With our routines and world upended by the Shelter in Place Order that affects all of California, we are looking for ways to stay connected during a mandate to physically stay apart from one another. This is a continuation of our time together, even though we’re in different spaces.
Greetings
Opening Hymn • From All That Dwell Below the Skies • Chalice Hymnal, 49
Opening Prayer
Lay Leader: Palmer and Gren Families
Special Music • Rejoice • Mary Jo Renner
Reading from the Hebrew Scriptures • Isaiah 55:10-13
Lay Leader: Palmer and Gren Families
Epistle Reading • Romans 8:1-11
Lay Leader: Palmer and Gren Families
Tithes and Offerings
Checks can be mailed to:
Grace Community Church
C/O Rene Horton
P.O. Box 368
Auberry, CA 93602
Gospel Reading • Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Lay Leader: Palmer and Gren Families
Children’s Time
Families: You should receive mail from me this week with an activity packet and seeds for your children to plant. If you do not, please email me and I’ll make sure to get one out to you. If you are not in the Grace Church directory but would like to request a packet of seeds and activities email me your address and I’ll get it in the mail right away!
Church at Prayer and The Lord’s Prayer
All are invited to email me prayer requests for next week’s prayer, or to get in touch any time during the week. We are in the midst of an unprecidented global event, and I am available as a compassionate ear if you find you need to talk through what’s going on.
Hymn • Wonderful Words of Life • Chalice Hymnal, 323
The Message
Sermon Transcript
What do you know about soil? For having grown up in the central valley, bread basket of the world, you would think all this agricultural influence would have given me a better understanding of what it takes to make stuff grow. I’ll admit, even though I love gardening, I do a pretty haphazard job of it. Sometimes I remember to fertilize the soil. Sometime I’ll even aerate the ground, but usually that happens when I’m wearing heels and I forget and walk across the lawn, leaving little puncture marks as I struggle back to the sidewalk without turning an ankle. But I do know that there are certain conditions that make for a good garden. And the conditions that might be right for one plant could be wrong for another. I’ve learned that growing clover in one’s lawn helps to boost the nitrogen in the soil, which leads to a greener lawn (but let’s be real, the true benefit here is growing clover and watching the bees buzz around). I know that when I plant roses I should throw some rose food in the hole before I put the rose bush in because it makes for healthier plant. I know I should probably be composting my green kitchen waste because I’ll make for a nice, cheap mulch to spread in my garden beds. I’ve even purchased “beneficial nematodes” off the internet to put into my garden because I liked saying “nematodes.” But when it comes to what’s actually happening with my soil I’m not really sure. I’ll plant two geraniums, impulse purchased on the same trip to Tractor Supply, and one will thrive and the other will wither once I put them in my garden. Both spots looked exactly the same as far as shade/sun ratio and how much water they get. It has to be the soil, right?
Today’s parable is the Parable of the Sower, but it has much more to do with the soil than the sower or even the seed. Yesterday, my husband and I took a hike in Sequoia National Park. We were ambitious, perhaps overly so, and went for the Alta Peak trail. With the parable of the sower bouncing around in my brain, I started noticing where things grew and where they did not. The Alta Peak trail is 15 miles round trip, so there was plenty of time to look at plants as I was trying not to think about my aching feet! I noticed that certain flowers only grew near streams, and as we climbed higher, the bright green of the ferns and moss disappeared and the darker, hardier greens appeared only in little clumps here and there, clinging to crevices in between rocks, where they were able to get their roots in deeper. Admittedly, once I was in the last mile, I was paying less attention to plants and soil, but I can tell you this, it was very rocky, very sandy, and the only plants I saw were the kind that lay low, almost like a cat hiding in the grass, blending in with their environment. They were the pussypaws rather than the lupine. They were the pink heather rather than the sierra shooting stars. Rugged, scrubby, the kind that look like if I were a plant I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with them. The verse, “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.” played in my mind, imagining a stray Columbia Lily making it’s way up to the peak at 11,000 feet and just after the snow melted, while the winds were cool and the sun not yet at it’s mid-July harshness sprouting up, getting what it needed from snow run off and spring rain, but as the summer comes closer, the roots not being able to burrow deeply or perhap spread wide and shallow enough to access the scarce water. It would wither. This is probably a flawed image, I have no clue what the root base of a Columbia Lily look like or if it spreads by seed or by bulb. But without proper oxygen getting to my brain, it was the best I could do.
