This story begins at the seaside.  Jesus leaves the house and sits by the sea.  We’re not told how long he gets to sit there: but you and I both know that any time, no matter how short, any time by the waters can be healing, restorative, refreshing: to be by the water is a chance to see the horizon; where the sky and the heavens meet.   So, this story starts in this place by the water… with this sense of being… with this sense of presence. This way of being.  It’s a liminal space. Some time later in the story, Jesus gets into a boat and sit in it and teaches the gathered crowds from there.  And he speaks to them in stories: parables.  Stories we can easily remember: and chew over.

When this church building was opened here in Fairfield, in the early 1950’s, after the terrible fire that destroyed the original weatherboard church building, some stained glass windows were installed.  I don’t know the timeframe of these windows, or their installation dates: but what I do know is this: one stained glass window was devoted to this story.  Cleary this story was important for that congregation then: so much so, that they wanted future congregations to dwell with the meanings of this story too, to helps them in sharing the Gospel.  That’s an important thought for us, as the current congregation: what might this story tell us in our mission and ministry together here?

One of the most challenging things for parents, in our current paradigm, is the confounding question of how our children have engaged with the Gospel: we ask the question ‘Why have our children not engaged with Jesus in the ways we did and the ways we do, every day?’

Theologian Brian McLaren, in his book Everything Must Change, suggests to us that the Gospel, as we have received it, and lived it, is too personal, too comfortable and too narrow.  He is responding to a North American Christianity that has had its focus on personal salvation, personal devotions, and individualism.  I’d like to suggest to you, that that is only one part of the complex.  I feel like there is work for us to do, in not only living into the Grace we have received: but also learning and practicing the ways to speak of our sense of Spirituality and Encounter.  Our personal salvation, devotions and relationship with Jesus is yet to find its words – even the ones we tell to ourselves of our faith.  So, I ask you, how do you speak of your faith? How do you speak of your sense of Spirit?  How do you speak of your encounters of God?

I’m talking about finding the words to explain the Liminal space: where the heavens reach the lands: the horizon moments: the change in us, by sitting at the waters… so that when we speak our very own parable of encounter, the story is clear? 

Catholic theologian James Alison, reminds us of the context of today’s story.  Jesus speaks in parables to both disciples and crowds because, at that time, with Roman occupation, violence and domination, the people largely did not listen to the prophetic word.  And, that Jesus teaches in parables because the very thing he was teaching was so strange: “The Kingdom of God at Hand”.  How could God’s Kingdom be at hand when death rules our living: cruelty dominates faithfulness and the people are suppressed?

And so we come to the story in context and place.

‘Imagine a sower going out to sow. As the seeds were sown, some seeds fell on the edge of the path, and the birds came and ate them up.  ‘Others fell on patches of rock where they found little soil and sprang up straight away, because there was no depth of earth; but as soon as the sun came up they were scorched and, not having any roots, they withered away.  ‘Others fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.  ‘Others fell on rich soil and produced their crop, some a hundred-fold, some sixty, some thirty. ‘Listen anyone who has ears!’

Did you learn this story as a way of wondering what kind of ground or soil you were? Do I need to do some rock removal or pull up the thorns from my life?  What do I need to do to improve my soil?  Clean up your act Ian!!!

But this is called the Parable of the SOWER not the parable of the SOILS… This story is about the nature of God.  As Barbara Brown Taylor says: “What if [this story] is not about our own successes and failures and birds and rocks and thorns but about the extravagance of a sower who does not seem to be fazed by such concerns, who flings seed everywhere, wastes it with holy abandon, who feeds the birds, whistles at the rocks, picks the way through the thorns, shouts hallelujah at the good soil and just keeps on sowing, confident that there is enough seed to go around, that there is plenty, and that when the harvest comes at last, it will fill every barn in the neighbourhood to the rafters?”

Theologian Norman Wirzba, expands what soil is: “We forget that organic soil is the indispensable, life-nurturing setting (a placenta of sorts) in terms of which so much of our living is made possible. Good, healthy soil is not dead but teeming with life. Death decays into it and reemerges as new life, all because of the astoundingly complex and mostly invisible work of billions of bacteria and microorganisms. Without their work our world would be overwhelmed by the corpses and stench of death. Soil is a marvel and a mystery that we have not yet even begun to comprehend.”

And with that, hear the poetic words of Wendell Berry to speak of soil in Christ-like terms: “The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness. It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it. It keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but as richness, new possibility. Its fertility is always building up out of death into promise. Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future.

And before I try to weave this together, James Alison also notes something about Ancient World farming practice: he says “A farmer would often sow seed everywhere first and then plow afterward. God’s word is sown, and there is a promise of bearing fruit. Now what about the plowing? How can we participate in that? What might we contribute? “At what depth are we prepared to allow ourselves to be plowed into the earth so as to become part of the bearers of the signs of the kingdom of God?”

So, we’ve thickened up this story: what might the stained glass be telling us?

I listened to a troubling podcast this week, with the horrible title “Worship as a Weapon”.  In it, a Christian Artist was asked about her family, and she told a story of profound perplexity.  None of her children seemly, had encountered Jesus in the way she did.  In fact she described her children as hell raisers!  (With a smile)… And she told of one night, an agonising night of prayer, where she found herself weeping: snot weeping: profund sadness, after a lifetime in public ministry of Christian Hope, and seemly no engagement from those she loved the most… when something happened.  It was like God came to her and said ‘Shhhhh, I’ve got them.’

That assurance has enabled the most amazing things to emerge.  Even if we don’t understand or see now.  She spoke of a capacity to be God’s love for them: to love them even more freely: to be more present, more real, more honest, more abundant in the capacity to be mom.  Even now, as her children are now adults and come into their own lives and family… the grace has grown.  The abundance of the seeds of God has enabled her to BE…

This gospel today helps to correct us: to focus us on God, the prolific sower, who does not worry about the condition of the ground, who is not stingy with the seed. God, who casts seeds everywhere, on good soil and bad.  God who is not cautious or judgmental or even very practical, but who seems willing to keep reaching into the seed bag for all eternity, covering the whole creation with the fertile seed of love …

Shhh

Sit by the waters

Tell me a story of God…

You know the rocks in my life:

and the thorns that seem to come back and choke me

And you know how watering the garden is endless, and I can barely keep up.

And you know how sensitive i am to the sun: I just burn and burn up…

Shhhhhhh.

Sit by the waters

Tell me a story of God

Who sees all this, and knows.

And scatters the seeds on you anyhow… seed after seed…

remember Wendell Berry, about how the soil is Christ-like…

“by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness. It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it. It keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but as richness, new possibility. Its fertility is always building up out of death into promise…”

Shhhh. 

Sit by the waters… Tell me a story of God… look at the stained glass… and remember, the One who foolishly scatters seeds into our lives, knowing it can take root: knowing beyond all hope, that this is the way of God…  Even seeds land in liminal places… and brings life.  In you and in me.  Amen.