The Parable of the Sower

You can read the parable of the Sower in Matthew 13, alternatively you can watch this cartoon. Yeah, you're going to go for the cartoon aren't you?!

My first degree, before studying Theology, was in Biology. A large part of my work in that course was practical field work and we often found ourselves in muddy English fields assessing the plant life and collecting soil samples. We would then take it back to the lab and analyse it. Did it have enough nutrients? Was it acidic? Were there any toxins lurking about?

Sometimes I think we can approach the parable of the sower in much the same way. Rather than hearing the 'Parable of the Sower' we hear the 'Parable of the Good and Bad soils.' We quickly get to work on analysing ourselves, doing a soil sample on our own lives. Are we enough for God's word to take hold? Are we choking the good things God is doing in our lives? Of course a clear headed appraisal of ourselves can be a good thing from time to time but when we immediately jump to this interpretation we often miss a really important part of this parable. The parable is about the Sower.

And what kind of Sower is he? Well, he's not the kind of sower who does a thorough soil analysis before scattering the seed. No, instead he spreads it liberally throwing it over any and every ground. The seed is not scarce. The ground is not assessed for its worthiness. The seed is sent out everywhere.

In the interpretation of this parable Jesus associates the seed with the Word of God. Sometimes the 'Word of God' has been interpreted to be the Bible but the Bible itself points to something more than this. The Word of God is depicted in the Old and New Testaments as a powerful force in the world. The Word is associated with the creation of the world, as Genesis reads 'Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light'. This link between the Word and creation is used by John in the opening chapter of his gospel. Echoing the Genesis story he begins his gospel with the words 'In the beginning' and writes that the Word is none other than Jesus, as John writes, 'the Word was with God and the Word was God'.

The Word is also described as influencing historical events and changing individual lives. The prophets speak into the circumstances of their time with the phrase 'Hear, the Word of the Lord' seen at the start of many of the prophetic books. For the prophets the 'Word of God' has something to say to all human life. To Kings and exiles. About wars and about reconciliation. Isaiah describes the Word as not only powerful but effective, he writes,

'For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
 and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be, that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it'

I recently planted some lettuces in my garden. They grew up well and I was so pleased with them. Then one night what must have been one very hungry slug (or perhaps he brought friends!), came and ate up all my lettuces in one night. I was very frustrated. I didn't, however, go back to my husband and say, 'Oh well, that's it then. No salads this summer!' No, I sowed more seed until I got a harvest.

Likewise the parable of the Sower can be read negatively as the final verdict. Some people are rocky ground, others are all choked up by the cares of the world. In the worst case this can be used to cast judgement not only on ourselves but on others. Suddenly we move from our own soil testing to testing others and finding their ground to be somewhat lacking too. The parable is quickly turned from an observation of the ways of human beings into a lifelong sentence on individuals.

 

But the Bible doesn't talk about a God who gives one chance. Who drops one seed and if it doesn't take hold, then that's your lot. No, the Bible talks about a God who sends prophet after prophet, speakers of his word, to his people. He is the Father of the prodigal son who wait and wait and waits, never giving up hope for his lost child. He is the shepherd who goes out looking for his one lost sheep until he finds him and then he celebrates with joy. The sower sows again and again. He sows generously and into all types of ground.

And we see that when the seed finally takes root that the harvest from this one small seed is abundant, thirty, sixty or a hundred times what was first planted. We see this at work all around us. In the natural world there is not one type of flower by over 250,000 different kinds. God the sower sows in abundance and nature testifies to that fact. So when reflecting on the parable of the sower lets remember that the parable is primarily about the Sower who is generous, who sows again and again and on each and every type of ground without discrimination. We can trust this sower and that this seed, his word, 'will succeed in that for which he sent it' and that we, too, can bear much fruit.

From a sermon given to St George's Church in Barcelona on 13th July 2014.

Connections

We human beings love to categorize. It is part of how we make sense of the world and our place within it. But in recent weeks, and in as I dwell on the Christmas story this Advent, I have been thinking more and more about connections not categories.

At college I am currently studying Sociology of Religion. There the world is placed firmly into the category of the social. The behaviour and beliefs of religions are assessed on the basis of their social role. Of course there is much to be gained from this approach but it often places the individual into the social system as an unautonomous being who is simply moulded and changed by the social world around them. The connections between sociology, psychology, biology and belief are severed and this produces a flatter view of the world than it really is.

On Guardian Science today research was presented on the 'wiring' of male and female brains. The article presented sex differences as if they were a fait accompli. We are born with these wirings, that determines what it is to be a man or a woman and we just have to get on with it. The reality is, of course, much more complicated than this. Our genes limit what we can become but the expression of those genes, the development of our biology – even the functioning of our brains, is also determined by our environment. We create men and women on the basis of our cultural norms. We are not just biological, or social, or psychological, we are connections.

