“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.” Then Jesus said, ‘Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear’” (Mark 4:3-9).

When we moved to Brownsville, Tennessee, we lived in a home with very shallow topsoil and a lot of clay underneath. It was almost an acre. One winter, we decided to purchase a pine tree that would grow in the midsouth as a Christmas tree and then plant it in our yard. A group of men in the church helped move the very heavy tree in and out of the house, a farmer with a backhoe helped dig a hole of the correct size and depth, and we planted the tree at the recommended time of year. It was dead by August 1. The soil was just too shallow and poor to support the tree. Over the time we lived in the house, we had a similar problem with every non-irrigated foot of our yard. Each time we planted anything less hardy than privet, it looked good for a short time, and then when the weather got hot and dry as it does in mid-summer, it died.

Last week, we began a series of sermons concerning the Parable of the Four Soils. The parable is about a farmer that sows seed in a field. Some falls on ground that is packed hard and filled with rocks. Nothing ever grows there. Some seed falls on what is called “rocky ground,” that is soil where the topsoil is not deep enough and rich enough to allow the plant to receive nutrients when the weather is hot and dry. Some soil falls in among the thorns. Some soil falls in the places where there is deep topsoil.

In the parable, God is the sower, the Word is the seed, and we are various soils. Last week, we talked about what it means to have a heart so hard that nothing, not even the Word of God, can penetrate it. This is is the worst condition we can be in. When our hearts are hard, we do not even allow God to enter into our being. We don’t respond to the Gospel. The Word of God, the Wisdom of God, and the Grace of God are simply eaten away by the Evil One.

Soil in Jesus’ Day and In Ours

Years ago, I had an opportunity to travel to Israel. A retired Baptist pastor, beloved in Brownsville, led a trip to Israel every few years. He lived across the street from the Presbyterian Church, and his next-door neighbor was one of our members, an elderly lady who loved her neighbor and our church. As this retired pastor entered his 80’s, his friends had mostly died, and so he had trouble filling up his last trip to the Holy Land. In addition, he had fallen off his roof and had several pins in his legs and hip. Our Session asked if I would go along to help fill up the trip. The congregation offered to help with the costs, and so I went. We landed in Tel Aviv late one night. After clearing customs, we got on a bus and traveled north of Tel Aviv to a hotel in a beautiful place on the Mediterranean Sea area called “Natanya.”

The next day, we got up and traveled first to Haifa and then south to Nazareth. At one point, we crossed from Israel to the West Bank. In some places, unimproved land in Israel and the West Bank reminds me of the Hill Country of Texas. It is filled with rocks with very little topsoil. A few rugged trees and grasses can live in the soil, but most of it can intermittently be just barren rocky soil.

Jesus, of course, had walked the “hill country” of the Galilee from one side to the other. He was very familiar with rocky, shallow soil. One characteristic of this soil is that it is shallow, rocky, and poor. In the winter and spring when there is some rain grass and a few hardy plants can grow, but when the sun gets hot the water in the soil evaporates, and almost any crop dies.

We sometimes read our Bibles and think of what a religious people the ancient Jews must have been. Scholars think otherwise. There is a passage in II Chronicles that alerts us to the fact that, from the time of the prophet Samuel until the days of Josiah, Passover was rarely, if ever, celebrated by the average people or by the leaders of Israel. Only a few folks probably continued to celebrate the feast. [1] It faded from most people’s memory. The writer James Michener wrote a famous novel about ancient Israel called The Source. [2] I remember being kind of disturbed by his portrayal of the Jewish people in the ancient world. He pictured them as only partially captured by the religion of Moses, and continually intermixing with the native religions. It was not until I got to seminary that I learned that this is probably true. The Jews could have a very shallow faith.

The ancient Jews were not unlike us. They were busy and often had all the worries people have. Discipleship takes time and energy, and they did not always have the time and energy. They lived in a culture in which there were many non-Jews, most of whom worshiped fertility gods and goddesses. Over time, many Jews only paid only nominal attention to the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus would have known many such people. They had some connection to the faith of Israel, but when the crops were bad, they visited the pagan shrines, performed the ancient fertility rites, and hoped for the best. Their faith was a shallow faith.

