THE GROUND WE CHOOSE
“And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” Mark 4:16-20
This was the Bible passage that the nine massacred Bible study members were mining when they were shot down in cold blood a week ago on June 17, 2015.
Cynthia Maire Graham Hurd (54)
Susie Jackson (87)
Ethel Lee Lance (70)
Depayne Middleton-Doctor (49)
Clementa C. Pinckney (41)
Tywanza Sanders (26)
Daniel Simmons (74)
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton (45)
Myra Thompson (59)
it’s not the seeds that are important, it’s the soil
rocky ground
thorny ground
good soil
rocky ground
doesn’t give us a place to put down roots to weather the storms and challenges of life and living
it gives us little to hold on to when we face persecution because there is nothing there to grab except rocks that shift and cut us
they might look sturdy, but they are undependable because they are not boulders
and the faith we must have is grounded on the boulders of love, hope, and justice
rocky ground is made up of tiny motives, petty desires, isms, and schisms
rocky ground shifts under our feet and leaves us unstable and uncertain and often times lost when we are asked to stand up for the least of these or even for ourselves
thorny ground
encourages us to let the word of God take a back seat to the pursuit of wealth and the acquisition of things
we choke on thorny ground
we choke on the thorns of greed and hatred and bigotry
those thorns, they look good to us
but if we look at them more closely, we see they are made up of violence cloaked in some misbegotten notion of pride and history
if we look more closely, we see the symbols of lynching trees and hooded men, women, and children, and burning crosses
if we look more closely, we see homo-antagonism dressed up in the Sunday- go-to-meeting clothes of piety and respectability
if we look more closely, and we see, sadly, ourselves far too may times
as we choke on bubble gum faithfulness and we shrivel like grapes in the sun
and then there is the good soil
good soil helps us lean more fully into our faith
good soil helps us realize that massacring 9 people in a Bible study because they are black and not like you is sinful and demonic and mental illness has nothing or little to do with it
good soil allows us to name evil unapologetically and refuse to give into the ways that evil likes to bait us into hatred
good soil helps us understand that God is a god of love and we are a people who stand in that love
but good soil also tells us it’s alright to be angry at sin as long as we will also use every fiber in our body to combat it, defeat it, bury it, and turn and walk into the healthy lives God is offering us each and every day
good soil knows something about forgiveness and something about atonement and something about hope and something about righteousness and something about justice
good soil knows you can’t rush reconciliation; but you must hurry toward right relationships
good soil tells us over and over again that black lives matter, that we all matter in a great variety of ways and because we matter we must lean into hope that puts running in our feet and dancing in our steps as we proclaim and live a witness wrapped in God’s word to us: you are mine and I am yours
good soil is ground that has been worked and prepared
it has been plowed and tilled and it is ready to receive those of us who come to grow our hearts and realize that the grace of God surrounds us
yes, this has been a difficult month in a difficult year
from mckenney, tx to rachel dolezal to emanuel ame church
from collapsing transracial (whatever that is) into transgender
to ferguson to new york to baltimore and more
it has been a wretched year on many accounts and I am persuaded that the emanuel ame massacre is more than the act of one racist young man with a gun and an ideology fueled by hatred and perhaps fear
the massacre was and is about us and the culture and the theologies we embody and practice
we are the ones who far too often do a duck and cover around gun control, symbols of hatred (yes, the confederate flag is one among many), racist/sexist/”ist” jokes, the rolling back of voting rights, the dismantling of affirmative action, the outright attack on the poor
all these and more with a theology that celebrates the individual and forgets that one of the most powerful biblical witnesses is Jesus calling us into community with each other and with God
our theologies are like the rocky and thorny ground in the passage from Mark and we are not giving folks enough to grow their lives into healthy and faithful witnesses
but we can change
it’s the soil more than the seed and we must choose where we will cast our lives
adapted from a community-wide Bible study marking the Charles 9 massacre
6/23/15