Scripture: Mark 4: 1-9, 13-20
(1) Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around
him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the
sea on the land. (2) He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching
he said to them: (3) "Listen! A sower went out to sow. (4) And as he sowed, some seed
fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. (5) Other seed fell on rocky ground,
where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil.
(6) And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away.
(7) Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no
grain. (8) Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and
increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." (9) And he said,
"Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" (13) And he said to them, "Do you
not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? (14) The sower
sows the word. (15) These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear,
Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. (16) And these are
the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with
joy. (17) But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or
persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. (18) And others are
those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, (19) but the cares of
the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the
word, and it yields nothing. (20) And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear
the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."
- Mark 4:1-9, 13-20
For most of my life, I lived within ten minutes of farmland. Even though I have always
loved cities and been attracted to the urban life, farmland has almost always been just
over the hill in Ohio, New York and Massachusetts. But there's not a lot of it left in the
parts of the Los Angeles basin where I travel. So I'm apt to lose track of the agrarian
images of scripture. Today's text is one of those images.
Jesus tells a parable about a sower throwing out seeds on the ground. Some fell on hard
ground, soil that was probably trampled under foot and baked hard in the sun. Nothing
would permeate its hard crust, and the seed failed. Some fell in thin soil and thrived for
a short while, but the roots were shallow and could get neither the nourishment nor water
needed for long-term growth, and shriveled in the hot sun. Other seeds fell among thorns,
and like most weeds, the thorns grew faster than the good seeds, choking out the harvest
for which the farmer had hoped. And some seed fell into good, deep soil, flourished and
bore much fruit.
The word of God is like that seed, says Jesus. Sometimes it falls on people's hearts
that are so hardened, nothing good or kind or faithful or challenging could permeate their
hardpan. The love of God, the word of God, the challenge of God, the opportunity for
growth and change and life, the invitation to forgiveness and hope and new beginnings hits
them in the forehead right between their eyes ... and bounces off unnoticed.
Sometimes the word falls on a heart that welcomes it and it seems to take root, but
then trouble comes along as it inevitably does, or persecution. The spiritual high fades,
the new growth shrivels up and everything returns to the way it was.
Sometimes the word of God with its promise of hope and radical challenge is choked out
by, as Jesus says so well, "the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the
desire for other things." It doesn't stand a chance of growing in a heart filled with
pain or bitterness, with jealousy or envy, with the desire for more that keeps our eyes
focused on the temporal and temporary.
Then, sometimes, the word of God comes to a heart that is ready for it, that has been
yearning for it, that is prepared and tilled and soft. Sometimes it falls upon a heart
that lets it grow, lets it send down roots into the deep places within, where foundational
change occurs and cannot be shaken. Sometimes it falls on a heart that is willing to do
the hard, persevering work of growth and change. When it does, it bears fruit, and not
just a little miserly amount, but thirty-, sixth- and one hundred-fold.
Do you know how awesome and miraculous and wonderful that is, when the word of God
takes root and you are willing to let it grow and flourish? Willing to water and fertilize
it, willing to trim and prune your life so there's room for the growth God wants? Willing
to soften your heart for change? Willing to weed out the tentacles of materialism and
envy, of bitterness, complacency and pride?
Last week I drove through Ohio farmland on my way to visit my mother. The fields had
been tilled and planted. Initial warmth had given farmers hope, but 4 inches of rain in
four days threatened to wash their hope away as water stood in most of the fields I passed
for 50 miles.
Planting seeds and getting them to grow is difficult, frustrating work. Planting relies
on hope, perseverance, patience and a willingness to put yourself on the line, knowing
that the end result will always be different than what you planned on.
As I drove past their fields, I found myself giving thanks for their courage that
plants a crop year after year and makes it possible for the rest of us to eat.
My thoughts turn from the farmers, though, to wonder what it's like to be the seed that
is planted, that which is created by God to grow? Or the soil on which the seed is thrown?
God is in the seed business, you know, and so is the church, constantly planting seeds,
hoping they will take root.
It sounds like a good thing, this desire for growth. Of course we are, all of us,
willing to have God's word, God's love, God's seeds of challenge and hope planted within
us. We know that growth means change, but change is good, everyone has to change in some
ways, every church has to change through the years. Growth is good, we say glibly.
But I think Gail Godwin has a more accurate view of change in Evensong, a novel I read
while I was back east. The story is set during the season of Advent, during December, when
the church prays for the coming of Christ and prepares itself for the changes Christ's
birth will elicit. The main characters are a pair of Episcopal priests, a clergy couple as
Mark Smutny and I are, who welcome an old man and a truant teenager into their home and
end up with more change than they think they can manage.
