Luke 8:4-10, 11-15
4 When a great crowd gathered and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: 5 “A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. 6 Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. 7 Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. 8 Some fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.” As he said this, he called out, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”
11 “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 12 The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. 13 The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away. 14 As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. 15 But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.
So…the beauty of this particular scripture, and being parabolic in nature, gives us this really concrete illustration of what Jesus is asking us to do. The challenge with this scripture is… that there's nowhere to hide. We can't say, “Oh, I'm not really truly sure what He meant or there's a number of ways to look at this.” No, there's only one way. We have to put ourselves in good soil and stay with, and in, the Word. But since our scholarship recipients have already done, and modeled, courageous work, including naming their own challenges, the very challenges that they themselves endured over the last year, and what they faced, and how they overcame them, maybe we can be inspired, even through them to do some of the same.
As you know, this parable is in all three synoptic Gospels and they all have their unique spin, or lens on this text. Luke’s slant is very focused on the relationship between hearing and listening. (He does not differentiate between the two). But that's the path to producing fruit. That, in and of itself, is not really news, but what gets glossed over is… how the fruit matures.
Let's go back. Can anyone remember all four of these dynamics in the scripture? You can probably get two out of the four, right? Maybe three? Can you do all four? Yes? No? All right, it's okay, but I'm going to invite you to again listen, and hear, and see if you can hear this differently, and get concretely the four different dynamics.
Now the seed is the Word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard, and then the devil comes and takes away the Word from their hearts so that they may not believe or be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Word, receive it with joy; but because they have no root, they believe only for a while, but in time of testing, they fall away. As for what fell on the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and their fruit does not mature. But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the Word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patient endurance.
As I think about Vivian Lowther, (I didn't have a chance to know Bill, he passed before I got here)— this text describes Vivian Lowther. She held it fast. She held it to her heart. She had an honest and good heart and she bore fruit which is still bearing more fruit because she did it, not with speed or ego, but patient endurance. She died at 102 and 1/2 and she was still coming in here with her wheelie walker when most of us, on a rainy day, decide to roll over and go back to bed, because you don't feel like climbing up the hill. But Vivian understood the meaning of patient endurance.
For those of you who were privileged to know her, just looking into those big blue eyes, you could see nothing but
love coming back at you. I'm not sure if I told you this story or not, but Vicky, Carolyn, Vivian and I went out to dinner one time in Morristown. We had a lovely long dinner and then Vicky and Carolyn left to go get the car. So, I was with Vivian and she's wheeling her way from our table through a bar that is packed with people. Packed!
And there were three men who sort of turned around and looked at Vivian as she's wheeling her walker. They were both surprised and a bit amused. I turned to them and said, “She's a hundred and two!” And they went, “What?!” Vivian and I make our way to the vestibule, waiting for the car to arrive. One of guys from the car comes by and he says, “I understand, I just learned that you're 102.” And she says, “That's right.” And he says, “You want to dance?” She giggled and said, “No thanks. Maybe another time.”
Loving, kind, good heart--this is what we need to focus on, friends. Having an honest and good heart alone is hard, especially when we've been locked up with our spouses and our families and all the Zoom calls that continue to go on. Wearing masks in some places but not in others. It's craziness, right? So, I'm going to just say I want us all to be in good soil. But that's easier said than done.
As all three recipients talked about today, life is hard. Most of us look back on our college days and think they were the best days of our lives. But college days now, they're hard, especially this year. And so I'm going to put to you another thing to think about. Instead of just being hard on yourself and saying, “I have to be in good soil”; “I want to be in good soil, but I'm not very patient”; “I want to be in good soil, but sometimes I'm not honest with myself or my spouse or God”. I'm going to put to you that we keep going in and out of all four of these categories, all the time.
The first category is where the seeds that fall on the path and the devil swoops in and takes it away. We all know times where evil gets the best of us. Evil gets in our relationships. Evil gets in our mindset. Evil makes us paranoid. Evil makes us judge other people without knowing the whole story. Evil is around us all the time and so,
we're going to get gobbled up by evil if we're not paying attention. Sometimes we have a mountaintop experience with tremendous joy, like in the second example of soil. We have faith when we feel good, and we feel like our faith is strong. But then the testing comes and we revert back to being like a child who doesn't get dessert, because we haven't eaten all of our peas. Then there are times where everything's going fine and we're enjoying life, but we're a little more wrapped up with the cares of the world or the headlines or our own riches or pleasures and we bear fruit, but it's so small we can hardly even see it. It doesn't amount to much. It doesn't feed anybody.
Then we get to that fourth soil, where, once again, we are willing to be planted by God in rich good, fresh soil. Not only do we hear God's word, but we hold it fast--right here (hands on heart)--so that no matter what comes, we have the love that God wants. We share the love that others need. We bear fruit, because we are patient and we know that we can endure, because the Christ is pointing the way.
So whatever soil you find yourself in right now, my friends, it's okay, because in a few minutes we're going to come to the table and we can start all over again. Thanks be to God. Amen.