Hearing Parables Otherwise: The Impossible Harvest (2nd Sunday after Pentecost; Luke 8:5-8; June 18, 2017)

Hearing Parables Otherwise: The Impossible Harvest

2nd Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 8:5-8
June 18, 2017

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

I am discouraged. I am tired. And I am angry.

I've seen their names before. I've heard about them on the news. And then I've watched as the national attention turns away, as if to say, "Nothing to see here, folks. Move along." And nothing changes.

You've heard their names and others besides. Don't imagine that there are not more!

Amadou Diallo
Travares McGill
Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr.
Trayvon Martin
Eric Garner
Michael Brown
Freddie Gray
Tamir Rice
Sandra Bland

They were as young as 12 and as old as 68. They were boys and men and women. Some had criminal records. Others had the same sort of records you and I have. They lived in cities and suburbs. But in spite of all those differences they share several things in common. They are all African Americans. They were all killed by the police or died in police custody under questionable circumstances. They were all unarmed. And in each case, their killers were never convicted of any crime.

I know, I know. When I hear of one of these incidents, in my head there is a part of me that tries to figure out how to explain each of these incidents. What was Tamir Rice doing with a toy gun that looked like the real thing? Why didn't Kenneth Chamberlain just let the police in when they came to check on him? But then another voice in my head says, You used to play with toy guns that looked pretty real when you were Tamir's age and no police cruisers rolled up to your yard shooting first and asking questions later. And would you let the police into your house when you had pushed your medical alert button by mistake and they were beating at the door and they didn't have a warrant?

And besides these aren't isolated incidents that can be explained away one after another. There is a pattern here.

Thirty-seven percent of the unarmed people killed by police in 2014 were black even though black folks are only thirteen percent of the population. Let me put that differently: Unarmed black people were killed at five times the rate of unarmed white people in 2015.

Almost no matter how egregious the cases are, the police seldom answer for their actions. There were 102 cases in 2015 in which an unarmed black person was killed by the police. In only ten cases was an officer charged with a crime. In only two cases was there a conviction.ⁱ

The only thing that separates Tamir's story from mine is the color of his skin. And that does not mean that Tamir died because of his skin color. No one dies because of their skin color. They die because of the racism of their killers. And I don't mean the kind of racism that sends someone out to join the KKK or some skinhead militia. I mean the kind of racism that causes a trained police officer to look at a twelve-year-old kid shooting plastic pellets at trees and rocks and see a threat to public safety so massive that it must be met with deadly force that is meted out without warning.

I'm discourage by this wanton disregard for lives of human beings whom God calls beloved children. I'm tired of black people being regarded as the enemy. I'm angry about police departments acting as if black neighborhoods were hostile territory to be occupied.

And that brings me to Friday of this last week. On Friday, Jerónimo Yanez was acquitted in the shooting death of Philando Castile. Cleared of all charges. Free to go.

Office Yanez was on patrol last July 16 when he saw Philando Castile behind the wheel of a car. Something about the shape of his nose reminded Yanez of robbery suspect, so Officer Yanez pulled Castile over. Castile complied. Castile's girlfriend and her daughter were in the back seat. Yanez approached the driver's side window and asked to see Castile's license and registration. Standard stuff. Castile reached for his wallet and while doing so told Yanez that he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Yanez drew his weapon and shot Castile in the chest killing him.

Now, like I said, I know the little voices, the voices in my head, the voices that look for anything to put the blame for his death on Castile. I know those voices. I have come to recognize those voices as my inner racist trying desperately to defend my privileged status as a white person. What I have come to realize is that before it will admit that being black is a risk factor for being killed by the police, my inner racist demands that the victim be a "perfect Negro." The slightest deviation not just from being a model citizen, but a model Negro will let a racist officer off the hook. Is it not good enough that Philando Castile had lived blamelessly for years, that he held a job, that the children and staff at the school where he worked loved him, that he greeted children by name every day, that we was trying to be a father to his girlfriend's daughter? What does my inner racist want, anyway? Did it expect Mr. Castile to scrape and bow, to hang his head and speak only in "Yessuh" and "Nosuh"? What? He had a gun? Yes, he had a gun for which he also had a permit. That is not a crime. But maybe my inner racist cannot abide an armed Negro, maybe that strips him of any claim to be a perfect Negro. And if he is not a perfect Negro, then he deserved to die.

I am discouraged. I am tired. And I am angry. I am discouraged over my own implicit bias that, really, has no right to be a part of my own inner conversations. I am tired of having work around it. I am angry that I have to even though I never asked for it.

I am discouraged that I live in a country that is so blind to its own racism while pretending that it has gotten over it and is shocked every time that racism erupts in some spectacularly ugly way. I am tired of having to explain what that means. I am angry that it is so impossibly hard for a black man to get justice in the nation that proclaims itself a land "of liberty and justice for all."

I am discouraged. I am tired. And I am angry.

……….

