The Quiet Spaces

Luke 8:5-15

‘A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.’ As he said this, he called out, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’

Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that
“looking they may not perceive,
   and listening they may not understand.”

‘Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away. As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.

So I probably should have started this sermon series with this parable instead of ending it, but it is what it is. Because this is, essentially, a parable about parables. This is Jesus, towards the beginning of his ministry warning folks that he’s going to talk in a way that some people just won’t understand; or rather, in a way in which people will choose not to understand. And it does sound counterintuitive to his whole mission, doesn’t it?

“I speak in parables, so that
“looking they may not perceive,
   and listening they may not understand.”

Doesn’t Jesus want to reach people? Doesn’t he want people to see the light and make the changes that need to be made to make this a just world for all? Yes, he does—but we have to do some work. We have to come to that perfect world on our own for it to have any meaning. We have to work to truly understand what it means to have compassion and love for one another.

 

This famous parable is widely known as “The Parable of the Sower.” But that’s a little deceptive; because this parable isn’t about the sower. It’s about the soil. It’s about the conditions of the soil and how well a seed with thrive in it; this parable is about the perceiver of Jesus’ words, and the frame of mind one must be in to understand Jesus’ profound words.

 

Thankfully, Jesus kind of gives us some cliff notes for this parable, so that from here on, when he speaks in parables, we can maybe understand better how they work (yeah, I really should’ve started with this one).

 

He first mentions seeds that fall onto a rock, or presumably into rocky, dry soil—in this case, the listener would have a shallow understanding of Jesus’ words. They hear all the good stuff, all the stuff about salvation and joy, but they hear none of the sacrifice and work it takes to get to that point. And so those words take no root, they don’t go anywhere. Then is mentioned the seeds that fall into the thorns. These are people who hear the words and the commands and simply do not care. They go about their day, perfectly happy with the unjust status quo; or perhaps they’re too jaded or cynical to believe that a better world is possible. And then of course, the good, fertile soil—where the word of Jesus can really take hold in someone and lead real positive change and transformation—a world where compassion and capital-L Love flourish.

 

To really hear and take in the word of God, we have to be in the right state of mine. We have to be in a place in which we can think deeply and carefully about the world around us and about what it means to live a life in which the Christian principles of love, compassion, and freedom from oppression can flourish. Easier said than done.

 

If this parable was written today, I think another kind of soil would need to be added. It would maybe be some kind of genetically modified soil, making things grow faster and faster and bigger and bigger, but what ultimately grows from that soil on steroids would have no real nutrition to actually sustain and strengthen.

 

There was a now-famous article Chris pointed me to, from way back in the still-earlyish days of the internet in 2008—“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by the journalist Nicolas Carr. Even though this article is from nearly 15 years ago, it holds up, and, as Chris said when he mentioned it, “Carr was right.” Carr writes about how the internet is changing the way we read and decode information, and in turn, it’s changing the way we think.

 

“The internet,” he writes,

 

puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else… weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, [which] made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online…we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

 

He then writes about of Google specifically sees information as a commodity, as something to make things more productive and efficient, which goes into the tech world’s ambitions of AI years before it was the reality it is today. But maybe the most profound part of the article is when Carr says,

In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas… If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.

 

The points Jesus was making in his parable are applicable today. So many take the words of the Bible at surface value, ignoring the context in which they were written, ignoring the more difficult points Jesus was trying to make; so many people also fully ignore the words Christ, either because they’ve lost their faith and don’t believe what is possible, or because they benefit from oppression and simply don’t want the better world that is possible. And now, in our modern day, we have a whole other thing to contend with—the commodification of information, the quickness, the instant satisfaction we get from skimming an article without checking the sources and assuming we’re now experts on the subject. In our new need for instant gratification for more and more content, in our new fear of boredom, we lose those quiet spaces.

