Pentecost 6A
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
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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