For most of my life, I've hated the Parable of the Sower. I think there was a children's book based on it floating around my church with sad-looking seeds withering on a path or being devoured by evil-looking weeds that made me think of it as rather cruel. Then, of course, the more I thought about it the more it just seemed like he was a terrible farmer. Who doesn't weed? Who doesn't know their land? Who would waste seed by throwing it on a path? What is he, an idiot?
I got a bit older and I could say I understood the metaphor of each bit of land, but I still hated the parable. It just seemed so inhumane. I blame the illustrator of that children's book; anthropomorphic seeds represented people to me, and I could never imagine God throwing people to the weeds or the rocks or the birds.
Years went by before I really got it: love. Love, of course! The seeds weren't people, they were the Word! We are the soil! Dumb illustrators, ruining parables... The Word doesn't look like a little seed with a terrified expression on its face. The Word is courageous, compassionate, full of light and truth. It is given to us whether we have a heart of fertile soil or hardened path because God loves us.
I only had this revelation a few years ago, embarrassingly recent. It was such a huge epiphany I tweeted about it. That counts, right? Since then I have been walking closely with this particular parable. It comes out to hit me at the strangest times.
Just last week, we lost a member of our parish. This was a young man in college who died, along with his companions, in a canoeing accident. For their loved ones, the funeral at our parish was just one of four they would attend within a week. It was enormously sad and heart wrenching. I did not know him and his family had not attended church in a long time so I do not know them, either. I hope the rest of this post does not seem heartless, as I had another moment with this parable during the funeral and that is the focus of this post. What happened to those young men and their families is undoubtedly a tragedy, and I feel deeply for them. That is, however, not what I will be focusing on. Sometimes, two things happen at the same time.
I was asked to be at the funeral by our business manager to help with any support pastorally or as a staff member. I was able to get some more chairs out as our church was overflowing, and I was asked to distribute communion. This is not one of the regular ministries I perform, but I love doing it on occasion. It is special, intimate, and holy in a way I will not try to describe here. The funeral itself was beautiful. Our pastor's homily was perfect, not an easy feat, and every person was there to mourn and to celebrate his life.
As happens at most funerals, there were a large number of Catholics who had not been to church in a long time and non-Catholics. For those of you not in the know, to receive the Eucharist you must be a Catholic in good standing. This rule is not meant to be exclusionary, it is meant to emphasize what we believe about the Eucharist: it IS the Body an Blood of Christ. Not a symbol, but the real presence. The rule is meant to make sure that those receiving actually believe that. That being said, it does often feel exclusionary to visitors and is fairly impossible to enforce. You don't know every person who comes forward and even if you do, you don't know what is going on in their heart. Some public figures have run into trouble with this rule as their faces and views are widely recognizable, so some priests have withheld communion.
This might not be everyone's approach, but I am not going to check each person's "Catholic card" when they come forward to receive communion. Particularly not at a funeral. There were some who obviously had not been to church in a long time and while I have no way of knowing for sure, some who were not Catholic and had no clear idea why they were in line. If you are a non-Catholic reader, the expected response to the minister's presentation of the host or cup and "The Body of Christ" is "Amen." I got a nearly comical range of different responses:
"Thank you"
"Thank you, Amen"
"Amen, Thank you"
"Peace be with you"
And from one teenage girl, "cool."
I mention the last one was a teen but I got these responses from every age. I had many very polite and slightly confused "thank you's" from boomers and gen Xers. (Could we please stop blaming millenials for everything? Really, the rest of you ruined it first and raised us, and I'm pretty sure boomers invented blaming your parents, so... /endrant/)
So there I was, handing out communion in what was probably the most literal Parable of the Sower possible. I was handing Jesus to soil that could be fertile, rocky, full of weeds, or hard. Perhaps in that moment someone had an encounter with Jesus. Maybe they will laugh it off with their sarcastic friends later, or maybe they will ignore it completely. But maybe one person will decide to come back to church sometime this month. Maybe one person will come back this week and never return again. But they did have an encounter with Jesus. The love of God touched them, and I was lucky and/or blessed enough to help facilitate that encounter. What they do with that experience I have no control over, but being able to witness that was incredible.
As ministers, we are asked to be trusting farmers and spread the seeds of God's love wherever we can. Like the farmer, we are supposed to trust the power of the Word instead of forcing and hovering. One of my favorite books about youth ministry is The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry by Kendra Creasy Dean and Ron Foster. In it, the authors remind us that we are not Jesus and we cannot be Jesus for others. We do not save people. Jesus saves people. What we can do is bring Jesus to others, to be Theotokos, God-bearer, like Mary. We have to remember in the midst of finding enough chaperones and honing a talk just right that the work done in the hearts of those we minister to is not done by us. We bring Jesus so that God can do the work in their hearts, something we do when we distribute communion, sing in church, hug a friend, pray for a loved one's intention, or any other use of our gifts for others and the glory of God.
I look forward to the other ways the Parable of the Sower surprises me in the future.
The Sower, Vincent Van Gogh. from http://counterlightsrantsandblather1.blogspot.com/2008/08/van-gogh-sower.html
