Planting the Garden

¹⁰ And when he was alone, those who were about him with the twelve asked him concerning the parables. ¹¹ And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables; ¹² so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven.” ¹³ And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? ¹⁴ The Sower sows the word. ¹⁵ And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown; when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word which is sown in them. ¹⁶ And these in like manner are the ones sown upon rocky ground, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; ¹⁷ and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away ¹⁸ And others are the ones sown among thorns; they are those who hear the word, ¹⁹ but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. ²⁰ But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”  Mark 4:10-20

Now that Memorial Day has passed us, we find ourselves fully consumed with planting and working in gardens and flower beds.  After raking the leaves, pulling the weeds and laying the mulch, we can plant the vegetable starters or the seeds of our favorite annuals.  Whether you have one flower bed or twenty, now is the planting season if we want crops or flowers come August or September.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is planting God’s garden and in the parable of the Sower, Jesus is planting God’s Word into human hearts.  From the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus begins His work of implanting God’s Gospel in the hearts of the disciples and the crowds.  We find ourselves in this chapter with Jesus speaking a message that most, including the disciples, fail to understand and even requires Jesus to interpret that message privately to the disciples, hence the “let those who can hear, hear.”  So, it also is with us.  For six weeks now, Jesus has been cultivating us His new garden of people, hard at work to prepare the soil of our hearts to produce not lettuce or beans, but love and covenant faithfulness.

What kind of soil are you?  Perhaps your heart is like the rocky soil of the parable, too hard for God to dig into, too stubborn to change, or even too lifeless to grow anything.  Jesus would explain these hearts as so hard that Satan can steal God’s Word before it can do anything.  Still today, the human heart can be and often is hard to what God wants to do.  We can be inflexible, mired in comfortable familiarity, and pulling against the inertia of the ways we have always done things.  But the only result of the hard heart is that God’s Kingdom is stolen from us, perhaps because in our stubbornness we never really wanted it and instead wanted a different kingdom, our own.

What about the heart that is choked with care and desire?  These are also too common in the Church today.  More concerned with having enough resources to pay the bills, the church’s and our own, we focus solely on the institutional needs and worries instead of people and God’s concerns.  Endowments are used to maintain bureaucracy instead of nurturing wholeness in people.  We care more about coffee and toilet paper than mission and evangelism, and these things choke out what God is trying to grow.  We are hearts filled with weeds instead of hearts filled with love and God’s Word is choked out.

What about the heart that is shallow?  These are the people that are committed and devoted when it profits them but disappear or leave when the difficult tasks of being in this different community become risky or costly.  They are here for Easter Sunrise Service but not to feed or tend the homeless.  They are here for Christmas Eve candles but missing when discerning issues of justice or social witness.  They are here for the community dinner but missing when tough decisions and sacrifices need to be made.  We are shallow hearts when we can procure the greatest goods and services from God, but when devotion or commitment or sacrifice is needed on our part, absence instead is our contribution and God’s Word is burned up.

What about the heart that is faithful?  You see the soil merely is the receptacle for the seed, the seed provides and creates everything.  The soil is merely a pliable and open vessel for the Creator’s work.  When we listen to the Scriptures and allow the Spirit to shape our worldviews, our principles, our priorities and our practices then we become the soil that God can grow anything in.  But the key word is “allow.”  Do we allow God to do what God chooses to do in us, or do we seek control over the entire enterprise?  In the next weeks and seasons ahead of us, what kind of heart will we as a community be and what will Jesus find: stones, weeds, shallowness or faith?  What will we grow in the next 6 weeks, 6 months and God willing 6 years, as Jesus’ garden to the glory of God?  Jesus is still planting what will we allow him to grow?  Amen.