Well, here we are. The last of the five elements–although some would say that it is actually the first of the elements. After all, without dirt, we wouldn’t be alive. According to scientists, “Soil is crucial to almost every aspect of life on land, from water storage and filtration to climate regulation, flood prevention, nutrient cycling and decomposition.” It is often said that water is life, but without earth, we land-dwellers wouldn’t have much water: “Water storage and filtration is one of the most important roles soil plays, even today: we depend on it for our drinking water and agriculture.”
Earth is the element of cultivation. It allows for life to grow. It is the place where you find the roots of trees and plants. Religions and mythologies from around the globe have taught that humans were created from earth matter–dirt, dust, mud, clay. And now many scientists think that life as we know it might have begun with clay.
In 3 of the 4 Christian gospels, Jesus tells a story about seeds and earth and the kingdom of God. It’s often called the Parable of the Sower. He said,
Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!
(Matthew 13:3b-9)
The seeds are the message of the kingdom of God. This kingdom is a vision of the world renewed, as it was meant to be, an image of Love. Think of the Edward Hicks painting, The Peaceable Kingdom, inspired by the prophet Isaiah, who spoke of a world in which
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
(Isaiah 11:6-7)
In the parable, Jesus talks about the seeds of this vision of life being spread by a sower in various places. The seeds couldn’t grow on rocky ground or where there thorns. They needed good soil. In the version of the story in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus explains that the good soil represents those who, “when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with endurance.”
I’ve been thinking about good soil and rocky ground as I reflect on racial justice in the United States. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about white privilege and how the lives of white people are cultivated in a way that we very rarely see what was in the earth that yielded our family histories, our values, and our identity. It may be invisible to us now, but the whole soil system of the United States has been cultivated to produce bigger crops for white people than people of color. And that is harder to change than seeds that fall on rocky soil or among thorns. The thorns and rocks are in the soil. We need to dig deep into the soil, turning it over and over, and pull all the weeds. And these weeds are deep. The entire topsoil has been affected. So we need to be careful farmers, introducing healthier soil while we also forcefully pull those deep weeds and discard those rocks–and ever so gently remove the thorns, trying to keep ourselves from getting cut up as we do so. It’s hard work, and it’s going to take a long time. In the words of Jesus, “hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with endurance.”
I leave you with these words of blessing from the Ute people of North America:
Earth teach me quiet ~ as the grasses are still with new light.
Earth teach me suffering ~ as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility ~ as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring ~ as mothers nurture their young.
Earth teach me courage ~ as the tree that stands alone.
Earth teach me limitation ~ as the ant that crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom ~ as the eagle that soars in the sky.
Earth teach me acceptance ~ as the leaves that die each fall.
Earth teach me renewal ~ as the seed that rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself ~ as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness ~ as dry fields weep with rain.
The Reverend Chase Danford 