Scriptural Sermons

As some of you may know, I have recently sparked an interest in farming. Lynnly is responsible. She gifted me with a book entitled, appropriately, You Can Farm , authored by the maverick farmer Joel Salatin. Suddenly all the stars aligned – my passion for healthy food, sustainable living, manual labor, Mother Nature, domesticated animals, vegetable gardening, and the family farm. Before I'd finished the first chapter, I knew of a certainty that some day, some way I would become a farmer. I am not one to do things in half measures. Have heard the distant call of the wild, I have begun digesting voraciously books, articles, podcasts, web pages, blogs, and instructional dvd's on new farm starts, agriculture, horticulture, biochemistry, soil science, composting, animal husbandry, organic farming, food preservation, and home beer brewing. All of this has begun to make me do just as Joel Salatin bids me do -- to “think like a farmer.” I was playing tennis last week at the park adjacent to my children's' school with my long suffering tennis partner. My mind wandered off my game, as it tends to do whenever I am losing. "This park would really be improved by the addition of a few goats," I remarked to my tennis partner. "But what a pipe dream," I continued, "since this town can’t even manage to pass a chicken ordinance, much less a goat ordinance.” “Ah...," my partner remarked, “the topic turns again to farming.” "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I returned, knowing that I'd trapped him. If he said it was a good thing, he knew he'd only encourage my farm talk. But if he said it was a bad thing, he knew he'd hurt my feelings. He opted for the former. "Good," I said, "because Joel Salatin has bid me to think like a farmer, and she who thinks like a farmer talks like a farmer." I was thinking like a farmer when I read this morning's gospel lesson, the Parable of the Sower. Yes, I know the standard interpretation of the parable, the one offered by those who do not think like farmers. I have even preached the standard interpretation. It has to do with the difficulty of evangelizing. It recognizes that more often than not, our efforts at evangelizing will not bear fruit. But what struck me as I read it this time was that even Jesus recognized it. Even Jesus recognized that for a seed to be productive, it needs good soil. He didn’t have to state it explicitly. He simply took it for granted, as did his audience. For a seed to be productive, it needs good soil. Of course, Jesus was a first century man. Were he here today, with the help of soil science, he would know the up-to-date specifics, the here and now reality about good soil. Soil is by far the most abundant ecosystem on the earth. Unfortunately, this thriving ecosystem is largely invisible to the naked eye -- a) because it is microscopic, and b) because it is underground. It all begins with plant roots. Plant roots, through photosynthesis, deliver carbohydrates into the soil. This in turn attracts hungry bacteria, and when I say bacteria I mean countless millions of bacteria per tablespoon. This in turn attracts hungry bacteria predators -- protozoa, again countless millions, which in digesting the bacteria release nutrients essential for the plant roots. It is a virtual symphony of symbiosis and synergy. And don't even get me started on all the other players - the miles of fungi threads that encircle plants roots offering them protection in exchange for food, or the big daddies of the soil - earth worms, grubs, ants, and moles. At any rate, this, we now know, is the good soil that a seed needs to be productive. Of course, good soil, like every thing else in the created order it would seem, is now dwindling and endangered. It has fallen casualty to industrial farming that in its use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers has poisoned good soil into dead dirt. It's now innovative farmers like Joel Salatin who are on a mission to regenerate that dead dirt back into good soil. It is, not surprisingly, a matter of cultivating that symbiosis and synergy. It's a matter of regathering the intrinsic and necessary parts together. It's a matter of restoring its wholeness and completeness. Or put another way, it is a matter of integrating what has become disintegrated. Were Jesus here today, with the up-to-date specifics, with the here and now reality about good soil, he would be referencing to precisely this. He would be referring to soil that has once again become integrated. It is this soil that is currently productive. It would seem then worth exploring the possibility that there is a connection between integration and productivity. It's odd, because you wouldn't normally equate the two, integration and productivity, but if you think about it, that connection surely exists. Integration precedes productivity. In order to be productive, productive in healthy ways at least, a thing must first be integrated. And the opposite holds true as well. If something is disintegrated, it is not productive, again, at least not in healthy ways. And this goes way beyond soil. It is a general principle, and so holds true wherever it is applied. Consider the prophet Hosea, from this morning's Old Testament lesson. Hosea is addressing himself to a society in decline. Perhaps that is to put it too mildly. Hosea is addressing himself to a society in collapse. Society was collapsing from without because it was being destroyed by the Assyrians, the ISIS of the 8th century BCE, only worse. But it was being destroyed from without because it had crumbled from within. And why had it crumbled from within? It is because it had become disintegrated. As Hosea himself declared, there was no faith in God, no knowledge of God, no love of God, no loyalty to God, no service to God. And therefore society had become disintegrated. For people were, and are, not people unto themselves. People are people unto God. Therefore they are created by God for faith in God, knowledge of God, love of God, loyalty to God, and service to God. And to be lacking this is to be disintegrated. And Hosea described just what that disintegration looked like -- swearing and lying and murder and stealing and adultery broke out...all the bounds of decency and were broken...bloodshed followed upon bloodshed, and this in turn wrought disintegration upon the created order, again as Hosea described -- the land mourned, along with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the seas. No doubt the soil too mourned as it does today. Society crumbled from within and so was destroyed from without. Needless to say, in its disintregation, it was scarcely what could be described as productive; just the opposite, it was pervasively destructive. Yes indeed, integration is connected to productivity. Integration is the prior to productivity. So the questions for us become, How can we become intergrators? What can we integrate? Can we integrate ourselves? Are there essential parts of us that have been broken or destroyed or forced into hiding? Are we wallowing or ailing in body, mind, or spirit? Can we help to integrate another? -Someone who has lost his or her way through abuse, addiction, error, or indifference? Can we integrate some society -- some family or workplace or network of which we are a part that through dissolution has become afflicted by conflict or prejudice or self-interest? Can we integrate some patch of earth? Can we steward it back to the balance and symmetry and health and wholeness with which it was created? How can we become integrators? What can we integrate? But one more essential point. Returning to the Parable of the Sower, I have stated of it that integration is connected to productivity, that integration prior to productivity, and so we must become integrators. But not for productivity just for the sake of productivity, as significant as that may be. Instead for productivity as it is understood by the parable, productivity for the sake of the Kingdom of God, that kingdom inaugurated by Jesus Christ that anticipates and strives for God's will and way for his created order. To paraphrase our Lord: Blessed are the integrators! For they are the producers of God's Kingdom. Amen.