Our behaviour is full of connections. We are like walking self fulfilling prophecies. Psychological research shows that if you believe you will have a bad day, your behaviour shifts, you attract fewer positive responses from others (because we are, of course, social animals as well as individuals) and your perception of 'having a bad day' is reinforced. So much of our daily experience is shaped by our assumptions about it. Our behaviour is full of connections.

And in our typical way of categorizing we have done this no more so than in ideas about the 'spiritual'. We have sacred and we have secular. This is a very 'Western' thing. In many cultures there is no such divide. The spiritual is not the thing that goes boo in the night or which gives you a warm glowy feeling it, it is the wind blowing through your hair and a bird perched on a tree branch. That we separate the world so categorically breaks us off from so much of the reality of God and from the depth of our own lives. If God is only to be found in the 'spiritual' then will I miss him when a baby clutches my finger or when my Mum gives me a hug? Will I seek God out in the 'spiritual things I do' rather than in the way I have a conversation with my family over dinner?

The wonder of the Christmas story for me is that it smashes open these box and lays bare all the connections. God in a tiny baby. Divinity in the dust. Nothing about our humanity, our every day here and now, is untouchable. It is validated and made whole. Our assumptions are turned upside down, our categories broken down. It tells us to open our eyes wider, to see our every day as sacred. To stand whole and to celebrate those connections.

Seeking God - Love

A simple online search of the Bible brought up 731 instances of the word 'love'. Here a few drawn from the New Testament letters:

'Let all that you do be done in love' 1 Corinthians 16:4

'For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself' Galatians 5:14

'Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony' Colossians 3:14

'Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love' 1 John 4:8

'There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear' 1 John 4:18

The longer I have been on this journey of faith the more I have realised that there is no getting close to God without love. As is so well put by the authors above, God is love and our relationship to that love is shown by our action in the world and how we treat one another. There are no short cuts, there is no getting of the hook. Love is what formed the world and it is what we are made for. Just like skipping 'Go' in Monopoly, we cannot bypass love and still collect £200!

In Paul's classic passage on love in 1 Corinthians, that you have no doubt heard many times at weddings, the characteristics of love are laid bare. Love isn't arrogant or boastful or self seeking. It isn't resentful or irritable or rude. It never fails. I don't know about you but I fail miserably at this love test. And it really is done miserably because lack of love is like a wound within us.

As I reflect on love, and my lack of it, I've come to think it has something to do with the last passage quoted above on the relationship between love and fear. We live with an awful lot of fear in our lives. Fear of what others think of us, fear around our value (or lack of), fear about our place in our own world ( aren't we always questioning if we are even meant to be there?), fear that we are unloved or even simply unlovable. Piles and piles of fear that colour all our interactions and that we act out of constantly.

I am reading an interesting book on this at the moment and the author raised the point that much of our judgement and lack of love for others is often a projection of our worst fears about ourself. I can see a lot of truth in that. When we consciously begin to let go of snap judgements and condemnation of others we can begin to let ourselves of the hook too. When we forgive others, we can forgive ourselves. To love someone doesn't demand their perfection. Likewise we don't need to be perfect to be worthy of love either.

In the Christian story Jesus, God made man, comes to demonstrate true love to humanity. Love that ultimately led him to his death. A key part of that message is that God didn't come to a rescue a perfect world, he came to rescue a world full of war, anger and a bunch of people who just don't know how to love. He came to us imperfect because he knows our true value, that each of us is truly wonderful from the top of our head to the tips of our toes. He sees what each of us should be and can be when we are reconnected to the place that we came from, the beating heart of love that is the origin of all things.

I'm using the phrase 'perfect love casts out all fear' as somewhat of a mantra these days. When I feel insecure and want to act out, when I compare myself favourably or otherwise to other people, when I am irritated or frustrated with someone else I am trying to choose love over fear. With each conscious decision I hope that love will grow, that I will become more who I am meant to be. It's not an easy task but if you're seeking God, I think it is the only real way.

Seeking God – Creator

When you say you believe in God as 'Creator' these days people are pretty much ready to sign you up to the ranks of the crazies. The whole concept has been so hijacked by people on the one hand insisting on a literal view of the Bible, that I don't believe the Bible text itself warrants, and on the flip side those insisting we narrow the scope of our thinking to only that which can be examined under a microscope.

