows it is foolish to throw seeds on questionable soil but does it anyway.  There are no soil analysis tests done beforehand.  The Sower does not sit down ahead of time and figure out how to avoid the rocky places, how to tell where the soil is too hard for anything to take root, or how to anticipate where the weeds will be.  The Sower just flings the seed.

         I like to think that the Sower knows as well  that there is enough seed to go around – to fill all the nooks and crannies.  And if some is “wasted”?  Well, who is to say what waste is anyway? After all, even the birds feast off some of the seed.

         With reckless abandon, then, God throws the seeds of justice and peace and love on hearts that often refuse them or crowd them out - and only once in a while nurture them until glimmers of hope, glimpses of the kingdom, are revealed.  Just as Jesus throws seeds at the disciples time and time again in spite of their stubbornness and dim-wittedness, so God continues to work with us so we can see what the Almighty is up to in this jaded and cynical world we live in. 

         God is still speaking.  God is still recklessly spreading seeds.  As Steve Pankey notes, “The good news is: God continues to throw seed at us. (God) pours out (her) love upon us relentlessly. And when he finds even the smallest patch of good soil in our hearts, God nurtures the Kingdom within us, producing an abundant harvest: 30, 60, even 100 fold.”

         The story is not about dirt.  It is not about the soil.  It is not about us.  It is about the sower and the extravagant and generous way the seed is spread – over and over again, with reckless abandon, with no sense of what soil is worthy to receive it. 

        No matter who we are or where we are on our life journey, the seeds of justice and compassion have been sown – and will continue to be sown - in our less-than-perfect hearts.  But we have to nurture those seeds, be the soil they need to grow.Surely that is worth remembering as we become engaged in the risky business of being followers of Jesus, of doing our part to usher in God’s kingdom. 

         The seeds are there.  We are in possession of them.  They have been sown in us.  And so it is up to us – and even more so up to the church – to nurture those seeds of justice and compassion and ensure that they sprout and grow.  That is the risky business we say we will engage in.  The Sower does not do it alone.  The Sower only sows the seeds.  We nurture them.  We take action.  We serve.  We bind up the broken-hearted, heal the sick, feed the hungry, welcome the stranger.  We grow the seeds of justice and compassion.

         And because that sort of business is risky, it is so worth remembering that, we are in partnership with the sower.  Like the Sower, we do do it alone. We cannot. And if you remember nothing else from this sermon and this worship service, remember that.  We are in partnership with the sower.  We depend on the Sower, and the Sower depends on us.  Not cause the Sower has to, but because the Sower has chosen to.  We cannot do it alone.

         The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, said this to her superiors as she began her first orphanage:  "I have three pennies and a dream from God to build an orphanage."

         A dream and three pennies – not much!

         And so it was that her superiors chided her gently. "Mother Teresa," they said.  “You cannot build an orphanage with three pennies...with three pennies you can't do a thing."

         "I know," Mother Theresa said, smiling, "but with God and three pennies, I can do anything."

         With God and those sacred seeds sown in our hearts, we can engage in the risky business of being followers of Jesus. With God and the seeds, we can do anything.   
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, U.C.C., Raymond, Maine