What a Lot of Seed!

When my children were in kindergarten, they sang this little piece from songwriter John McCutcheon. The chorus describes a poem on the wall in his kindergarten classroom. 

“Of all you learn here, remember this the best
Don't hurt each other and clean up your mess.
Take a nap every day, wash before you eat
Hold hands, stick together,
Look before you cross the street.
Remember the seed in the little paper cup,
First the root goes down, then the plant grows up!”

Instead of rules and regulations — don’t talk when the teacher is talking, raise your hand if you have to say something, walk straight in a line, |this little song told the story of kindergarten in alternative fashion. Think about others, get enough rest, make sure the cyclospora on your hand dies before you eat, be in community, be safe, and it takes time to grow up. I wish it were that folks today lived by these principles! 

Jesus liked stories. Instead of preaching on the 613 commandments found in the Torah, Jesus tells stories, parables, stories with everyday settings that help unfold deeper layers of truth that require probing, wisdom, and careful thought. They’re not fables, like the tales of Aesop, with the race between the rabbit and the hare, “slow and steady wins the race” or an allegory, where everything represents everything else. They’re basic stories with human characters, and Jesus loved telling them. Just you wait. We’re into the parables for the next few weeks so be excited. 

It wasn’t about hiding deep truths from the people; the opposite is true. Jesus left the house in today’s story, where there wasn’t enough room, where not everyone could be with him to go beside the sea, where he could see everyone’s eyes, intimately. These were stories from his heart, ones I’d guess he’d been chewing on since he was small, stories that illuminated the way that the mystery of God unfolded in the world. These stories told about that place where God is all in all, the kindom of God where we all belong even as it takes work to do our part.  

So back to today’s story, what a lot of seed! 

Seed on the path, seed on the rocky ground, seed among thorns, and seed in the good soil, that grew like hotcakes, multiplying and giving us good food to eat!

When I was small, I heard this story interpreted one way. God is the farmer, we are the seed, and are you gonna be the good soil or are you going to get choked out, eaten up, or are your roots deep enough, Christian? 

But this story is not an allegory, it’s a parable, and a parable’s meaning, well, it can go on forever. So let's try again. 

What a lot of seed! What a lot of good seed! And if the good seed is the word of the kindom, like Jesus says, there are some other surprising parts in this text. Today, I want to read this text even more expansively, with more hope. 

In England, properties are demarcated by hedgerows, those closely planted shrubs with trees, living boundaries. Today they provide blockage for harsh winds and ecological corridors for wildlife. You know how these began? Birds! They’d eat seed sown and seed that they found, they’d sit on the fences and they’d poop out the seed, where it would germinate and then grow. Hedgerows started with the birds. 

So what about those birds? Even if not all of those seeds sprouted, that seed that the farmer planted, that seed sown, it still had a purpose, a meaning, like the song from Isaiah that we read this morning that says, the rain and the snow come down and give “seed for the sower and bread to the eater.” If the goodness of the kindom of God feeds anyone, even the birds, I’m glad for it. 

What a lot of seed! 

And even that seed that didn’t have deep enough roots, even those plants that grow and then die quickly are good for something. I know this because I throw so many weeds into my compost. Along with the detritus of our kitchen, the lawn clippings and some occasional wood chips all mixed together, what comes out of there is excellent soil, rich, loamy, worm poop that we use to amend our garden. Those quick growing plants, those plants that shoot up, they’re still good for something, even if it’s only the compost. In their death they offer life, if used the right way. And there’s another possibility. Sometimes plants go into the compost, and their seeds don’t die. We augment the soil and there it is!  An unexpected tomato right there with the petunias! A bean climbing the back fence. A squash growing right out of the compost, happy as a clam. A sunflower where we didn’t expect. Volunteer plants are always a gift. 

What a lot of seed! 

You know an irony? In my garden, it’s not the weeds choking out the natives, now that the natives are established — coneflower, black eyed Susans, bee balm and milkweed. These are the plants that are choking out the weeds, making it harder for the thorn and the thistle to grow, or at least easier to pull them out. Sure, it’s been a haul reforming my backyard into the garden I’d like it to be. Sure, there have been some summers where the thorn and the thistle took over, but this summer, some of the hard work is paying off in beautiful plants. 

What a lot of seed! 

And of course, some of it grows, and it doesn’t just double or triple or quadruple itself, it grows a 100 fold, or at the least 30 fold, as God’s story spreads like weeds, as the kindom grows right here, among us. 

All that seed, that seed in the first reading of this story seems excessive, wasteful, “throwing money away” (to use a capitalist metaphor) all of it has a purpose. Nothing from God is wasted. Jesus even collected the leftovers during the feeding of the 5000, 12 baskets leftover! The seed shall “succeed in the thing for which I sent it,” and “accomplish that which I purpose,” just like the rain and snow that fall from heaven, just like the words of Jesus, just like God’s love, just like our work, our labor, our hopes, even our mistakes, and our composts. 

I don’t think the reading that I heard as a child was right, the one where we’re the seed. I think God is only one of the farmers. I think we’re all called to be farmers, sowers, all of us, throwing seeds all the time, our deeds of love in the world. And even those things we’ve sown which have felt like a waste, all of that love which we threw out into the world that didn’t feel like it came back to us, all of that has a purpose. I think we should keep it up, keep up being excessive, throwing our goodness all over, even on the rocky ground, even when we know the birds are going to munch it up, even if we sow that seed into a bed of crabgrass, hoping that the deep native roots will eventually choke out that annoying grass, knowing that our composts might be full, but that nothing from God is wasted, nothing, not a bit. Not rain, not snow, not seed, not love. 

There’s nothing in the parable about how we should be more “careful with the seed.”

Sure, it’s excessive, ridiculously even. 

But that is God’s nature. Quick to show mercy. Quick to love. Coming down from heaven for our salvation. Always there. A real love of our lives. 

Sure. Sometimes it seems like nothing is happening, that all the goodness is of naught. But it's not like that. 30 to 100 fold growth! 

Keep on. Keep on being ridiculously excessive. Love, even when you know it might be rejected. Give more than is necessary, without expecting to get anything back. We’re not playing the game of chess here. We have been given so much, so much goodness, so much love, so much beauty. It’s on us to pass it on. We never know what will grow.