Don't get me wrong there is a whole world of spectacular things that can be learned through observation and empirical study of the world but we are one of the first eras that has insisted that this is the only way to understand the world. There will always be break points in our understanding, the place where our comfort and control ends and the unknown stretches out before us. We will always have the question of what to do with that, with those the ultimate questions. To my mind, we can close them down because we can't pin them down or we can be like the great philosophers that came before us and ask the questions.

My first degree was in Biology and I have always credited this as a major part of the opening of my mind to the possibility of God. Looking at the sheer wonder of the natural environment, its regenerative potential, its diversity and its sheer beauty was what made a believer out of me. Not a believer in God at the time but a believer in hope and in eternity. It is of course true that death is a fundamental part of the natural world but seeing the amazing power of evolution and how life always overcomes, adapts and perseveres put a deep seated sense of peace inside of me.

 

Snap by my lovely friend Hannah at http://hannahruthking.blogspot.co.uk/

The Christian story, then, of hope rising up out of death made a lot of sense. The world is decaying every day, every thing is born with a shelf life and yet there is something in the natural world that speaks of regeneration and renewal. When a forest is affected by natural fire it looks like the end has come but that fire releases seeds which spring up to form new ecosystems, new life and new ways of being. It's the 'Circle of Life', if you will!

By Hannah Ruth King

The sheer diversity of that life, when I did develop a belief in a 'creator' (not I might add as a chap sitting there making Zebras like clay animals but the author and architect of all life commanding life into being like the conductor of an orchestra) left me in awe. Because I wonder how people who claim to believe in God can ever see him as joyless when they wonder on the fact that there are 400,000 different types of flowering plants on earth? I wonder how they can fail to see humour in the baboon or majesty through the elephant? How a great storm cannot help but stop and make them think about the tiny place we occupy in this great big world under a great big God.

Photo by my other lovely friend http://www.hannahbeatrice.co.uk/

So 'Creator' means a lot to me and I'm not willing to relinquish it, despite the connotations today. 'Creator' means walking outside and looking up at a thousand stars and being deeply amazed..That, to me, is something to hold on to.

Seeking God - Home

Home is one of the most fundamental human needs.The greatest gift we can be given, that we should thank our lucky stars for everyday if we had it, is loving parents and a warm home. Life is often about builidng a home, finding a place to put down roots, to make your own, a place that speaks of you are your place in the world. We Brits are thoroughly obsessed with home, aren't we? Stick on Location, Location and pop us on a sofa and we're golden. I love mine to bits. It is thoroughly trussed up and often reinvented. It is my haven and my resting place.

When out house was broken into I realised what happens when your home no longer feels safe anymore. Suddenly your security is gone, the place where you curl up in a ball in front of the telly after a hard day has been forever changed. The place where you are most vulnerable, where you sleep, cry, laugh and throw birthday parties, has been trampled on. I wailed when it happened to me. And yet the idea of home had dramatically changed for me since I encountered God and I was glad for it at that time.

Home was the second word I spoke about God (I'll leave you guessing on the first!). A sense of 'home' was one of the first feeling that I associated with him. Not that I suddenly had a window on some heavenly place, full of fluffy clouds and angels playing harps and some bearded man standing arms wide open where I instantly hoped I'd go to one day. No, the Christian story I embraced of God made man is a commitment to everything we are - flesh and blood and dramas and laughter and baking and telly and gardening and dog walking and box sets and chips.

I think that the Christian story tells us that God is fundamentally, wholeheartedly fixed on transforming what is broken in our world and putting it, and us, back together.  God will give anything for that end, even himself. Home is not a place we go to. It is the one who comes to us. Who fills us with a sense of peace and belonging because we have found what it is we are made for. Home is not a place, it is a person. Home is God. It cannot be shaken, or trespassed in. No one can take it from you, or burn it down, the price of it will never fall, you will never get sick of it.

I love this poem by Emily Bronte because it reminds me that I am both on a journey to my 'home' and already in it. I journey on as I discover more of God and yet I live in this tragic and broken world, and yet somehow my heart is already at home with God and always has been. That 'will be my pole star to the grave'.

Now Trust a Heart That Trusts in You

Now trust a heart that trusts in you,
And firmly say the word 'Adieu';
Be sure wherever I may roam,
My heart is with your heart at home.

Unless there be no truth on earth,
And vows meant true are nothing worth,
And mortal man have no control
Over his unhappy soul;

Unless I change in every thought,
And memory will restore me nought,
And all I have of virtue die
Beneath a far and foreign sky.

The mountain peasant loves the heath
Better than richest plains beneath;
He would not give one moorland wild
For all the fields that ever smiled;

And whiter brows than yours may be,
And rosier cheeks my eyes may see,
And lightning looks from orbs divine
About my pathway burn and shine;

But that pure light, changeless and strong,
Cherished and watched and nursed so long;
That love that first its glory gave
Shall be my pole star to the grave.

