Rev. Lauren Efird
Myers Park Baptist Church
March 24, 2019 | