Ecumenical Service Plainfield Days 7-10-11 Matthew 13:1-17 Bad Soil
For the first 13 years of my life I lived in Kansas City, Kansas in a house with a yard barely big enough to contain the driveway and my dad’s ’71 VW Beatle because my mom’s car was parked in the one car garage that was part of the basement.
My father never liked living in the city. As a child he spent his summers on his uncle’s farm in Bethany Missouri, and his childhood home had a large yard where his mother had a large garden. My father liked to think of himself as a farmer trapped in the city. He disliked everything about the city the small yard we had, the lights, the traffic…and so when I was 13 we moved to a suburb of Kansas City, KS onto a ¾ acre lot. It was big enough for my dad to have a 1600 square foot garden which he proudly worked on for years.
The only problem we had is that the soil was terrible and when I say terrible that is an understatement. It was nothing but rocks and clay. Everyday one of the choirs my sister and I had was to clear a 5 gallon bucket of rocks before we could do anything. In the beginning this was fairly easy as the rocks were large but as time went on the rocks got smaller and it took longer to fill the bucket.
The first year the garden didn’t do very well. But my dad kept at it, he was big into organic gardening so he got some horse manure, and made me bag the grass with a push mower and all organic food leftovers went into the compost pile. As my dad worked the soil year after year it eventually got better and we got some good harvests of tomatoes, green-beans, leaf lettuce, carrots, potatoes, cucumbers and zucchini. The two things that never did well no matter what my father did were sweet corn and strawberries. Although the strawberries did better then the corn. We would get a couple of quarts of decent strawberries but the corn was never any bigger then my thumb.
In Matthew 13 Jesus uses a farmer and soil as the background for a parable He tells about how lives are affected by those who hear the Good News. In the parable there are four types of soil, the path, the rocky ground, the thorny ground and the good ground. Now with the first three soil types we often think there is no hope. The seed falls on the path and the birds eat it all, it falls in on the rocky soil and the sun scorches it and in the thorny soil the thorns choke it out. And I think we hear that and think that’s it, those poor people have no chance at all.
But I’ve seen that bad soil can be turned around. I watched my dad labor with it for years in that back yard of my teen years. That first year as I said was terrible but little by little with my dad’s earnest care the soil improved. As I said it never was able to support sweet corn but I think another 10 years or so of my dad working on it and I think it would have been able to begin producing a decent sweet corn crop. Now there is no doubt that my dad had to work really hard at the soil to get the garden to produce, there is no doubt that if had soil like I have over at the parsonage he could have grown a good garden with relative ease. But the thing my dad’s work on that garden soil year after year that I learned was that bad soil can become good soil.
Now we may look at this parable and think about those 3 bad soils and wonder how could they ever become good soil. The path for instance, we might think of that as the side walk or a paved road what can grow there. But we all have seen that green stuff can work it’s way through even concrete, it can crack it and take root and eventually break up the concrete. If grass and weeds can do that to concrete how much more so can the Good News do that with someone’s life if they are exposed to it enough. Or if we help work on them, work on busting up that hard surface so that Word can get into their lives and start to take root.
What about the rocky soil? Well it’s main problem was lack of water. If you travel down to Kansas you will see lots of corn were there used to be nothing but wheat. Kansas’ climate isn’t exactly conducive to corn takes a lot of water for corn to grow. If you look close every corn field is irrigated. So the irrigation makes it possible to grow corn where it previously didn’t grow very well. So the Word of God sown in a person’s life with rocky soil can grow if it can be watered and nurtured. Again we can help nurture that seed of the Word.
And what about the thorny soil? Well the easiest thing to do with that soil would be to remove the weeds, clean it out I imagine it’s probably not bad soil once you get all the weeds out. The same is true for the person who has a lot of clutter and worry in their lives if we can help to clear that out then the Word of God that is sown will have a fighting chance.
But what about the good soil? You might be thinking what about it? It’s good soil we don’t need to worry about it, it takes care of itself. But does it? How easy is it for good soil to become thorny or weedy soil? How many of you farmers never have to pull rocks out of some of your fields at least? What happens if you drive a lot of heavy equipment over the fields or try to plow in them when it is too wet?
The house that Yolanda and I had in Kansas City had a large yard with lots of flower gardens, at least that was what they were supposed to be. We bought it from elderly widow who had been unable to tend to the gardens for many years. It took a lot of work for Yolanda and I to clean up those gardens so that they would once again be nice flower gardens. You can’t just depend on good soil to continue to produce a good crop it takes work.
As I said we had to pull rocks out of the garden every day until my dad planted in the spring and then after the harvest until it got to cold. So it was work to keep the garden rock free. And weeds? As I said my dad was into organic gardening. That 1600 square feet never saw any herbicide. Now fortunately my dad had a fancy tiller with all kinds of attachments and he cultivated and planted the rows far enough apart to get the tiller down to till up the weeds between the rows so we only had to weed in the rows themselves. But we still had to weed to keep them from overgrowing everything and choking out the plants.
We never had any trouble with compaction but I know that you farmers have to take care of that because if the soil becomes too compacted it will be like the path and the crop won’t grow.
I think too often we hear this parable and think that it’s kind of a one time deal. You hear the word and if your heart is hardened or you have lots of rocks and no spiritual death, or too many things choke out the joy you have at hearing the word then all hope is lost. Or we think that we have received the word and we have allowed it to sprout in our lives and it has produced a good crop but we don’t need to do anything else.
True Jesus didn’t elaborate the way I did when He told his parable but the people who heard this parable first were farmers. They understood the work that even good soil required to maintain a good crop year after year. I imagine they too could even improve the conditions of soil whether it be a path, rocky soil or thorny overgrown with weeds soil.
One of the things that we need to remember today is that spreading the word, and following the word takes work. We can’t just spread the word once and think that’s it, we can’t hear the word and let it take root in our life and think that’s it either. We need to cultivate that word in our own lives and in the lives of others, we need to cultivate the soil of those we encounter, praying for them, tilling up the soil of those with hardened hearts, helping to remove the rocks of those with rocky soil and weeding the worries and concerns out of other’s lives. Jesus told a parable about different soil types, and sowing to farmers, knowing that farmers would see and understand the deeper implications of what He said as they recalled the story.
Let us not neglect to continue to cultivate the word in our lives so that it may continue to bear fruit and may we also cultivate others lives to prepare them to hear the word and for it to take root.
