08/03/2026
In case you missed church on Sunday. Sunday Message
Written by our lay leader and Moderator
Section 1: The Invisible Work of Morning Soil
Good morning. Some mornings, if we are completely honest with ourselves, we wake up feeling less like a Moderator:
lush, fertile garden and a bit more like a dusty, neglected sidewalk. We carry the weight of yesterday’s headlines, the quiet anxieties of our households, and the nagging suspicion that we are running on empty. It is precisely on these mornings, when inspiration feels distant, that we are invited to look at the ground beneath our feet. Not to judge its cracks, but to acknowledge its potential.
We live in a culture that treats human beings like manufacturing plants. We measure our days by our output, our efficiency, and how much we managed to cross off our to-do lists before collapsing into bed. But the language of the Divine has never been the language of the factory. It is, and always has been, the language of the farm. It is organic, slow, occasionally messy, and deeply reliant on things we cannot see or control.
The late Frederick Buechner captured this beautifully when he wrote about the quiet, subversive nature of grace:
"Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There's no use trying to improve yourself or draw up a resolution for the next day, because the grace of God behaves like the wind, blowing where it wills, or like the rain, watering the unjust as well as the just."
When we approach our spiritual lives through this lens, our perspective shifts. We stop asking, "What must I force myself to do today to prove I am a good person?" Instead, we begin to ask, "What kind of environment am I creating within myself to allow love to do its natural work?"
Our task is not to engineer the growth. Our task is simply to soften the soil.
Section 2: The Sower’s Beautiful Extravagance
In the ancient world, seed was a precious commodity. A sensible first-century farmer would be meticulously careful, dropping seeds only into the most perfectly prepared, cleared furrows. They would never waste a single grain on a hard-packed walking path or a patch of visible briars.
Yet, the Sower in Jesus’ story behaves with a kind of reckless, joyful extravagance. This Sower throws seed everywhere. On the concrete sidewalk, into the brambles, onto the gravelly parking lot, and over the dark loam.
This is a radical picture of how love operates in our universe. It reminds me of that classic 1989 anthem by the band Tears for Fears, which used this exact image to talk about changing the world. They sang:
"Open hearts, feel about it
Open minds, think about it...
I believe in love power."
And what happens when we lead with an open heart and an open mind? The song tells us we end up:
"...Sowing the seeds of love...
An end to need, and the politics of greed."
That pop song captured a deeply spiritual truth. Love does not wait for us to have our lives or our world completely sorted out before it offers itself to us. It does not look at our broken relationships, our societal divisions, or our messy histories and say, "I will withhold my presence until you clean up that corner of your life." The Divine flings love at us constantly, indiscriminately, and relentlessly. The seed falls on everyone, because everyone is deemed worthy of the investment.
This echoes the expansive vision of Isaiah, who reminds us that the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return until they have saturated the earth, making it bring forth and sprout. Notice that the rain doesn't check the credentials of the dirt before it falls. It blankets everything.
As a progressive community, this is our foundational starting point: an absolute, non-negotiable insistence that love is the core of our humanity, and that this love is distributed to all people without exception, barriers, or prerequisites.
Section 3: Navigating the Hard Paths and Shallow Corners
If the seed is guaranteed and given freely, then our only work is to look inward at the landscapes of our daily routines. Jesus describes three environments where the seed struggles, and if we are honest, most of us experience all three of these environments in a single week.
First, there is the path—the hard-packed ground. This is what happens to our hearts when we become cynical, numb, or overly defensive. Life can be brutal. We get hurt by institutions, by people we trusted, or by the sheer exhaustion of watching the world struggle. To protect ourselves, we pack down the dirt. We build a shell. But the problem with a shell is that while it keeps out pain, it also keeps out the life-giving moisture of community and connection. The seed can’t pe*****te a heart that has decided it is no longer safe to feel.
Then, there is the rocky ground. This represents our shallow enthusiasms. We hear an inspiring song, read a beautiful poem, or attend a moving service on Sunday, and we feel an immediate surge of joy. We think, “Yes! This is how I will live from now on!” But by Tuesday afternoon, when the email inbox is overflowing, and someone cuts us off in traffic, that initial surge withers. Why? Because it didn't have deep roots. It was an emotional high rather than a steady, daily practice of patience and grounding.
