SOWING SEEDS OF HOPE Matt: 13: 1-9, 18-23
On Wednesday evening, I had a fair idea of what I was going to be saying this morning. We were going to be looking at the Parable of the Sower. We were going to see how the seed of God’s Kingdom must be sown in the unlikely places as well as in the safe places, for Christ’s love is a love for which there are no boundaries. Also we were going to see how on some occasions we are unresponsive soil as well as being responsive on other occasions. How, it would have turned out, I do not know, but by Thursday morning, all my efforts at a neat sermon had become obsolete with the London bombings.
These bombs now seem to have killed in excess of eighty people. They happened in places which many of us are familiar with, from our visits to London. They were as the Mayor pointed out, ’an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion or whatever.’ What happened was a reminder to all of us of the reality of evil in our world although along with evil we saw the other reality which is goodness in the efforts of the emergency services to save lives as well as in individual acts of kindness and heroism by those who happened to be on the scene.
Our prayers have to be with those who have suffered injury, bereavement or indeed uncertainty as a result of these deeds. It has to be our earnest hope that good use of intelligence and sound policing brings the guilty to justice.
Now around us, will doubtless begin a debate as to why this happened. I don’t want to really go into the politics of it here this morning. That is other than to say, if as seems likely, this was an action of Al Qaeda, we do well to ensure that we are not sucked unwittingly into its agenda. Al Qaeda is committed to a battle of civilisations - a battle between the ‘West’ and the community of Islam. This, however, is a fraudulent agenda for Al Qaeda does not represent Islam. When I was taught Islam by a Muslim scholar during my training, I was told that these terror groups represent a heresy. And indeed during the past few days, representative Muslim groups in this country such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain have as I knew they would, totally condemned this atrocity. A blaming of ordinary Muslims, makes no more sense than blaming us because 10 years ago this week, General Mladic’s army of supposedly Christian Bosnian Serbs, massacred 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica. It makes no sense and adds to the hatred of the world of which there is already too much.
But let us be clear. Thursday‘s atrocity was about sowing the seeds of hatred. So often this becomes a circle with ever increasing levels of hatred and violence. A circle that is self perpetuating for it has within it no capacity to end it wrongs. I find myself thinking of Martin Luther King’s wise words;
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
In a recent book, the American scholar Walter Wink warns of the dangers of what he terms ‘the myth of redemptive violence.’ This myth which he roots in the Babylonian Creation myth in which the cosmos and indeed humanity are the product of conflict between the gods, sees violence as an inevitable necessity for peace and order. The myth is expressed in much of our popular entertainment and all too often in the affairs of the world. Tyrants and rebels alike seem to buy into this myth whose contradictions are powerfully echoed in George Orwell’s 1984 with violence saving, war bringing peace and might making right.
Wink argues that this destructive philosophy is dominant in our world contrary as it is to the Biblical perspective in which violence from its very beginnings with Cain killing Abel, is seen as a problem to be confronted, confronted ultimately by the self giving of Jesus on the cross.
At a time like this, we need for very different seeds to be planted. We need the seeds of hope to be planted. For that, there is no better example than Jesus. For Jesus is shown in the gospels as the one who constantly plants the seeds of hope for often the most unlikely of people. The man made barriers of race, religion, respectability and gender, are constantly broken down by Jesus who crosses them to offer all sorts of people glimpses into God’s love for them. Time and again, Jesus gives dignity and worth where it has long been denied.
And you know, seeds of hope and compassion can have great effect. I think back in my own life to those who have bothered to plant seeds for me at times when I was at my most awkward. In each of our stories, there are those who planted seeds, the results of which they never saw, but nevertheless seeds for which we can be grateful.
And you know! Seeds can change the world.
Think back to the momentous events of the fall of the Soviet Union. A key figure was Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin is now chiefly remembered as a somewhat hard drinking President whose policies created the robber barons or oligarchs as they are sometimes known. But before all that, Yeltsin had been a key figure in the movement for democratic reform, wishing to go even faster than Mikhael Gorbachev. Yeltsin’s finest moment was when Gorbachev was briefly overthrown by the old hardliners in the military. With Gorbachev held under house arrest, Yeltsin rallied the people of Moscow with the result that the military coup evaporated and Gorbachev was returned to power. Years later, Yeltsin gave an interview in which he said that in those heady days, his inspiration had been Lech Walesa, the Polish electrician who had formed the trade union ‘Solidarity’ and had played a major part in bringing democracy to Poland. Similarly, Walesa has said that he found his inspiration from Martin Luther King and the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, Martin Luther King is on record as saying that what brought him into that struggle was the courage of a middle aged black woman named Rosa Parks who one day decided that she had had enough of being treated as a second class citizen and so refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white man.
Is it stretching it too much to suggest that Rosa Parks sowed the seeds that ended the Communist empire?
The reality that confronts us, is that we all have the capacity to sow seed. Terrorists have shown us how to sow the seeds of hatred. Christ calls on us to dare to sow the seeds of love and hope. For a retired Methodist minister whom I know, who spent years with the Church of South India, the seeds of hope are sown by his keeping in touch with other faith communities in Bradford. When terrorism stretches our sense of community and creates tensions, we should be grateful for the likes of him. But it is not just for such situations that we are called to sow. Her in North Devon, we have our share of alienated people, our share of hurting people, our share of damaged people. For far too many people, hope has been crushed. But we hear this morning of a sower, whose seed is for all. And we are called, without fear or favour, to sow the seeds of hope that point to dignity and acceptance. It is these seeds of hope, that we owe to those who have this morning been baptised for without hope our God given humanity is fatally crushed.