A sower went out to sow. He scattered seed across his field. He went surrounded by a thin cloud of seed flying in every direction. Later he would guide a scratch plow across the same field, kicking up a little soil to cover the seeds so that they would germinate and take root.

There were many ways this project could fail. He knew them all. Some seed fell along a path that cut across his field. The soil there was packed so hard no simple scratch plow would make even a shallow furrow. Even while still scattering seed, the birds were landing on the path, picking up seed as fast as they could manage it. He might as well be putting those seeds in a bird feeder.

Some seed would fall onto that rocky, thin soil in the southwest corner of his little plot. The seed would sprout. It would grow up quickly. But then dry season would come after the early rains. To survive the dry season, to live long enough to make it to the late rains, the plants would need deep roots. And in that rocky thin soil deep roots were impossible. The long hot days of the dry season would kill anything that sprouted there. He might as well have baked those seeds on a hot stone.

Other seeds would fall along the weedy boundary between his field and the next. Those seed, too, would spring up, but they would be overshadowed by the weeds and never come to a harvest.

There were all sorts of ways this crop could fail and he had seen them all. Those hazards didn't even include the ones that could take he whole planting at once: insects descending in a cloud to ravage everything green, pestilence that rendered the harvest a harvest of poison, or his neighbor Schlomo's sheep that got out of their pen one night last year, gorged themselves sick on his new wheat, and trampled the rest.

There were so many ways for a crop to fail. He had seen them all. He had seen so much of his good work gone to waste. He was discouraged. He was tired. And he was angry.

Everything about this story is ordinary and common. Everyone knew this sower or one just like him. Everyone had a field like this one, full of hazards to any attempt to make it productive. Or at least they knew of fields like it. Especially since the big landowners had slowly but surely taken over all the good land in the valleys, forcing peasants into the hills, to farm land that was really only good for grazing and not terribly good even for that. Many of Jesus' hearers were discourage and tired and angry. Why even carry on? Why plant at all? What was the point?

Ah, Jesus said, but some of the seed doesn't fall on the path or on thin soil, or into the weeds. Some of the seed falls on good soil. It germinates, no one knows how. The roots go down and the stem grows up, just like it did when we were in kindergarten. No one knows why. And the plant grows during the first rain and it sends down roots, chasing the retreating moisture deep into the soil. The roots and the moisture deep in the ground sustain it through the dry season until the late rains come and the plants take up the fresh moisture and the grain swells and ripens. Harvest comes, says Jesus, and the plants yield a hundred grains for every seed sown.

And here is where our train of thought goes off the rails. What? Wait a minute. A hundred grains? That's not possible. A single wheat plant yields between twenty and thirty grains. And that's only for the seed that germinates. A hundred fold harvest? That can't possibly be real!

But what if it were? With just a hundred-fold yield the sower could pay off his debts and hold his land free and clear. With just a hundred-fold yield, he could buy a sheep or two himself. With just a hundred-fold yield, he could afford to make a good match for his eldest daughter Deborah, she of the twinkling eye and the sparkling wit who would add life to any man's household and whom he would hate to see worn down by hardship as his own dear wife Miriam had been.

Wouldn't that be the dawn of a day when everyone had enough and no one had too little or too much? Wouldn't that be like the prophet Micah's dream:

All will sit underneath their own grapevines, under their own fig trees. There will be no one to terrify them; for the mouth of the Lord of heavenly forces has spoken. [Micah 4:4]

What would it be for the sower to hear news like that? I think the sower would look out at the world with eyes that held a new light. I think the sower would march across the field with a lighter step and cast seed with a new flourish.

What about us? What about we who are discouraged, tired, and angry because all our work to bring about God's dream in our world is swallowed up in competing "ism's" before it even sprouts?

We know all the ways that our work for peace can fail. We know all the ways that our dream of justice can fade away. Interests who have money to make from war making drown out our voices, demonize a far away people, rain death on them from the skies, and cash their government checks. Letters that carry our outrage are counted and then discarded and are outweighed by a single check from a big donor. We know all the ways that the prophet's dream can fail.

So we have gathered today as the discouraged, the tired, the angry.

But this is not the end of the story. There is still the part about the hundred grains of wheat for every seed. There is still the impossible promise. For this isn't just a story of an ordinary farmer with planting ordinary seed in an ordinary field. It is also the story of an extraordinary God who dreams an extraordinary dream and will bring it to pass, in and through and despite our efforts. Our effort, this God declares, will not just yield twenty- or thirty-fold, but a hundred-fold.

We are discouraged. We are tired. We are angry. But the struggle for justice, the quest for peace, is not just our dream. It is also God's dream. "Lift up your heads," God says. "Lift up your hearts. An impossible harvest is coming--a hundred-fold harvest. More certain than the all the ways a dream can die, it is coming."

A sower went out to sow...If you hear anything, said Jesus, hear this.

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i “Police Killed More than 100 Unarmed Black People in 2015,” Mapping Police Violence, accessed June 17, 2017, https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed/.