SPEAKER_01: In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
SPEAKER_01: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_01: Well, here we are.
SPEAKER_01: We've finally hit the parables.
SPEAKER_01: I was excited when I saw the reading for this Sunday landed in that part of Matthew where I knew the part parables could be found.
SPEAKER_01: And then I ran to the lectionary and I read it and I went, well, darn.
SPEAKER_01: Because this is the one parable, the parable of the sower, the only one in all of scripture that Jesus tells the parable and then interprets it for them.
SPEAKER_01: So what's a preacher to do?
SPEAKER_01: Repeat.
SPEAKER_01: Just come out here and go, ditto.
SPEAKER_01: So I had to think about it a while, of course.
SPEAKER_01: Mull it over.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that got me going and usually does when I read these parables is trying to figure out sort of the mental context of the hearers, right?
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't know about you, but I'm not a farmer.
SPEAKER_01: Might be some farmers here, but I'm not one.
SPEAKER_01: And while I have some general idea of what sowing is, S-O-W-I-N-G, not with the E.
SPEAKER_01: I always picture it in a more modern sort of sense, you know, we plow the ground, we make nice straight rows, and then we drop seeds into the, and then it gets covered up, and then the plants grow.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not how farmers in the first century did things.
SPEAKER_01: They would take a bag of seed and they would scatter it.
SPEAKER_01: This is called broadcast sowing.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like those little things that you use to fling uh weed and seed all over your lawn in the spring.
SPEAKER_01: What they would do is they'd fling all this seed out, and then they would come and plow the ground and depend on that which got turned under in order to grow the crop that they were looking for.
SPEAKER_01: No nice, nice straight lines in fields in the first century.
SPEAKER_01: So that makes a whole lot more sense.
SPEAKER_01: Because I thought to myself, why would someone scatter seed on unprepared ground to begin with?
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's how they did it.
SPEAKER_01: And then I start to think about how I've always seen myself in the context of this parable.
SPEAKER_01: Probably because of when and where I grew up and having heard biblical interpretation done in a much more, let's call it evangelical fashion my entire life.
SPEAKER_01: When I hear this parable, I immediately imagine myself as the sower, as the one who's out there spreading the word of the kingdom, as Jesus calls it in this reading.
SPEAKER_01: And so the parable in that context is kind of just informing me what kind of ears my spreading of the gospel might land upon.
SPEAKER_01: And the question with that interpretation of the parable is what can I do about it?
SPEAKER_01: Not a thing.
SPEAKER_01: Because if in the parable I'm the one broadcast sowing the word of the kingdom, all I can do is depend on it landing on healthy soil.
SPEAKER_01: But then I thought, what if I'm not the sower in the parable?
SPEAKER_01: What if instead I'm the soil?
SPEAKER_01: What if I'm the ground that the word of the kingdom is being sown into?
SPEAKER_01: Because we're getting the word of God in lots of different ways all the time in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: When we hear word of God, we usually think what first?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Most people think scripture, first and foremost, and absolutely God is presenting himself to us within the story of Scripture, but we're also receiving God's word all the time from the people around us, from the world we live in, from our very consciences sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: And the question is, how ready are we to accept what we're being given by God?
SPEAKER_01: Because if we're the soil, unlike the soil of a farmer, we can change.
SPEAKER_01: We can make ourselves ready for the reception of God's message to us.
SPEAKER_01: We can be prepared for every moment of every day.
SPEAKER_01: Lots of things we can do, right?
SPEAKER_01: Think about the things that Jesus talks about in the parable.
SPEAKER_01: Can't do much about those who just don't understand, right?
SPEAKER_01: But if we study, if we're ready, if we're asking questions, if we're willing to learn, then understanding ceases to be a problem.
SPEAKER_01: If we prepare ourselves by getting rid of the stones so that what we have doesn't take much root, meaning we will willingly listen to what we're being taught and told, then that can take a better root.
SPEAKER_01: And then for us, I think, for us 21st century Christians, I think the thorns are the biggest problem.
SPEAKER_01: Because the thorns in the parable are the things of this world which distract us from God's message to us.
SPEAKER_01: We're surrounded all the time by the world telling us things are important that you and I know deep down really don't matter that much.
SPEAKER_01: In the case of eternal life, matter not at all.
SPEAKER_01: I think we've all been taught from the moment we were born by the world, certainly not by our parents, but by everything we see and read and hear, he who dies with the most toys wins.
SPEAKER_01: Gather all the cash you can and sit on it like a dragon on a horde.
SPEAKER_01: If anybody needs it from you, then there's something wrong with them.
SPEAKER_00: Where Jesus says, give freely to everyone who asks.
SPEAKER_01: Because the kindness of the heart and willingness to give is more profitable for us than any amount of money we can sit upon.
SPEAKER_01: All of the kinds of things we can do in our lives to prepare ourselves moment by moment to get ready for when God speaks to us, living our lives like Jesus' example in the gospels, living our lives like the examples of the saints, willingness to give it all for God.
SPEAKER_00: Who here has ever heard of spiritual direction?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah?
SPEAKER_01: Most people have heard of it.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people have no idea what it is.
SPEAKER_01: Most people think that spiritual direction is kind of like therapy, where you're gonna go in and spill your guts, and then your spiritual director will tell you where you've gone wrong.
SPEAKER_01: But that, at least in my experience and in my reading about spiritual direction, is not at all what spiritual direction is like.
SPEAKER_01: If you can sort of boil it down into one statement, now this is gonna be different for every spiritual director and directee, but one basic statement that can describe spiritual direction is where have you seen God in your life?
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk through your week.
SPEAKER_01: Where did God shine through in your week?
SPEAKER_01: And what was God saying to you in that moment?
SPEAKER_01: And how can you live into that light which God is shining into your world?
SPEAKER_01: If you can have a spiritual director, then that's a wonderful thing.
SPEAKER_01: One little thing you can do is you can do this for yourself on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_01: I learned to do this a long time ago.
SPEAKER_01: I love our prayer book, service of common.
SPEAKER_01: It's beautiful, but sometimes I don't do it.
SPEAKER_01: But I remember the canticle at the end, the song of Simeon, with its antiphons.
SPEAKER_01: Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised.
SPEAKER_01: You know the rest.
SPEAKER_01: That's a little bit of that I can say in my head at night when I go to sleep.
SPEAKER_01: And after I've said that, I think to myself, where was God in this day?
SPEAKER_01: How did God poke his finger through and make me pay attention today?
SPEAKER_01: Who spoke to me as Christ today?
SPEAKER_01: Not me as Christ, them.
SPEAKER_01: Where can I see God active in my life?
SPEAKER_01: Because that's a thing that most of us are not paying attention to.
SPEAKER_01: But if you take a moment every day and think about it, I promise you, you will see God moving in your life.
SPEAKER_01: That's just one of a million ways that you and I can try and prepare ourselves to be the good soil on which the word of the kingdom falls.
SPEAKER_01: And if we are the good soil, then we get all the things that God said joy and peace and life.
SPEAKER_01: And as Jesus said, we'll have that more abundantly.