Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65: 9-13
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Sermon by Pastor Joel
There is a picture that has haunted me this week. It stays with me, even though I am Canadian, a big guy, a white man, and even though I live in one the safest – perhaps, the safest – countries in the world. It is the picture of a commuter on the metro in Washington, D.C. on July 4th—the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence. The commuter is a woman. She is Black. She looks small. But that may be just because standing and sitting all around her, even hovering over her, are white men. Her narrow shoulders look tiny in her subway seat with all of these men wearing white handkerchiefs to mask their faces. They are part of the crowd of 400 from the Patriot Front that marched down the streets on this historic American day. The Patriot Front is a white supremacist group. They want to recreate America as a white, ethnostate for people solely from European background. To me, they are vile and hateful. I am sure they think of themselves as dissidents.
This week, another piece of media remained with me, this one an essay in The Atlantic about David Thoreau, an environmentalist, writer, and libertarian. The story begins with a moment in Thoreau’s life in 1846, when he was stopped by a tax collector, insisting he pay a poll tax. Thoreau refused – paying the tax, the writer explains, would be supporting the government, and the current government supported slavery, and so Thoreau reasoned that paying the tax would be supporting slavery. Thoreau was sent to jail. He only stayed for one night, but the writer contends that the piece led to his most famous essay: Resistance to Civil Government. In it, he criticizes those who agree with him about slavery but do nothing. His individual conscience is his guide: his only obligation is to do what he believed to be right. He will not, he writes, restrict the freedom of another person, even in the pursuit of those righteous actions; he must ensure, he says, “I do not pursue them sitting on another man’s shoulders.” Thoreau, the Atlantic writer, observes, did not use the word; but he was, of course, a dissident.
And while the image on the metro and the essay about Thoreau rolled around in my mind, I also reflected on the gospel, written by the dissident whose words I most heed in the world, whose teachings remain with me long past all others. Jesus, in our gospel this week, offers one of his simplest parables – the stories of the three seeds and then explains each one in case we missed his point. He tells us of the seed that fell on the path and is pecked up by birds; this is the person who doesn’t understand the gospel, and never hears it. The seed that fell on shallow soil, grew quickly, but withered in the sun. This is the person who celebrates the gospel when they hear, but never follow it. The seed that fell in among thorns and were choked by them. This is the person who is distracted by other things – who stands, you might say, on the shoulders of other people – and is eventually destroyed by the cruelty and selfishness of their own actions. And finally there is the seed that grew in good soil and prospered; the person who planted firm roots, the person who thought about their place in the world while they grew and were mindful of those around them, the person who flourished with a life of meaning, and love.
I have always felt the seeds were a little more complex than they first appear. Were those seeds, for instance, dropped on the path not carelessly lost or discarded and forgotten, as happens to too many people in the world. Should we judge their failure to thrive so harshly? Sometimes circumstances happen, and seeds fail to grow – even in the best soil – for no apparent reason at all. Or they need some extra fertilizer, of extra TLC from an expert gardener. Are people also not like those seeds, sometimes in need of a booster dose of TLC?
But I take Jesus’ point. When we have the choice – as seeds of the gospel – we should aim for deep soil, and good sun, for the education and insight that gives us knowledge and understanding, for the community that brings light into our lives, and grows us strong enough that thorns cannot choke us and bad winds cannot bend us. That grows us strong enough to be the dissidents we are called to be.
For what else is the gospel but a rebuttal of the base motivations that underpin so much wrong doing in this world – intolerance, greed, corruption, judgement. What else does the good soil of the gospel prepares us for but to do what our conscience knows to be right. To follow the gospel is to be a dissident, to refuse to stand on someone else’s shoulder, to make room in that good soil and share the sun.
And how do we know which dissidents are right and which are wrong. That’s pretty easy isn’t it? Who mocks the weak and who vows to help them? Who marches to the cross, or to jail, for what they believe to be right? Who puts their names on essays and speaks publicly in the streets? And who hides behind the power of the office? Who wears a mask?
I wonder what I would do if men marched so blatantly racist on Canada Day? What could anyone do, as one person against 400? But this is Thoreau’s point, and it was the point Jesus made long before that. We are responsible to our own conscience to do what is right. As Christians, we are responsible to the gospel, which is our conscience, as Jesus presented it. And when enough people are dissidents for what is right, those 400 masked marchers may not disappear. They just no longer matter. Their chanting becomes a whisper without any power.
Let us pray that we grow in good soil and warm sun, so that we may be tall and strong dissidents in the name of the gospel. Amen