We laugh each Christmas and Easter about “Christmas and Easter Christians.” The truth is, however, that the problem with contemporary Christianity is a bit deeper than just those who rarely attend. All of us some of the time, and a few of us most of the time, are content to be shallow Christians. We are unprepared for the heat of the trials that come into every human life. When trials come, we don’t have the depth to meet them.

What Prevents Your Soil from Being Deep?

When I began thinking about this blog, I thought it would be hard. First of all, Americans in general don’t like to be called shallow. There is something in our psyche that rebels against that particular charge. Second, I don’t normally think of myself as a shallow person. I can relate to hardness of heart and thorns a lot easier than I can relate to shallow soil. (At least I could before I began to write this sermon.) Therefore, I began to think of the ways in which I can be a shallow Christian. Interestingly, it was not long before it was much easier to to think of myself as spiritually shallow.

Perhaps it will help to think about what it means to be shallow soil. Literally, our text reads “rocky ground.” The land in Springfield Missouri is really rocky and my father was a gardener. I am very familiar with the need to remove rocks from soil. Whenever my father would extend his garden or plant a new one, one of the things we most needed was a pick age. The ground around Springfield is filled with rocks, some of them so big you have to break them to get them out of the ground. Planting a garden meant getting rid of rocks.

I used to travel to Lexington Kentucky to attend Asbury Theological Seminary. In order to shave a few miles off my journey, I would take a short cut that took me through the horse country outside of Lexington. I used to wonder at the fields where those thoroughbreds graze: they were greener and had fewer weeds than my front lawn! Interestingly, it was not the grass that first attracted me. It was the wonderful, lovely rock walls lining the fields for miles. Where do suppose those rock walls came from? They came from the fields. The farmers who originally farmed that land, removed the rocks, and worked the soil until the land was able to grow that lovely grass.

In order to have good soil, you have to remove the rocks and deepen the topsoil. It may, therefore, be important for us to ask the question, “What are the rocks in our spiritual topsoil?” One of the most important things Christians can do to make our spiritual topsoil better is remove the rocks. The biggest rocks in our field are sins we have never confessed, never repented of, never gotten out of our lives. We all have such sins. These are the sins we kind of like and don’t want to stop. We may occasionally feel bad about them. We may confess them in the sense that we know they are there. But, we have never really and truly repented and removed them.

We might ask if we, like many ancient Jews, have shallow commitment that simply will not withstand the pressures of hard times. In order to sustain our faith through the many, many difficult times of life, we have to be committed. The word in the Bible we translate “faith” does not mean simply believing that Jesus was the Son of God. It includes the element of trust. We have to believe in our minds and in the depth of our hearts, so that we live and act on the basis of our faith. Our faith is like a marriage: we must be committed to God and to his Word absolutely and without compromise.

We can also ask if we lack will power. You know, I have never run a Marathon. I have a medical reason I sometimes give, but the truth may be that I just do not have the will power to do the level of necessary training. I don’t want to get up at 5:30 every morning week after week, month after month and run several miles. The spiritual life is not a sprint. It is a Marathon, and it takes will power. You have to get up and be a disciple even when it is cold or hot and you don’t feel like it.

The life of discipleship also takes endurance and conditioning. I don’t watch a lot of sports, but here is what I can tell you—most experts will tell you that the difference between the best athletes and the average athletes is not usually native talent. Once you get to the professional level or the highest college level, all the athletes are extremely talented. It is conditioning that makes the difference. It is conditioning that produces the endurance athletes need. It is keeping on keeping on every day in the conditioning process and not letting up. Endurance is the single most important thing in a Marathon—and it is important in our spiritual life.

The difference between Mother Teresa and most of us is not native talent. It is practice. It is being a disciple in good times and in bad, in rainy seasons and dry seasons, in times of growth and times of stagnation. It is being a better disciple tomorrow than I was today, day after day, month after month, year after year. When we do that, we grow as disciples and we bear a crop for God.