The soil where the seed is scattered matters. That’s what this parable is getting at. It needs to be appropriate for the kind of seed that shows up in order for the seed to take root and endure all the drought and heat, or conversely mushy marsh and constantly wet conditions that come it’s way. If the soil is right, the seed will then grow, bloom, produce a zillion more seeds for the next wildflower season so that intrepid hikers who are out of their depth can look at them for inspiration as they stumble their way uphill.
Jesus isn’t giving his contribution to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, however. Most people who were listening to him speak would have known that if you scatter seed on rocky, shallow soil the bird are going to get it before it can ever take root, or that if the plot isn’t tended, weeds and thorns will choke the plant out. My garden is a testament to this one. His point is that the seed will scatter and if it doesn’t land on the right soil, it will struggle. The soil isn’t just the bag of Miracle-Gro potting soil we picked up at the nursery, it’s us. We are the soil, and the scattered seed is the Word of God. Jesus explains this in the second half of the pericope, noting that he had once again confused those listening. And that they were confused only proved his point, if they (the soil) were not ready for what he had to say (the seed) then the Word simply wouldn’t make sense. Tend to your soil, folks.
What does this parable of ancient, inefficient gardening practices have to do with us, here in 2020, worshiping from home while huddled around our smartphones and computers? How does this speak to us, even more specifically, as members and attendees of Grace Community Church?
We, as a church, are in a time of flux. Church, capital C, is having to reimagine worship and find ways to reach one another through the incredibly impersonal medium of the internet. We may be stuck doing this for a long time, which breaks our hearts. I long for a room full of people who are praying and singing together, or the vivid chatter of coffee hour. We also know, that Church, capital C will not look the same or simply go back to the way it was pre-COVID-19. Our hearts break further when we acknowledge that important parts of our worship services, like singing together and group recitation of prayer will no longer be safe to do when we come back together. The traditions that comfort us and connect us to the Divine and to one another are forced to end, possibly temporarily, but it could be longer. We never imagined back in March that we would still be having coffee hour using Go To Meeting in July. Our church, Grace church, has also been in flux. The many, many months of pulpit supply, lay leadership taking on roles that are traditionally what the pastor tends to, as a congregation, we’ve weathered a lot of question marks over the last few years. What does our soil look like?
We are in a time of flux and transition, both as the church as one body of Christ, but also as our own local church, the place that means so much to us. In this time, how are we tending our soil? When we begin to unwrap what the Church, capital C looks like post-Coronavirus, how will those seeds germinate when they hit our ground? What if we are stuck worshipping like this for even longer than we are currently imagining? Our enthusiasm to overcome the obstacles and make church happen online has been awesome so far, and we’ve risen to the task to finding ways to stay in community while also 6 feet or more apart. But what about the possibility of this dragging on?
I think we have an advantage, having been already used to the flux of being in search and call for so long before we were pulled apart from one another. Grace Church is well practiced in tending soil that can weather change, but what other ways is God calling us to care for our soil? If we were to buy one of those fancy soil PH testers, what would we find out about who we are as a community of faith? How will we tend one another so that God’s Word can continue to take root in our souls, even while things are rocky around us or we are choked by the thorny underbrush of alienation or grief? How can we nurture our own soil during this time so that when it is revealed to us what Church capital C will evolve into, we are receptive and ready to grow with it? I leave these questions with you today to ponder, and I leave you with the charge this week to find one new way you can tend to your own spiritual soil so that it enriches our communal garden plot at Grace Community Church. May our soil produce deep, meaningful roots. Amen.
Closing Hymn • Sent Forth by God’s Blessing