That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”
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“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
(Matthew 13:1-9 & 18-23)
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John Muir was a 19th century naturalist and conservationist - in modern terms I guess you'd call him an environmentalist - whose most lasting accomplishment was to be the founder of the Sierra Club. He was also active in the movement that started the US National Park system. He was born in Dunbar, Scotland and his family emigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old. They started a farm in Wisconsin, and when he was 22 years old Muir began attending the University of Wisconsin. He studied botany and geology, although he never actually graduated because apparently his attendance at classes was "irregular." Muir and his brother Daniel both lived for a while in what's now southern Ontario. They came here in 1863 - many believe to avoid being drafted into the Union Army during the Civil War. They explored the Niagara Escarpment and the shores of Georgian Bay. John returned to the United States when the war ended and in 1867 he made a 1000 mile walk from Kentucky to Florida. He also spent time in Cuba and New York City. But he's most famous for his next adventure - a trek to the Sierra Mountains of California in 1868. He ended up spending six years in the Sierras, sometimes high in the mountains and sometimes in the Yosemite Valley. During that time he kept a daily diary in which he kept notes about the plants and animals that he saw, the weather he encountered, and simply described what he saw as the rugged beauty of the area. Finally, in 1911 - three years before he died - he published the diary he kept during his first few months there, calling it "My First Summer In The Sierras." I tried to get a copy of it but there are no copies in any of our local libraries. There are, however, excerpts of the book available on the internet on Google Books - and it's a captivating read. His decriptions are often breathtaking, and while not a great deal is known about Muir's religious views, you can see from his diary that at the very least he did believe in God and that he felt nature was a testimony to who and what God was. I thought that one of the most meaningful quotes I came across in the research I did on him was "No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull." To me, there seems to be great wisdom in those words.
Our Scripture passage for today (and, really, the entire story of Jesus' life) convinces me that Jesus himself was fascinated by nature and saw nature as a way for people to enter into the mystery that is God. Think about his words. He spoke about birds and flowers and foxes and olive trees and mountains and sheep and goats. So much of what he taught had a nature theme to it. So many of his parables seemed to revolve around nature or farming. Today, for example we read the parable of the sower and the different kinds of soil that seeds can be sown in. And Jesus helpfully went on to explain the parable, just in case anyone had missed the point: the seed was the word of God, and the various kinds of soil are the various types of human hearts into which the seed is planted. Sometimes the seed bears fruit and the fruit matures and sometimes it doesn't - but as I read the parable I find myself wondering if there's any fault to be assigned for those times when the seed doesn't seem to produce a crop. The seed isn't to blame; God's word is always sufficient. But what about the human heart, represented by the various types of soil into which the seed is planted. Is there blame assigned there?
We all know that people hear the word of God and are permanently changed by it, or have an initial enthusiasm for it that burns out quickly, or embrace it until tough times come and then let it go, or just get pulled off track so to speak by the company they keep. This particular parable is probably one of the most easily understood parables Jesus offered and it gives us perhaps the clearest and most obvious lesson we gain from a parable: the word of God won't fail - but circumstances can affect how we respond to that word. But if I continue to apply the parable, I'm struck by the fact that (in this one parable at least) there's no blame attached. It isn't, of course, the fault of the plant that grows that it sprouted in an undesirable place. That's just called life. For years now whenever I've read this parable I've thought of it as a sort of negative parable - a warning of sorts. "You better be the right kind of soil, and if the seed doesn't sprout it's your fault." But somehow, reading it over the last couple of weeks preparing my thoughts for today, I came to the conclusion that I've been wrong. The more I think about the image Jesus gives us the more I find this passage to be an incredibly hopeful parable - hopeful even for those plants who end up not doing so well, because nature - and Jesus is using an image from nature as he often did - has a strange way of dealing with these things.
I like James Muir's comment: "No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull." I'd extend it just a bit: does any landscape anywhere hold anything truly dead or dull? Life sprouts in the most unexpected places. We know that now. There's life at the bottom of the oceans at the entrance to scalding vents that would kill humans in an instant; there's life inside active volcanoes; life is found in bubbling lakes of hot tar; life is found in the frigid valleys of Antarctica and in the sun scorched sands of the desert. We don't know about life anywhere else - but on earth life is everywhere; even where logic tells us it shouldn't be. Jesus didn't know about all of the extreme places life could be found on earth - but his parable seems to be a way of saying that life can take hold in pretty much any environment, and nature seems to tell us that once life takes hold it's pretty stubborn. Life can seem to disappear - but it comes back. Jesus died and was resurrected. And I find it interesting that in the course of the parable Jesus never speaks of anything dying. It withers, it fails to bear fruit, it falls away - but he never actually says that anything dies. Perhaps the point is that life actually doesn't lose. Even when things die they get recycled and emerge again in some way. I think that in this parable Jesus wasn't warning us that we better be good soil or else!; I think Jesus was assuring us that once God's word is inside us it won't let us go.
We're in the middle of July, at the height of summer. We've had a lot of rain this year, but in years past wherever I've lived by this time of the year there's usually been some pretty scorching days and a good period of time without rain and there have been times that I've looked out at my front lawn and seen a forest of withered, brown blades and thought it was never coming back. But the most awesome thing is that all it takes is a little bit of rain overnight and you look out the window in the morning and those withered, brown blades of grass are starting to come back and green starts to show almost right away. That's what John Muir noticed in his travels. "No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull." And maybe that's the point Jesus was making. No matter what kind of "soil" the word of God falls in and no matter what perils or hardships or circumstances arise after it falls - the word of God always gives life, and that life can never be taken away.
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