The Stones Crumble…

YOUTUBE VERSION

SERMON TEXT

I want to start with a poem, it is by Stephen Mitchell. Appropriate for today, it is titled, “The Parable of the Sower”

A sower went forth to sow. Some of his seeds fell upon stony places. Centuries passed; millennia. And the seeds remained. And the stones crumbled and became good soil, and the seeds brought forth fruit.

“Wait a minute,” said one listener. “You can’t play fast and loose that way with the natural facts. The seeds would die long before the soil could receive them.”

“Why would they die?”
“Because they can’t hold out in stony places, for thousands of years.”
“But, my dear, what kind of seeds do you think we’re talking about?”
“But, my dear, what kind of seeds do you think we’re talking about?”
The seeds outlasted the stones:
Poor rocky places
ground down by time
to become sand in an hour glass;
ground down
one chip and chunk at a time
by erosion
rain
wind
fire
rivers
earthquakes
and time…always the slow procession of time.

Rock ground down into sand –
a mountain pinnacle
falling in geologic slow motion
for millennia
into the granules of beach
then finally carried outto sea.
Granite ground down to itsy bitsy grains of time.

But the seed –
its generations are growing;
growing evermore
prodigious.

 

Carl Sagan, the late noted astronomer,
once said that human beings are like cockroaches –
we survive anywhere:
on rocky ground
icebergs
desert sand
and water.

He could envision that in the aftermath
of a massive nuclear catastrophe
three species would be left standing:
cockroaches, rats, and humans.

Jesus’ point was a little different
but oddly it works toward the same direction.

I want to preface Jesus’ point however,
with a brief bible study.

One of the ways that scholars attempt
to discern Jesus’ original words or intent –
if indeed such a thing is possible –
is to note differences in the literary
and spoken forms of Jesus’ day.
For example, Jesus taught with parables –
pithy, spoken sayings
well suited for someone
who could not read or write,
which Jesus may not have been able to do.
Parables were also well suited for memorization
by the audiences who heard them,
which was important because certainly
they could not read or write.

Parables were a unique teaching tool
developed by itinerant Judean and Galilean teachers
during a brief period around the first century.
On the other hand, allegory was a Greek teaching device
that was widely used for hundreds of years – and is still used today.

Notice that the portion of this Gospel used today
has a parable hidden in it like a dinosaur bone
lodged in stone.
I did not include the next paragraph
which was Matthew’s allegorical interpretation
of the parable.

Because we are so familiar with allegories,
they can, by contrast, help us
to understand the uniqueness of parables.

The parable tells us simply
what God is like,
while the allegory
takes each element of the story
and gives it a highly symbolic meaning.

A parable has one strong point
like the tip of a spear –
and it makes that point
with a sharp contrast or comparison.

So the original parable
about the Kingdom of God and the Sower,
before it got passed around for generations
and turned into an allegory,
may have gone something like this:

The Kingdom of God
is like someone who sowed good seed,
and when it was discovered
that weeds had grown up around the wheat,
she wisely waited until the harvest
before separating the two.

Just that simple.

The Kingdom of God
is like someone who is in no hurry
because she understands
the nature of time
and the processes of creation.
The nature of time and the processes of creation.

There is a very juicy,
even challenging meaning
swimming around in that parable:

The Kingdom of God
is like someone who allows time
and the processes of creation,
to work on the fruit of her labor.

Human beings are one of the fruits of God’s labor.
So what that parable might suggests
is that someday,
somehow, human beings may actually bear fruit.

It may be a parable with hope as the point –
that somehow we may actually survive
long enough
to find ourselves in good soil
and producing the fruit of God’s love
for which we were created in the first place.

Is that too much to hope for?
Is it too Pollyannaish?
I will tell you why
I think it is not too much to hope for:
because it is grounded in fact –
solid, concrete, scientific evidence even.

In an age of pervasive cynicism
it is difficult to believe that our little acts of kindness
or advocacy for justice
can have an impact
on the rest of humankind.

Even more difficult for us to believe
is that what we humans do,
and how our future unfolds,
could somehow positively impact the cosmos.

Isn’t that a stretch in this day and age –
to believe that whatever happens to human beings,
as tiny as we are
and as little as our planet is
swirling around on the tail-end
of our Solar System –
that we could have a positive impact
on the whole cosmos?

Some people roll their eyes at the idea of the Butterfly Affect –
mostly because popular culture
literalized what was a very useful physics metaphor.
It wasn’t meant literally to mean
that a butterfly’s flutter in Brazil
could create a tornado in Texas.

But it did express what physics and mathematics
has observed:
that a small event,
at just the right time and place
can trigger a set of events
that culminate in the formation of a hurricane
somewhere else in the world.

We have certainly witnessed
over and over and over again
in climate science and weather studies
how something small on one part of the planet
can have terrible consequences
for another part far away.

So what about the Human Affect?

What about the idea that something
a group of people do in Geneva, NY –
or anywhere –
could positively impact
the lives of other people
somewhere else on the planet?

What about the Earth Effect?
What about the idea that what we do on earth –
what becomes of humankind for example –
will have a ripple effect
and touch the cosmos
in some far distant place
across space and time?

If we have learned nothing else
from climate change,
or the pandemic
or even economics,
it is that everything is connected
and that it is impossible for us to escape
the consequences of what China and Brazil do
just as it is impossible for them to escape
what we do right here in New York.

If it is true in the negative, then it must be true
in the positive.

If we can recognize the extreme inter-connectedness
of life as a result of our environmental sins
and our economic excesses
and our military plundering,
then how can we not recognize
that the love we share
here, in our lives and together,
and the justice we foster
here, in our lives and together,
and the joy that we encounter
here, in our lives and together
have some influence elsewhere?

It is easy to feel the weight of powerlessness
under the preponderance
of media images
stained with pain and suffering.
They assault us minute-by-minute.
And yet, there is an astounding array of other events
that have life-giving influence
that work to counter-balance the darkness.

What we do
and our relationships with one another –
what we do with our hands
with our money
with our knowledge
with our creativity
with our wisdom –
all of it can have an unseen effect
elsewhere in the world,
especially when the ingredients
of time and creation
are added.

Who knows, perhaps maybe even elsewhere
in the Cosmos?

We know this for a fact
because that is how creation works –
everything is inter-connected.
The kingdom of God
is like someone who allows time,
and the processes of creation,
to work on the fruit of her labor.

The stones crumble,
create good soil
and the seeds
finally bring forth fruit.

Now here is the challenge.
If your own personal parable for life – for your life
and for our life together –
is darker,
more grim
and pessimistic
than this hopeful image of Jesus’
then it time for you to reconsider your assumptions.

Frankly, it is far more energizing
to assume our influence
than to assume our powerlessness;
and it is far more empowering
to assume the positive consequences
of our inter-connectedness
than only assume the negative.

As with most things that matter,
it truly is our choice
which one we will assume.

The kingdom of God is like someone
who allows time,
and the processes of creation,
to work on the fruit of her labor.

The stones crumble
and eventually become good soil,
and the seeds?
They finally bring forth fruit.