July 12, 2026
Pentecost 7 / Proper 10, Year A
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex, CT
Genesis 25:19-34 ~ Psalm 119:105-112 ~ Romans 8:1-11 ~ Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
We have reached the point in Matthew’s gospel where we get an entire chapter of Jesus’s parables. This 13th chapter even has a name, the Parabolic Discourse, and it has been endlessly analyzed and studied and written about which is probably a good thing, because some of it makes absolutely no sense. When Jesus tells this Parable of the Sower and then offers an explanation for it, the compilers of our lectionary left out the middle part where the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks in parables and he says he doesn’t want his listeners to understand what he’s saying. I’d have failed preaching class for less than that. A bit later in this chapter, Jesus asks the disciples if they have understood all the parables, and they say “yes” (13:51). No, they didn’t. They didn’t understand them anymore than we do sometimes.
But lo these millennia later, most of us have a pretty good handle on the kind of soil the seed is scattered on and which kind of soil we think (or hope) we are. And because it is so familiar, I wonder if we aren’t a bit too comfortable in thinking we know what it means and where we belong in it. So often we make it about us, the soil and the thorns and the rocks and the hard pathway.
Maybe, just maybe, this parable is less about us than it is about a God who scatters seed all over the place not because the Lord knows some of it might land in the wrong place but precisely because there is no wrong place. God can make seed grow wherever God chooses to.
I’m not sure there is anything more annoying, at least to me, than having a priest go away for a couple of weeks of vacation and then to return home to preach a sermon filled with vacation stories. And yet, here we are.
No, I won’t bore you with details of luscious scenery in Scotland or glorious worship at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, but there is one thing about our trip that I want to focus on.
And that is the thistle.
Some of you may know that the thistle is Scotland’s national flower. The legend goes that, back in the 13th century, Norse invaders tried to surprise a contingent of Scottish Clansmen by arriving in their ships under cover of darkness and removing their shoes so as not to make noise. But these Norsemen had apparently not heard about the prevalence of thistles across Scotland, and as soon as the first of them stepped on the plant’s spiky leaves, he yelped and alerted the Scots to their approach, spoiling the element of surprise and, ultimately, costing them that battle. True or not, this legend elevated the lowly thistle to become a symbol of the entire country. I suppose the Norse invaders learned their lesson, and the thistle is a celebrated flower dotting the landscape from lowland to highland. A chapel in St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh is named for it, and a chivalric order is housed in that chapel.
It is also a great partner, this thistle, to a country whose Latin motto (nemo me impune lacessit) translates as No one provokes me with impunity. I know that the Scottish Army was much beloved when it came to the U.S. for the World Cup, but on the whole, I don’t think the Scots are to be trifled with.
The point of all of this, and there is a point, is that thistles will grow anywhere. You can find them poking up through cracks in asphalt and rocky places where there appears to be no dirt. They are beautiful and vicious and profligate and there is no way to truly effectively manage them. Bees and birds love them and carry their pollen all over the place so that they take root, once again, in an impossible patch of ground.
Those of you familiar with Thistle Farms may know that the social enterprise started in Nashville to provide job training and income for women recovering from addiction and prostitution is called Thistle Farms precisely because they are beautiful and they will grow through the roughest of places.
The word of God is like that, too. There is no place so dark, so bleak, so wounded, so parched that this seed will not take root. Jacob and Esau struggled against each other from the time they were in the womb, with Jacob later cheating Esau out of his birthright and their father’s blessing, and yet, after decades of estrangement, they would fall into one another’s arms as brothers. A few weeks ago, we heard the story of Isaac and Ishmael and how Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, were sent away from the tents of Abraham and Sarah, and yet these two half-brothers came together to bury their father when the time came. The stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs are filled with family conflicts and violence, yet through it all, in God’s good time, bonds of kinship are strengthened and endured. Had this not been the case, there would have been no Mary and Joseph and Jesus to have descended from this fractious clan.
This conflict is not restricted to families or friends. It isn’t always outside of us. It often takes place within each of us. Paul has spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks writing to the Romans that he doesn’t understand why he sins when all he wants to do is good. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19). Yet today we heard these words of restoration: “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1), because God is going to sow that seed even when we are lost and thinking we are masters of our own universe.
If this is true, and I believe with all my heart it is (because if it isn’t, I am completely sunk) – if it is true, then there is no place where the seed won’t flourish. Our political divides, our petty arguments and conflicts, our judgy inner voices, our broken relationships, and yes, even warring nations – like those pesky thistles, God’s Word can take root anywhere.
We can’t make ourselves ready. That’s why Ephesians says that we are saved by grace through faith (2:8). Sure, we can come to church and read the bible and pray and do acts of service to till the soil of our hearts. These are good and proper behaviors for followers of Jesus. But it is God’s unfailingly kindness and generosity and mercy that make the seeds grow even in the most unwelcoming of conditions.
So, if you ever think you are beyond God’s love and care, a helpless failure in matters of faith or life or love, I have Good News for you. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God the Sower is going to throw that seed all over the place including on hearts of stone and lives of brokenness, and that seed, like the relentless thistle, will find a way, because this is what God’s unstoppable love looks like.