The Seeking God Series

Last year, just before I started theological college, I made this picture.

I did it because I wanted to make a permanant reminder of how I felt about God. I wanted to mark who God was for me right then just in case, when times got hard and academic work overwhelmed me, I lost my way a little. I'm now so grateful for this reminder. It is like a slice out of my life of faith that reminds me of what was, and is, important to me.

These last few months have been wonderful, I have explored new ideas and had many new experiences. I love exploring the scholarship behind the Bible and Theology, to think about the history of religion and how the world has changed. More than anything it enhances my faith. To me, God is truth and there is nothing to be afriad of when heading out into the world to weigh the evidence. That, after all, was how I came to find faith in the first place as a very sceptical Biology undergraduate.

 

To question is essential to any alive faith. If you have never questioned your beliefs then how can you help anyone else in their questioning? If you have never reasoned it out with yourself then how can you stand up and present this stuff week in week out with any conviction? Studying with this level of intensity shakes everything up and you have to wait a while to see how things settle. That is where I am right now and that is what this series is about, forging ahead and putting down some of things I am seeing along the way.

Quite like becoming a Christian for the first time I feel like I am stepping out of one world, full of familiar assumptions and understandings, into something brand new that I don't quite understand yet. As Taylor Swift would say it is miserable and magical! All I know, and what I knew then, is that I have to step out of what is comfortable to discover what is ahead of me.

So that is what this little blog series is all about. I'm not presuming to be able to describe God to you. If I could so easily put God into a blog post what kind of God would that be? No, one thing I have constantly found is that the moment you try to squeeze God into a box, God bursts the box right open.

Rather I'm going to talk about what I have seen so far as I navigate this time of change for myself. This series, like all blogging, is partly to aid my own journey. To give expression to the things I am discovering and the things I rediscovering from my past. To put words to things that I haven't attempted to put words to before.

Each week I'm going to look at one of the words for God I stuck in that frame, written out in scrabble tiles, and share some thoughts for your perusal. I'm offering this little series not to tell you what you should think but in the hope that they provide a springboard and a starting place for your own explorations.

One thing I know from the years that I have been on this strange and wonderful journey is that it is always surprising, always inspiring and always, always brings life.

 

You are most welcome to join me.

Present Moment, Perfect Moment

I've just started reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh called Peace in Every Step. I'm always very interested in anything people like Thich Nhat Hanh have to say. He is both a deeply spiritual man abounding in peace and joy but also deeply involved in the daily sturggle of his people against poverty and war. Peace isn't an abstract concept or a nice warm feeling when your village is being stormed by rebels. Anything that comes out of that scenario has a depth and a reality to it that makes it worth hearing.

In Christian teaching Jesus stresses that the only thing we can really change is ourselves. Why go round trying to change others when you haven't even dealt with youself? If we want peace then we must be peace. War originates in the hearts and minds of people like us. If we hate then we contribute to the human created disasters we see, and are devastated over, on the news. We, by getting our own house in order, can contribute to a better, fairer world. Well, that's what I think anyway.

That's why I take this stuff seriously and see time investing in my own sanity and well being as important. I usually spend Monday mornings this way if I can, setting myself up for the week and setting intentions for how I want to tackle the week ahead. Today, after reading Peace in Every Step, I was reminded of the importance of being in the present monent. This is another thing that resonates with what Jesus taught, why worry about tomorrow when you cannot extend you life by even a single hour? All we really have is now. The past is gone, the future isn't here yet. So I spent half an hour just breathing and being where I am - in my house, in my pyjamas, on a slightly grey autumn day.

When I was travelling I was always in the present moment, there was so much to absorb, where else would you be? I tasted everything with the enthusiasm of someone who knew this might be my one and only chance to walk round a market in Madrid or eat gelato in Florence. I was deeply, deeply happy. But back at home it can feel like that is all slipping away and the days become so mundane again. But perhaps that is because we aren't really seeing them, too busy caught up in our thoughts and worries and so life just passes us by.

I loves taking photos on holiday, it made me see the detail in everything I was looking at and savour it. So this morning I walked around my ordinary place and took some snaps.

Snaps of ordinary things like the flowers in the corner of the room...

 

 

And the carpet beneath my bare feet...



The chilli that finally went red....

 

 

Piles of colourful felt....



A bathroom companion...

 

 

Crumpled bed sheets....

 

The things I love about home...



 

 

Where I 'make use of my time'....(and clearly don't dust much!!)

 

Present moment, perfect moment.