Kirkepiscatoid

<sup>This week's Gospel text is from Matthew 9; "the parable of the seeds;"

3</sup>And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. ⁶But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.

⁷Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

⁹Let anyone with ears listen!” ¹⁰Then the disciples came and asked him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” ¹¹He answered, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. ¹²For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

¹³The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ ¹⁴With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. ¹⁵For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn— and I would heal them.’ ¹⁶But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. ¹⁷Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.

¹⁸“Hear then the parable of the sower. ¹⁹When 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.

²⁰As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; ²¹yet 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.

²²As 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. ²³But 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.”

Well, I'll tell you where my mind started going when I read this one...I was thinking about how people have found seeds in pyramids entombed with mummies as a grain offering, and how these seeds that are thousands of years old can still germinate and grow today. That always seems amazing to me!

Ok, so Jesus mentions the seeds that fall out in the open and get devoured by the birds, the seeds that germinate on the thin worthless soil, the seeds that get choked out by the thorns, and the seeds that were sewn on the good soil. But, I was thinking, “What about the seeds that just get hidden and don’t germinate for a spell...maybe even for years or decades?”

Well, in describing God as this indiscriminate seed-flinging dude, maybe because I’ve been hung up in seeing “temporal” lately, I thought, “yeah, and maybe he doesn’t care if they germinate tomorrow, either, maybe years from now is ok by God...so if we know we have this un-germinated seed of something put in our heart by the Holy Spirit, well, we should be ok that it will germinate in its own time.”

Maybe a seed put in my heart today is not MEANT to germinate today...maybe it is supposed to take root later. I mean, think about those things that are still “black boxes” at the time they are happening. If that seed germinated right then, it’s worthless. But later, when the time and conditions are right, well it germinates.

I thought about the pine forests at Yellowstone. Those seeds in the pinecones, in order to germinate, need to be burned by fire so they will crack open. The park service people discovered that the forest management was not about “preventing all fires” but that nature expects the pine forests to be damaged by fire, in fact it is what is needed for new life to begin. So they learned to create and manage fires (that big fire in the 90's being the exception, of course). But there’s another concept; for germination to occur, sometimes fire has to scorch our life to break open the hardest and toughest of those seeds.

The other thing that crossed my mind is that some of the seeds that fall our way are meant for sharing. Or maybe we share and don’t realize it till afterwards. Take one of my blogfriends, who goes by the moniker FranIAm; you've seen her comments on this blog. She has suddenly found herself without a job for the first time since she was 14 years old. Turns out she has been reading my blogposts with some regularity and says that I have been helping her through her pain. Yet I am only feeling limited self-help in terms of my own pain.

But my mind goes back to a realization I had about a year ago--that the most real parts of me are the parts of me that give bits of myself away with no thought to “what that means” or "at what cost". I just do it. I am a little like Peter when Jesus said "follow me" and he went, "Well...uh...ok".

Although I am not yet feeling much yet in the way of answers for myself, my ruminations seem to be of some help to FranIAm (well, and Episcogranny too, if you've been following her blog)—and somehow that still reaches me. In this case, I am giving away my “seeds” and releasing any chance of control as to how they will be used. I expected no return on those seeds, yet I have an excellent return. Go figure!