Having prayed fervently at the beginning of Advent for growth in her husband and
herself, for their marital relationship, and for the church where she is rector, The
Reverend Margaret Bonner has, by the fourth Sunday of Advent, re-experienced the reality
that growth is messier and more difficult than we ever, ever wish it would be. She writes
in her journal,
"I was planning to do a sermon reflecting on the closing prayer for the Fourth
Sunday in Advent, which asks God to 'make us grow in faith and love' in order to celebrate
the imminent feast [of Christ's birth]. How glibly and thoughtlessly that phrase
"make us grow" slides off our tongues. As if growth were always a happy, shapely
matter: leaves unfurling., blossoms opening, hearts and minds joyously stretching toward
more light. Whereas the fact of the matter was, when we asked for growth we were asking
for a mess. Exploding tempers, privately nursed little petri dishes of resentments,
insecure stumblings into dangerous new places" (Evensong, Gail Godwin, pp. 355-356)
It needn't be Advent for us to struggle with the realities of growth - we have that
opportunity every day. We lose our temper at our children and have an opportunity to look
within ourselves and apologize. We speak sharply to a co-worker and have the chance to
practice humility when we ask their forgiveness. We ask a supervisor for feedback and get
to work through the feelings of someone's pointing out that we have room for growth. We
take on new responsibilities, maybe even some that we have hoped for, trained for, dreamed
of for years, and we discover the need to grow through our anxieties and insecurities to
the surefootedness from which we will begin yet new adventures.
We have a variety of responses we could make to such circumstances. Jesus names them
all, almost as if he knows human nature better than we ourselves:
We can respond with a hard-packed heart, unwilling to hear any advice no matter how
gently it is given, no matter how desperate the need for change. We can stay bound tightly
in our fear and judgment, ashamed to acknowledge that we have not yet reached perfection.
We can stay locked tightly in fear of the unknown, for if we open a crack and let a seed
of newness in, only God knows what will grow from it and what fruit it might bear ... and
many of us are far too controlling of our future to let God's unpredictable seeds take
root in our heart. Growth can be painful and change uncomfortable. Better the devil we
know than the uncertain future God offers.
Most of us have chosen that response on occasion. We've also chosen the next several.
We've had a spiritual high and committed our life to Christ like myself every year at
church camp, and Young Life and Campus Crusade, or even right here in this sanctuary.
We've experienced God's presence in crisis, or promised ourselves to Christ in return for
answered prayer. We've tried to honor those promises, but discovered that having made them
did not make our lives easier, in fact the very promises raised tough questions about why
God's elect are still faced with pain and sorrow and difficult decisions. Our friends
harass us for setting aside Sunday morning for church, the Los Angeles Times
beckons, and so do the beach and the mountains.
Or maybe the seeds that were planted and are trying to grow within us are not overtly
spiritual. Maybe there is an urging inside to stand up for yourself with your spouse or
partner, to claim your little bit of ground, to say "no" to his denigration of
you, to say "no" her sarcasm. Maybe there is an urging within you to treat your
family with greater respect, or to go back to school and train for the job you only now
realize you've always wanted. Maybe you realize the money you would spend on a new car
could do a lot more good supporting a job training program, or giving computers to poor
families, or providing sewers in the shanty towns of Tijuana. You start out with good
intentions, high hopes, determination. But they fade away, the new growth shrivels, for
the internal cost is too high and the external bombardment too great. You give up the good
intentions, plan them for another time, say they weren't important anyway.
It is not only people who are called to change, but churches and communities as well.
Although I still have clothes in my closet that I wore 15 years ago and I keep hoping to
wear again someday, the truth is they don't fit anymore. Neither do the clothes I wore in
the 1950's (think about that one!) when the pews were full and the balconies overflowing
and there were thousands of children in the Sunday School in my church in Middletown,
Ohio. I enjoy looking at those pictures of what we used to look like, but I know it would
be a dreadful spectacle if I walked down Colorado Blvd. in the shag haircut, brown
hip-hugger bellbottoms and striped polyester shirt I wore just 30 years ago.
The church is not much different. Growth and change are just as difficult for a church
as they are for an individual. Just as you'd be horrified if I stood before you in those
old brown bell bottoms, God needs us to do our worship and church school, our choirs and
programs, our outreach and even our building decor in a way that is appropriate for now,
not just as we did them in the 1950's, 70's, or even 90's, but today, so that we can face
the real issues that real live people face today, not just the still photographs on the
wall.
If this church continues to be fertile soil into which God's seeds of renewal are
planted and nourished, I guarantee you that we will not look like the Pasadena
Presbyterian Church of 1957 or 1977 or 1997, any more than Los Angeles or Pasadena look
like they did in those years. I also guarantee that if we continue to let God's seeds grow
here, and we don't harden our hearts against new life, or let the winds fear blow them
over, or the thorns of subtle and not-so-subtle racism and classism choke them out, we
will bear fruit thirty- and sixty- and one hundredfold.
