"Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this." Rev. 1:17-19.

Friday, July 10, 2020

Ears to Hear and Eyes to See

Pentecost 6A

Matthew 13:1-9,18-23


When I was a new priest, Bishop Gulick wisely counseled me to remember that my work is to plant seeds-- seeds of love, and mercy, and justice—seeds of God’s dream for our world. A few of the seeds will grow, he explained, but you won’t necessarily get to see the blossoms or claim the harvest for yourself. Yours is only the planting, he warned me. I needed to hear these words, but never more so than during this Pandemic. I’m finding that it’s hard to putter around at home, or sit in front of the computer, doing mundane things, surviving, while the world around me comes unglued. Tending my own little garden feels so inconsequential. It’s easy to forget about the mysterious potentiality of seeds.
One summer, I got the notion to plant some flowers in a lovely container on my patio. I bought a package of seeds and scattered the small dirt-brown specks all over the rich potting soil. I could immediately picture in my mind’s eye the tall, beautiful potential blossoms; I could smell their sweet scent and could imagine them waving softly in the summer breeze. The next day, however, my two-year-old nephew came to town for a visit. Puttering around my patio, he spied my planter, and mischief glimmered in his eyes. I explained to him that he should leave the pot alone, since I had just planted flowers in it …. But despite my clear warnings, he couldn’t put together in his mind the “flowers” that he heard me describe, and the empty reality that he saw in the nice “miniature sandbox” right at his level. In the blink of an eye, my bountiful flower “harvest” lay scattered in clumps on the concrete and clung to sweaty two-year-old fists. In the simplicity of his vision, my little nephew didn’t grasp the glorious potential of seeds.
Without experience and practice, we, like my nephew, have trouble seeing potentiality. When faith tells us one thing and we seem to see another, we’re left squinting and rubbing our eyes in mistrust. We claim, for example, that the Church is the body of Christ—yet often when we gather, we see very imperfect humans struggling to work together. We talk about Eternal Life and Resurrection, and yet we watch loved ones suffer and die. We read about signs of God’s Kingdom, yet every day we pass by signs of injustice and oppression. It’s easy to respond like Sarah, laughing as God tells her that she will give birth to nations. All that she can see is the wrinkled, sagging skin of her old age. How much easier it is to walk through the fields and point out the worm-eaten sprouts and shriveled leaves around us that it is to speak confidently of the abundant yield to come.
In today’s parable, Jesus is trying to wake us up, to encourage us to look at everyday life around us in a new and different light. He shouts, “Let anyone who has ears to hear, hear!” In other words, “Pay attention!” Right now, as you watch your neighbors go about the business of sowing their crops, the compact little seeds of God’s new creation are also being sown. At this moment. All over. In all kinds of places. Not just in the places that you would expect. Not just in the favorable places, or in the places where you like to look for them, but everywhere.” In his parable, Jesus presents to our imaginations not only the seeds that withered and the seeds that were choked, but he opens our minds to the seeds that are still growing up and increasing, with ever greater and greater yields.
          Seeing potentiality, and living by it, is a spiritual discipline. Not long ago, I came across the night-time prayer that Eleanor Roosevelt used as she took a key role in the creation of the universal declaration of human rights. This strong woman of action prayed at night, “Make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us … Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new.”[1] It is interesting to note that Roosevelt’s drive to work for change in the world was accompanied by her nightly practice of praying to be made aware of potentiality. She sat, day after day, week after week, in a room full of harsh cold War rhetoric, dealing with soaring egos, inept governments, and impossibly lofty ideals. Yet, at night, her prayer kept her eyes open to the potentiality of one-hundred-fold yields. Seeing the world as God sees it, as “a world made ever new,” Roosevelt was able to persevere in her work for justice and human rights.
          Did you ever stop to think that “potential” and “power” share the same root? Think of the word “potent,” like a “potent drug.” Potentiality is a channel of power—the kind of paradoxical power that makes a baby born in a manger the King of Kings. It’s the kind of paradoxical power that makes a mustard seed’s worth of goodness into the hope of the universe. Living into potentiality doesn’t mean just sitting back and imagining some vague and easy flowering that will probably come someday, without any effort on our parts. Neither does it mean flinging dirt around like my young nephew, ignoring the seeds that God has planted in our midst. Living into potentiality will take time and prayer, persistence and practice. Living our routine lives these days, one day at a time, we can choose. We can look around and take note of all the cracks and weeds and thorns around us. Or we can look around and start noticing the divine potential within. We can pray for the Light that will allow us to see ourselves and others as God sees us, filled with infinite possibilities.
          I’m going to try praying Roosevelt’s prayer this month, and I invite you to join me. “Save us from ourselves, and show us a vision of a world made new.” Each evening, as I look back over the day, I want to picture the small seeds of love, mercy, and justice that I have seen scattered that day across the varied landscape of my world. And I will spend time imagining the abundant possibilities that await each one. How can I live in such a way as to foster those potentialities? How can I nurture those seeds?
Perhaps, as Jesus cries out to us, “Pay attention! The seed is being scattered here!” we will have been trained by faithful spiritual practice to reach for a basket and start tossing out huge handfuls of seeds all along our way.



[1] In Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001), unnumbered page.

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