Barbara Brown Taylor describes this spiritual dilemma with her characteristic warmth and insight:
"The problem with many of us is that we want a smooth path. We want a faith that acts as an insurance policy against discomfort. But real spiritual maturity isn't about avoiding the rocky places; it is about staying present long enough for our roots to dig deep beneath the stones, finding the hidden streams of water that sustain us when the sun gets hot."
Digging beneath the stones means doing the quiet, unglamorous work of self-examination. It means choosing to stay kind when it would be easier to be sharp. It means practicing silence when the world demands noise.
Section 4: Choked by the Thorns of Modern Distraction
The third environment Jesus warns us about is perhaps the most relatable for our modern lives: the soil choked by thorns. Jesus defines these thorns as "the cares of the world and the lure of wealth."
In our 21st-century context, we can translate this as the constant, low-grade hum of distraction and comparison. We are bombarded by messages telling us that we are not enough, that we do not have enough, and that we need to achieve more, consume more, and display more to be valuable.
Thorns do not actively attack the seed; they simply take up all the room. They crowd out our capacity for wonder, for empathy, and for rest. When our schedules are packed to the absolute brim, we leave no margin for the unexpected phone call from a friend in crisis, or for the quiet moment of awe while watching a sunset. We become so busy managing our anxieties that we choke out our capacity to love naturally.
The poet Mary Oliver once asked a piercing question that serves as an antidote to a thorny life:
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
She didn’t ask what we plan to accumulate or achieve. She asked what we plan to do with the precious space we have been given.
To clear the thorns, we have to practice the holy art of saying "no." We have to intentionally clear away the clutter of consumerism to make physical, emotional, and mental space for what is right, just, and beautiful.
Section 5: Becoming Good Soil in a Fractured World
Finally, we arrive at the good soil. What makes soil "good"? It isn't that it is perfect, or that it has never known rocks or weeds. Good soil is simply soil that is open, receptive, and deep. It is dirt that has been turned over, exposed to the air, and allowed to absorb the nutrients around it.
When the seed of love meets receptive soil, something miraculous happens: it yields a harvest that is thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.
Notice that Jesus doesn't say the good soil produces a uniform amount. Some plots produce more, some less, but all of it is abundant. This relieves us of the pressure of perfection. Your harvest of love today might look like making a hot meal for a grieving neighbor. Tomorrow, it might simply look like having the grace to forgive yourself for a mistake. Both are a hundredfold in the eyes of the Divine.
When we live out of this deep, rooted soil, doing "good things" ceases to be a chore or a legalistic obligation. We don't love our neighbors because we are terrified of a cosmic judge; we love our neighbors because we have become so full of the Sower's life-giving rain that kindness becomes our natural overflow. We become, as the Psalmist wrote, like a land that is richly watered, whose ridges are softened with showers, and whose valleys shout and sing for joy.
As we walk out these doors and return to our ordinary routines, let us remember that the Sower has already gone ahead of us, scattering love into every corner of our lives. May we have the courage to soften our hard places, dig deep past our shallow distractions, clear away the thorns of anxiety, and trust that the simple, quiet act of being open is more than enough to change the world, remembering: "We don't force the harvest; we just soften the soil."
Let us ground ourselves together in a moment of quiet reflection.
O Source of all Growth, we recognize that our hearts are varied landscapes. We ask for the gentle rain of your grace to soften our defenses, to dig deep past our shallow distractions, and to clear away the thorns of daily worry.
Thank you for being the extravagant Sower—for never giving up on us, and for pouring love onto our brokenness and our beauty alike. As we go into this week, help us trust the slow, invisible growth happening within us right now. Empower us to live out of our natural overflow, actively sowing the soil of love through kindness, justice, and unconditional acceptance in our world.
In the name of Love, which binds us all together as one human family, we pray.
Amen.
You are telling them that even if the physical building closes in three years, the seeds of love, grace, and kindness they have planted in one another—and in their community—for over a century will continue to blossom out in the world forever. The soil changes, but the love remains.
