SUNDAY, JULY 16, 2023 | AFTER PENTECOST (Proper 10 A)

Once more, we are inside! Glad for the AC as our planet continues to warm up as hopefully less and less people doubt that our environment is in trouble due to humanity’s negligent stewardship of it! Just on Thursday we discussed that perhaps we will have to shift our outdoor services to Spring, rather than summer as even June and July are now very hot! And the same with K. C’s summer sessions that rely on cooler weather in the evening. But I digress, sort of.

Speaking of nature, Jesus once more uses an agricultural parable, because that is what most people of the time would understand as they themselves were engrossed in day in day out and if somebody wasn’t a farmer, they were at least reliant on their work more immediately as it wasn’t like they were many middlepersons between the farm and their livelihood. No transport companies, temporary warehouses, supermarkets etc. So most understood that it is not just about the seed, but also where you plant it! You may have the best seed to work with, but if you plant it wrong, it won’t do much good!

But first a little bit of my personal context - I do like this parable. As a forever student and a keen educator, I have understood it for a long time as an allegory for not only God’s truth, but for ideas in general. See, my beloved author Terry Prattchet liked to describe ideas as these birds that fly around and seek the right minds to nest in and some people’s minds are better nests for ideas then that of others. Some people think of the progress of ideas and inventions in a very narrow, local, and linear fashion - if Gutenberg wouldn’t invent printing press, where would it be! Well, I am sure the Chinese movable type printing press (invented around 600 BCE) would come to us eventually! So maybe more like flocks of birds rather than individual birds!

And I see it similarly with the sower - the word of the kingdom is scattered like the seeds and the seeds are everywhere - in other books, religions, philosophies, oral histories, cultures, ethnogroups… In some, it has taken up good roots, in some it got choked up or fizzled out with time, and yet in some others it has never taken up roots at all. That is why I like to think that God’s truth can be found in all manner of places, even in books by Marx or Nietzsche, secular movies that make you think and consider, in landscape paintings, in the teachings of Yoga or Islam, in alt rock music or ska.... And I’d argue that in some of those media, it took up better roots than in Christian culture and many of its institutions throughout the history - I really do not think there is much of word of the kingdom in the crusades, burning of witches and heretics, or violent colonization of the world.

There may have been at some point, but it all got choked up by the thorns of human hubris, pride, and greed. Ant it continues on. The same can be said about efforts of some Christian believers and institutions to stop the opening of the secular institution of marriage to all consenting adults in my country, not just a man and a woman. As a signatory of the petition for the government to consider “marriage for all” of many years, I am heartened that the law is finally moving forward through the process and not surprised there are certain, mostly Christian parties that try to prevent it in a rather self-serving manner that makes sense to their corner of Christian-related traditionalist culture, but not to the rest of mostly secular, but spiritual hungry Czech society. Their manifesto cites a Genesis passage that is about God creating humans, a man and a woman (nothing about marriage at that point) and then appeal to the “natural order of things,” which anyone knowing anything about the nature knows that it is a rather diverse and rich range of reproduction, sexuality, and family making. Even the so-called Biblical traditional family is not very clear cut as there is all kinds of family structures in the Bible - 2+ wives, concubines, even Jesus technically had a Dad and a step-dad. The law doesn’t address church marriages, just civil marriage unions! For me, there is more “word of the kingdom” in those Christian believers and institutions that affirm that regardless of their beliefs (whether for or against), Czechia is not a Christian country, so its civil laws should reflect that and allow for progressive values that make sure all citizens have equal rights. And hey, I am also all in support of it, because it is getting rarer and rarer that two people want to commit their lives to each other, so why should we limit that to a very narrow understanding?

I think it is important to contemplate how can we be good soil to receive the word of the kingdom from the sower, God. Two weeks ago, during our first K. C’s session on the sacrifice of Isaac and its connection to parenting and family dynamics, we contemplated how logic+compassion is integral to considering any kind of orthodoxy, creedal or Biblical. It can shake things up rather significantly and sometimes it may override orthodoxy - there are many things we are unable to accept anymore if we apply logic+compassion. Like no longer justifying any kind of colonization and oppression of native people anywhere by interpreting ourselves as the chosen nation entering Canaan and the natives as Canaanites to subdue. I think then we will be a good soil for the word of the kingdom, when we open ourselves to the compassion and logic of the Gospel, not just the bits we like that do not challenge us.

Beloveds, the gospel is compassionate and logical - the word of the kingdom is merciful, loving, and caring and we should do all our best to take it to heart, be the good soil. The word that God loves everybody and wants them to be alive and whole, thriving, not just surviving. God in Jesus came down and loved the unloved, cared for the uncared for, accepted the outcasts, healed the chronically ill, and dined with those considered sinners. He not only showed us the way of the kingdom, but also the way to live into this kingdom. Let us be the good soil for this wonderful kingdom. Amen.

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