The soil of our hearts

One of my favorite passages of Scripture because of what a call out to all of us it is, is when the Prophet Nathan, is telling King David a parable. We read about this in the 2nd book of Samuel. When the object of King David’s lust, Bathsheba, became pregnant from an affair with David, he attempted to cover it up by bringing her husband, Uriah home from war. Because Uriah honorably refused to sleep at home while his men were in battle, David ordered him placed on the front lines, resulting in his death.

So Nathan, intending to chastise David tells him a parable: “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle (this was an analogy to David’s wealth and opportunity to have women who were not married), but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought (this is Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba). He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.” 

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! David was gobsmacked. 

David, given all the talents and opportunity in the world by God, becomes for a time, but only for a time, like seeds that have fallen onto soil surrounded by thorns in Jesus’s parable today. “As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.” Indeed the cost of being given a talent and then burying that talent and yielding no fruit for God’s gathering mission, an action we call sin, is in fact death.

Jesus explains that there are four types of ground on which God, the sower or farmer, scatters seed/grace: there are seeds scattered on an open pathway, which Jesus says is like grace given to people who simply don’t understand or are unwilling to listen to the Scriptures. The bread/fruit/seeds of grace cannot nourish them.

Then there are seeds scattered on rocky ground that simply don’t take root, these are like people who eagerly take up Christianity but when it doesn’t meet their expectations because it really challenges or threatens them, they walk away.

Then there are seeds scattered on thorny ground and Jesus equates these seeds to people who allow the anxieties and concerns of this world to choke off their willingness to hear and listen to God’s word and seek his way in what they do. They fall to their own lusts and temptations rather than taking up God’s own mission. Here is where David fits when he plots to have Uriah killed so he can have Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, for himself.

And then of course there are seeds that fall on good ground. These are the folks that lay down their own lives, take the talents and gifts God gave to them, and allow God’s word to nourish them, transform, change, and renew them so that they can help nurture the seeds of grace given to other people.

But there’s a reason that I chose David as an example within Jesus’s parable. You see we have this tendency, when we read Scripture, to imagine that we are just like one character, or that we fit into just one situation, or that we are only one type ground: an open path, rocky, thorny, or good. The reality is that which type of ground, or type of person we are, changes constantly. One day I may fully use the gifts God has given me and I bear abundant fruit myself; I multiply the talents God has given me with interest. The next, my envy, jealousy, or lust has overtaken me and the good that I want to do I cannot do, and I do the evil that Paul says lies close at hand instead. And I become like David: dead in my sin, living according to the flesh, acting in my own self interest in a way that prevents someone else from experiencing the love, joy, hope, peace, and assurance that God offers them. And I hear Nathan say to me with John the Baptist: “you are that man. Repent.” And so I, with David, confess, recognize our fallenness, the broader lessons and mercy of grace, lifted up by this hope and transformed into a more faithful servant for a time. Seeds on good soil. 

Of course some days, I feel filled with strength in the faith and have a return of the first zeal I experienced when I first converted, zeal enough, like David, to overcome the Goliath’s of our age. And then conflict arises in the parish, or in the wider church, or Christians act like judgmental jerks acting with the emotional maturity of a 13 year old child, or our Sunday numbers are low and my faith and hope take a nose dive because I’m not seeing the immediate or even years long fruit of our labours as Christians; and there I become like the thorny ground where the seeds of God’s grace seem unanchored in my heart and soul.

In other words, my friends: every single one of you sitting in here, with me and David both, are all the types of soil throughout our lives. We are not merely the open path, the rocky, thorny or good ground. We all struggle with the things of the flesh; temptations, desires, anxieties, fears, frustrations, impatience - things that cause us to stop hearing/listening and seeing God at work around us. David, me, you, all of us. 

When we do this, our hearts harden; our souls clench up; our minds turn to what we think we must do to survive, to make it through. And we stop trusting in God. We stop hoping in God. We close off to God’s assurance. We put God on our timetables, our agendas, our workplans. 

But God lavishly offers the same life-giving Word to all in spite of our sometimes cold shoulder or outright childish, belligerent responses. The decisive question is not the quality of the seed, for it is God who gives and sows. The real question is our willingness to endure and persevere through life with patience. The whole life of faith is about the readiness of our hearts open to God’s relentless grace offered to us.

Rend your hearts, we hear in Scripture, not your garments. In other words, present your whole selves to God: all the terrible, awful, horrible, painful, dismissive, doubt laden, anguish soaked, thoroughly mentally, emotionally, physically exhausted parts of you. Confess them. Speak them openly and plainly. Rend your hearts to God: confess, repent of those things you most struggle with; you don’t need to show this with outward signs intended to display your righteousness to others.

It is your inward thoughts, your heart and soul, that God wants to get a hold of and fill with the assurance of his peace, his love, and the fact that he’s got you for eternity. Through humility, patient endurance, and a life of active obedience, confession, thanks, learning, and praise, God will transform you, just as he did with King David, ancestor of Jesus Christ himself, into the "good soil" that bears fruit in gathering others to God. AMEN