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Horticultural Holiness

15th Sunday : 13 July 2014  : Matthew 13: 1-23

There are those who argue that the true places of religious devotion in our land are the garden centres. Throughout the weekend little groups of pilgrims roll their shopping carts down the aisles of plants and tools, their faces full of rapt attention as they look for what might do good to their little bit of earth. Back home they kneel in homage to their garden plots while lovingly tending and nurturing green growing things.

The pilgrims report that gardening makes them feel good, and I believe them. A person I once knew well had only to plunge her hands in the earth to reduce the anxiety and anger that often came her way. So I am not inclined to write off the earth as inanimate matter. It has more than worms moving through it. There is a life force active within it. The creation has miracles of growth abounding within it all the time, if only we have eyes to see.

So the question I have running through my mind this morning after that gospel reading is – am I good soil? If seeds of wondrous growth were dropped on me how would they do? Am I well watered and methodically manured? Has the trowel been put through me so that the weeds are out? If God is a gardener, will his horticultural hopes for me flourish come seed planting time in my life story?

The abundance and the beauty of plants and trees and flowers are constant reminders that God is the author of life. So if everybody is reading the book how come so few people recognise who wrote it? That‘s a dilemma the gospel writer is struggling with.

Anyone reading the gospels can’t help but be struck by the inner authority of Jesus. Here is someone whom winds and storms obey. He has the power to cast out demons and restore people to their right mind. By a word and a gesture the sick are healed of debilitating incurable illnesses. Even the dead are, on occasion, raised to life. The teaching he gives has authenticity and conviction about it. It would appear that there is nothing that this person cannot do!

Except this. Jesus could not, and would not compel belief. People had to make up their own minds about him. And often they exercised their option to say no! How could this be? How could people witness miracles performed in their midst, hear teaching that read the very secrets of their hearts, watch neighbour‘s lives transformed for the better, and still walk away unconvinced? It was a question that perplexed the disciples of Jesus.

The dilemma intensified several decades on after Jesus. Now there was a Church armed with the authority of Jesus exercising an effective ministry of healing, teaching with a like confidence and conviction, changing people‘s lives through the life transforming secret that it had been let in on. But still the bulk of their contemporaries either said no, or tried it for a while, and then walked away. Here was something to really get burnt up about.

In the explanation bit of the sower parable we were hearing a debate going on within the early Church in which alternative explanations are offered about why so many people were giving the thumbs down to the wonderful message. It is because people are shallow, it is because they care too much about money and possessions, it is because they cannot cope with the problem of the persistence of evil in the world.

Learning to deal with disappointment feelings is one of the biggest tests of adult maturity. The person who won‘t love us back, the once in a lifetime job opportunity that went to somebody else, the friend who let us down badly. Being able to walk away from these disappointments with dignity, composure, and the wisdom that grows through hard experience. This is a precious gain for us to reach out for.

And that is my way into tackling the heartbreak agenda of why so many people ignore Jesus. That is their business. They are the ones who are missing out. No amount of finger pointing by me will change the situation for the better. What I can do is to take a good look at myself, and at my gospel community, and ask are we user friendly and attractive when the indifferent come across our path? If and when the Spirit touches them, and they come looking, have we got something of God to offer? To use the horticultural image that I started off with – am I the kind of good soil that you would want to run your fingers through because it would give you good feelings?

And maybe it is not too surprising that so many people suffer from a kind of cognitive malfunction when it comes to apprehending gospel truth. For the truth is that God doesn‘t shout at us through a megaphone. He communicates with us through signs. Like all truth that is worth having you have to do a bit of work to get to the bottom of all the treasure that is on offer. Like a great piece of music you have to give it some concentrated attention to truly hear and respond. And that is hard for people brought up in an age of instant information packages, sound bite news Bulletins, and seductive images that simplify. The information age explains everything right away. People aren‘t accustomed to struggling with symbols and metaphors that slowly give you more and more as you turn them over in your mind.

It is a challenge even for us who are insiders. For as we try to find out what God wants us to do next in our lives God won‘t just drop a blueprint down out of Heaven. We will have to work at it to find out what our mission is to be. God takes our freedom, and our gifts, and our individual particularity seriously. We are in a relationship with an unseen friend in which our asking clarifies our desires. We are allowed to get grumpy and to use the language of protest in our prayer. We are expected to use our brains, and our creativity, and our capacity for taking risks. We are not passive receivers. This is a two way process. As Augustine said, "Pray as if you expect a miracle, work as though it depended on you alone."

And let‘s remember why all this work is worthwhile. The gospel brings joy. It changes peoples lives. That is what the sower story is all about. The punch line is about the seed that fell on good soil and produced sixty fold, a hundred fold. At the centre of all this striving and activity is the Jesus who walks among us with power to transform our lives.

There is a further dimension to this morning‘s parable. Listen to these wise words of Donald Hagner:

Parables function in a dual manner. For those who have responded positively to Jesus‘ proclamation of the kingdom, the parables convey further insight and knowledge, while for those who have rejected Jesus and his message, the parables have the effect of only darkening the subject further. Thus belief and commitment lead to further knowledge; unbelief leads to further ignorance... Jesus proclaims that the kingdom has come, yet it has come in a secret or veiled form that does not overwhelm the present order of things. It thus requires faith and commitment to know and experience the kingdom in the strange, interim period of the present.

Here is my final word on the subject. For those of us who are believers the challenge is to take the promises of the gospel seriously, and to seek to live in its transforming power, so that we will come to know the kind of growth and change that is not on offer at any garden centre that I am aware of.