 

I’ve often made the comment about myself, in an almost apologetic way, that “I’m much better on paper than I am on the spot.” I tend to need time to process, things, to think things through, sometimes to actually write things out before I feel comfortable verbalizes my thoughts or feelings on something— which makes me an internal processor, as opposed to those who talk things out as they’re thinking them, external processors. I have a tendency to, say when someone asks me a question in a meeting, to apologetically say, “Okay, hang on a minute, I’m an internal processor.” Now, there’s no right or wrong way to be in the world, we’re all wired differently— we all get to the point we want to get to in whatever way it takes us to get there; but I think this world rewards external processors more than internal ones. Those who speak first and talked the fastest are often believed to be smarter ones, when they might just be more confident. We’ve gotten so accustomed to this instant gratification that the internet brings that we don’t stop to think about what’s actually being said, the context and the thoughts behind the words. We don’t value the quiet spaces anymore. Worse than that, we demonize them. We see them as slow, as lacking.

 

But the quiet spaces are often where our best revelations occur. And the quiet spaces are required to properly hear the word of God. The quiet spaces are required to understand Jesus’ lessons by way of his cryptic parables.

 

A version of this parable is present in both of the other synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Mark; but Luke is the only one that mentions bearing fruit “with patient endurance.” That’s what it takes to understand the word of God and to do right by it in today’s world. There’s no instant gratification here. It takes creativity and courage; it takes stamina and faith.

 

At the DNC last week, in Michelle Obama’s speech, one thing she made clear was that we can’t get complacent or all Pollyanna in the coming months. And she was speaking to the excited democrats watching her speech, of course, but this reference to her speech is for everyone. In this world of instant gratification, of confirmation bias, of cynicism and lies, we need to be vigilant. We need to think critically and deeply about attack ads, about op-eds; we need to be able to tell reality from fiction, and we can’t do that by letting our ears be tuned like rocky or thorny soil, choking out the truth in favor of what we want to hear, what we simply wish were true. We need to listen to and decide in the coming weeks the same way Jesus tells us to listen to his words. We can’t be distracted by bluster and pomp. We need those quiet spaces. We need moments not filled with content or doom-scrolling or continuous distraction.

 

We need to appreciate the quiet spaces. But before we can appreciate them we need to make them. We’re going into a couple months of non-stop politics—we’re going to be bombarded with rhetoric that’s dangerous or depression, that’s rosy or shallow. It’s going to be overwhelming—(though let me tell you, not as overwhelming as living in a swing state; my time in Pennsylvania during election seasons was downright exhausting). Nevertheless, it will be anxiety-inducing for many. And when we’re anxious, or angry, or overwhelmed; or when we’re simply tuned out, we’re not in a place to hear things properly. So we need to make those quiet space. We need to stop and really listen and think about the type of future we want.

 

The Christian calendar year is full of places to reset. And while Welcome Sunday, coming up in two weeks, isn’t an official part of the broad Christian liturgical calendar, it’s still a perfect time for us to reset. It’s a marked point in time for us to begin to bid farewell to the warm and carefree Summer days and enter into a time of discernment; but also to enter into a new time of togetherness—a time during the busy times of year when, for just an hour or so on Sunday mornings, we all stop for a moment to listen to what the Word of God is saying to us today; we all stop for a moment to join in song together; to pray for and to ask how we go about creating a just world for all people. It’s a time in which we commit to make space for the quiet; a time in which we till and water our minds so that they’re fertile and ready to truly listen, to truly hear the truth when it is revealed to us.

 

As we enter into this hectic time of year—whether it be hectic because we’re overwhelmed by politics or anxious for what the future holds; whether it be hectic because the school year is beginning again; whether it be because we’re preparing for winter fuel costs, for the annual tire switch—we can remember that we have this space. We have this loving, supportive, compassionate, quiet space in which we can give our brains a break from the outside world and we can give them rest and reset so that we can better hear the truth when it’s revealed to us. We can depend on one another and we can use this space to breathe.

 

And so even as we put our gardens to bed for the cold months, even as we work to pawn off to our neighbors all the squash and cucumbers and zucchinis thriving in our late-Summer gardens, we can prepare the gardens of our minds and our hearts to be fertile and ready to hear and process truth amidst the chaos and bluster and never-ending content that surrounds us. And we do that by creating time and space for quiet. We do that by going against our society’s belief that bigger and is always better or that louder is always right and we come here as a way to prepare our minds and our “honest and good hearts.” So let’s use September as a reset. Let’s shake the rocks and thorns from our minds and hearts and join together to hear the truth, and then, in turn to act on that truth—by making a just world for all; an earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

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