I wish seeds grew in the daylight with the sun always shining in just the right amount
upon them. But it isn't so. They grow in the dark where, except for the pressure
underneath, we sometimes can't even tell they're growing. In the dark of the soil, in the
dark night of our soul, in the dark tunnel that seems to have no end, in the long-term
dreams of Pasadena Presbyterian Church for a glorious rainbow of God's people under one
roof in the 21st century, it can be very hard to remember that growth is happening.
It can be very hard to believe you'll ever crack through the shell that holds you
captive. It can be very hard to believe your desperate urge for life and growth will bring
you to the surface where the sun shines, you stretch your leaves and bear fruit for God
and the world. As Ruth Harms Calkin writes in a poem a friend gave me recently:
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
Yes, Lord, I know.
They grow in the dark.
Just now it is dark
Really dark.
Are they growing?"
God-given growth is difficult, painful, messy, happens not just in the sunlight, but in
the dark, too. And it always takes us in directions we could not have foreseen, but
directions which always bear fruit for us and others.
We all know stories of growth prayed for, of perseverance and courage in the face of
messy transformation, of unexpected fruit thirty-, sixth- and one hundred-fold. We have
even discovered these stories within ourselves when we've looked at our own lives with the
eyes of faith. They give us courage and hope for nurturing our own growth when God sends
it our way.
Last week, I had such an experience with my mother in Dayton as we prepared for her
move from her house to a cottage in a retirement community. For three years since my
father's death, my siblings had encouraged her to sell her home and move to smaller
quarters. For three years, she said to me, "The time's not right, Barbara, I'm just
not ready." But she kept praying faithfully, moving forward and growing, often in
ways that those closest to her didn't even see. Then, like crocuses in some parts of this
country suddenly bursting forth from snow in the early spring, the time was right. The
place she wanted became available. She put her house on the market and sold it in a month.
She moved yesterday, with grace and courage, joy and internal peace that caused her to
marvel with me numerous times last week at who she has become in this past year, and the
new life opening before her.
"I wouldn't have had the strength or peace to make this move a year ago," she
said. "Now I do, and it's a remarkable thing." She let God's words of comfort
and hope and challenge grow in her heart, and with hard work and perseverance, they are
bearing great fruit.
In my own life, two years ago this June, a wall cracked open inside me that had been
sealed over for decades. I had been praying for growth and wholeness and joy, as many of
you do in your life as well, but this was certainly not the path on which I intended God
to take me. These have been the most painful and life-giving, the most wrenching and, at
times, hope-filled, years of my life as I have worked relentlessly through memories of
childhood trauma. Sometimes I didn't know how I would make it through the day, but I also
trusted that what would come from this difficult growth was new life on the other side,
far better than anything that had gone before. Although I have often prayed for an end to
this "growth opportunity," as I call it, I have already experienced much fruit
and can only begin to imagine the fruit this continuing growth will bear in the decades
ahead for me, and for those whose lives I will touch.
And lastly, as I speak about the difficult, important work of growth and change, I want
to lift up what happened here at PPC last Sunday. This church in the heart of Pasadena was
filled with the rainbow of faces and languages that God has given us. We received 21 new
members, people born in the U.S., Iran, Korea, South India. We sang and prayed in at least
three languages all through worship.
In the afternoon, more than 400 people gathered to hear superb choirs: a 60-voice
Korean American choir, a 60-voice African American choir, and a 30-voice Taiwanese
American choir. But it was our own 50-voice Celebration Choir that stole the show. For our
choir - drawn from the English language service, Hogar Cristiano and the Korean
Fellowship; ranging in age from a fourth grader to Mr. Arden Lichty, who graduated from
fourth grade many years ago; and attired in everything from Rainbow Choir t-shirts to polo
shirts to dresses and ties - sang in each other's language; our whole choir sang in
English, Spanish, and Korean, with an African-American spiritual to close. The Korean
choir was so stunned and thrilled that they cheered at the end of our Korean anthem. The
dlw Chorus cheered the spiritual. Although ours was not the most difficult music sung that
day, I thought our choir was going to receive a standing ovation. For it was the
embodiment, the fruit - at least a sixty-fold experience - of God's people coming together
in Jesus Christ, a vision of the ministry and future of this church that gave hope to
everyone in this sanctuary.
We do not know how the seeds God has planted in us will grow as persons and as a people
of faith. But we do know this: that God is the sower and we can be the fertile soil in
which God's word takes root and grows and bears much fruit for us and for the world:
thirty, sixty and one hundredfold. Amen.