Dare, my friends to hope! Dare to spread the seeds of that hope! For that hope can never be destroyed by the darkness!
AMEN
This sermon was preached in Bideford on July 10th 2005 at a service which included the baptism of three children
These bombs now seem to have killed in excess of eighty people. They happened in places which many of us are familiar with, from our visits to London. They were as the Mayor pointed out, ’an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion or whatever.’ What happened was a reminder to all of us of the reality of evil in our world although along with evil we saw the other reality which is goodness in the efforts of the emergency services to save lives as well as in individual acts of kindness and heroism by those who happened to be on the scene.
Our prayers have to be with those who have suffered injury, bereavement or indeed uncertainty as a result of these deeds. It has to be our earnest hope that good use of intelligence and sound policing brings the guilty to justice.
Now around us, will doubtless begin a debate as to why this happened. I don’t want to really go into the politics of it here this morning. That is other than to say, if as seems likely, this was an action of Al Qaeda, we do well to ensure that we are not sucked unwittingly into its agenda. Al Qaeda is committed to a battle of civilisations - a battle between the ‘West’ and the community of Islam. This, however, is a fraudulent agenda for Al Qaeda does not represent Islam. When I was taught Islam by a Muslim scholar during my training, I was told that these terror groups represent a heresy. And indeed during the past few days, representative Muslim groups in this country such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain have as I knew they would, totally condemned this atrocity. A blaming of ordinary Muslims, makes no more sense than blaming us because 10 years ago this week, General Mladic’s army of supposedly Christian Bosnian Serbs, massacred 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica. It makes no sense and adds to the hatred of the world of which there is already too much.
But let us be clear. Thursday‘s atrocity was about sowing the seeds of hatred. So often this becomes a circle with ever increasing levels of hatred and violence. A circle that is self perpetuating for it has within it no capacity to end it wrongs. I find myself thinking of Martin Luther King’s wise words;
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
In a recent book, the American scholar Walter Wink warns of the dangers of what he terms ‘the myth of redemptive violence.’ This myth which he roots in the Babylonian Creation myth in which the cosmos and indeed humanity are the product of conflict between the gods, sees violence as an inevitable necessity for peace and order. The myth is expressed in much of our popular entertainment and all too often in the affairs of the world. Tyrants and rebels alike seem to buy into this myth whose contradictions are powerfully echoed in George Orwell’s 1984 with violence saving, war bringing peace and might making right.
Wink argues that this destructive philosophy is dominant in our world contrary as it is to the Biblical perspective in which violence from its very beginnings with Cain killing Abel, is seen as a problem to be confronted, confronted ultimately by the self giving of Jesus on the cross.
At a time like this, we need for very different seeds to be planted. We need the seeds of hope to be planted. For that, there is no better example than Jesus. For Jesus is shown in the gospels as the one who constantly plants the seeds of hope for often the most unlikely of people. The man made barriers of race, religion, respectability and gender, are constantly broken down by Jesus who crosses them to offer all sorts of people glimpses into God’s love for them. Time and again, Jesus gives dignity and worth where it has long been denied.
And you know, seeds of hope and compassion can have great effect. I think back in my own life to those who have bothered to plant seeds for me at times when I was at my most awkward. In each of our stories, there are those who planted seeds, the results of which they never saw, but nevertheless seeds for which we can be grateful.
And you know! Seeds can change the world.
Think back to the momentous events of the fall of the Soviet Union. A key figure was Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin is now chiefly remembered as a somewhat hard drinking President whose policies created the robber barons or oligarchs as they are sometimes known. But before all that, Yeltsin had been a key figure in the movement for democratic reform, wishing to go even faster than Mikhael Gorbachev. Yeltsin’s finest moment was when Gorbachev was briefly overthrown by the old hardliners in the military. With Gorbachev held under house arrest, Yeltsin rallied the people of Moscow with the result that the military coup evaporated and Gorbachev was returned to power. Years later, Yeltsin gave an interview in which he said that in those heady days, his inspiration had been Lech Walesa, the Polish electrician who had formed the trade union ‘Solidarity’ and had played a major part in bringing democracy to Poland. Similarly, Walesa has said that he found his inspiration from Martin Luther King and the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, Martin Luther King is on record as saying that what brought him into that struggle was the courage of a middle aged black woman named Rosa Parks who one day decided that she had had enough of being treated as a second class citizen and so refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white man.
Is it stretching it too much to suggest that Rosa Parks sowed the seeds that ended the Communist empire?
The reality that confronts us, is that we all have the capacity to sow seed. Terrorists have shown us how to sow the seeds of hatred. Christ calls on us to dare to sow the seeds of love and hope. For a retired Methodist minister whom I know, who spent years with the Church of South India, the seeds of hope are sown by his keeping in touch with other faith communities in Bradford. When terrorism stretches our sense of community and creates tensions, we should be grateful for the likes of him. But it is not just for such situations that we are called to sow. Her in North Devon, we have our share of alienated people, our share of hurting people, our share of damaged people. For far too many people, hope has been crushed. But we hear this morning of a sower, whose seed is for all. And we are called, without fear or favour, to sow the seeds of hope that point to dignity and acceptance. It is these seeds of hope, that we owe to those who have this morning been baptised for without hope our God given humanity is fatally crushed.
Dare, my friends to hope! Dare to spread the seeds of that hope! For that hope can never be destroyed by the darkness!
AMEN
This sermon was preached in Bideford on July 10th 2005 at a service which included the baptism of three children
posted by Rev Paul Martin at 7:32 AM
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