What Kind of Soil?

Some of you know that during Covid I became a vegetable gardener. There’s few bigger changes than a tiny seed into a vegetable! Vegetable gardening was something I had wanted to do for a very long time, but I was always very busy in the spring getting ready for the Conference Annual Meeting, so it never happened. The forced lockdown of Covid gave me the perfect opportunity and so we started off with two raised beds, 3 x 6. 36 square feet of planting.

I was hooked… the next year, I had my husband build me two more beds, these ones 4 x 8… The next year I had extra potatoes to plant, so I threw them in a patch at the back of the yard, along with some pumpkins…Last year, we dismantled the 3 x 6 beds and my husband put in a 4 x 16 bed in the front yard! And a strawberry patch. We just finished eating the potatoes and carrots from our garden this weekend. We started small… but we have reaped much…

I didn’t know much at the beginning… Google and Facebook gardening groups were my friend… but I learned along the way… I made mistakes, I had some good luck, I had some bad luck.

Our reading this morning starts off talking about seeds and sowing. But how did we get from last week’s focus on healing, of discipleship, of challenge, of hospitality and of new wine and old wineskins to this point? In between last weeks reading and this week’s is an entire chapter. One in which Jesus heals a man on the sabbath in the synagogue, thereby finding himself at odds with the Pharisees. Jesus then departs to the seaside with his disciples, attracting a multitude from various regions. He cures many and orders a boat to prevent being crushed by the crowd. It’s at this point, that Jesus appoints twelve disciples, giving them authority to preach and cast out demons. It’s also where Mark recounts an incident where Jesus’ family believes he is out of his mind, his true kindred, he asserts, are those who do the will of God. The passage highlights Jesus’ confrontations with religious authorities, his widespread popularity, and the establishment of his core disciples. And then we come to our reading for today, it’s part of Mark 4:

4 Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching, he said to them: 3 “Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell on a path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root it withered away.

7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” 26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come.”

30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

This parable dovetails beautifully with some of the points that James Clear makes in his book Atomic Habits. He writes about people not falling to the level of their goals, but rising the level of their systems. What systems do we want to have in place so that what we do is most effective? A couple of the systems we put in place in the last year is a Communication policy and a Behavioural Covenant… and like any new system, we are not totally there yet. And brought me to my reflection title: What Kind of Soil?

What kind of soil are we?

I love that Jesus used such basic things all the time to illustrate his points. In the parable of the sower and the seeds, the sower scatters the seed on many different kinds of ground… presumably the sower’s goal is for all the seed to bear fruit, but the sower’s system is at odds with that goal. What kind of soil is needed for our community of faith to thrive and bear fruit?

One of the many books I read while on sabbatical a couple of years ago was one called Thriving Churches by the Rev. Lorraine MacKenzie Shepherd, a United Church minister, she and another minister, the Rev. Tammy Allan visited and wrote about thriving churches across the country and see if these churches had common characteristics.

When Covid19 hit, they called the churches and had a follow-up conversation about how they were meeting the challenges of Covid.

The first thing you need to know is that thriving didn’t necessarily mean large! Some of the churches they visited were small.

This was how they defined thriving congregations:

have a consistent or growing membership
are financially stable
engage young people
make meaningful contributions to their neighbourhood, city or community, and world
offer challenging, inspirational, and creative worship
offer educational opportunities for all ages
provide a supportive faith community for people of diverse identities
participate in justice partnerships
foster interfaith and intercultural relationships

This list is ambitious. The churches these two ministers chose to visit exhibited most, but not all, of these characteristics. However, they did prove to be thriving in both attitude and ministry. What Shepherd and Allan discovered was that these churches shared spiritual attributes that were similar to what was named in the early church. The spiritual attributes or habits that the people in thriving churches displayed were:

visionary
radically hospitable
joyful
communal
accountable
humble
open-hearted
risk-taking
discerning
contemplative
mission-focused
generous
offering public witness
innovative

The key to these attributes is relationship… with God… with one another… with the community… the world… and the earth.

That’s the kind of soil we want for the word of God to be planted in within and thrive!

That’s why I’m excited to offer two opportunities for us to explore this book, one in the evening, for those folks who work, and one in the morning for those who don’t. One of the things I’ve realized over the past year, is that we need some fertilizer… some good compost… not some BS 😊 but some good rich matter to till into our soil in order for our ministry to flourish.

If we want to renew and revitalize our church, we must relearn and relive some of the basics of the early church… all of us… not just the Transition Team, because that’s only 5 people. Good soil is made up of many different things… it’s not just dirt! Just as a community of faith is made up of many kinds of people… we all need each other to be the best possible soil for the word of God to be sown in us and flourish.

God the sower is still scattering seeds of faith, friendship, love, community, justice… what kind of soil will they fall on? Thanks be to God for the challenge and the opportunity of following Jesus.

Amen.

Mark 4: 1-34

January 28, 2024 – SJ