Improving Your Topsoil

Many, many years ago, I backpacked across Europe. One day, high in the Swiss Alps, I stopped because something smelled really bad. In the field just down the road a farmer was emptying his septic tank, spraying the accumulated waste into his field using a giant hose. For generations, every spring and early summer the farmers in Switzerland have been emptying their septic tanks and fertilizing their fields. After a few hundred years of this, you have some really great fields.

This fall, we had the opportunity to visit Italy for a wedding. The land in Italy in the area we were in is very interesting. I have told many people, the land outside the window of our room was so lovely, I thought I was in a scene from the Lord of the Rings where Tolkien describes Hobbiton in my copy of the Fellowship of the Ring. [3] It looked just like the cover of my old copy from college. Interestingly, the land is often kind of rocky and poor near where we were. However, generations of farmers have tilled and improved that soil. They have built little walls to keep erosion down, fertilized, hoed, and deepened the soil year after year for generations until it contains lovely olive groves and vineyards. Good farmers are always improving their soil. Great farmers of the past did so year after year, after year.

If we want the soil of our souls to be deep, fertile, and lovely, we are going to have to go about the task of improving the soil. We are all sinners. We all have rocks in our souls. We all will have some “rocky sin” in our lives until the day of our death. But we can have deeper spiritual soil than we have today. Actually, God has made it pretty simple, if not pretty easy. Here are a few simple tips.

First, get rid of those rocks. It really helps to form the habit of reviewing each day and asking what you think you did best and worst. If you have a temper, or a rash tongue, or a tendency to drink a bit too much, or whatever, I can assure you that reminding yourself daily that you wish you had done something a bit differently is a wonderful way to keep your mind on the rock in your spiritual life you want to remove. [4]

Pray for yourself, your family, your friends, and your co-workers—everyone you know. Pray for the Holy Spirit to enter your life in a new way. Read your Bible daily and join some small group of folks who are getting together to let the Word of God transform them. Finally, find a place to serve. Service changes you outside and inside. We need also to remember that part of serving is sowing. In the Parable, God is the Sower, Christ is the Sower, the Apostles are the Sower—and we are the sower. Our primary duty as Christians is to sow the Word of God into the lives people day in and day out.

God Wants Us to be Deep.

You remember my trip to the Holy Land? I forgot to mention a little fact. At one point we crossed a border. On one side of the border, the land was wasteland. Within just a few yards, we saw oranges, grapes, grapefruit, and all kinds of crops. What made the difference? One one side no one improved the soil, never irrigated, never fertilized, never added new humus, never improved the soil. On the other side they did.

Jesus told us this parable to teach us that we need to be sure that the soil of our souls is deep enough so that the seed of faith doesn’t just pop up and die, but has room to grow and prosper, even in hard times. To do this we must get rid of the rocks of sin, pray, read our Bibles daily, and serve others in love. This is the key to having a deep heart.

Prayer: God of Wisdom and Love: Thank you for this wonderful parable of the human heart. You came to show us what we were intended to be and to give us a glimpse of the wonders of your Kingdom. You call us to enter this kingdom of wisdom and love as little children. Help us to hear this story with the ears of little children and to understand in the depth of our souls its meaning for our lives. In Jesus Name, Amen.

 

Copyright, 2015, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] II Chronicles 35:12 reads: “The Passover had not been observed like this in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel; and none of the kings of Israel had ever celebrated such a Passover as did Josiah, with the priests, the Levites and all Judah and Israel who were there with the people of Jerusalem.

[2] James A. Michener, The Source (New York, NY: Marjay Books, 1963).

[3] J.R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (New York, Ballantine Books, 1965).

[4] One of the best ways to do this is to have the habit of examining yourself daily. A common so-called examen is one attributed to St. Ignatius: It goes something like this: 1. Become aware of God’s presence. 2. Review the day with gratitude. 3. Pay attention to your emotions. 4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it. 5. Look toward tomorrow. See more at: http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-examen/#sthash.zzhGUx24.dpuf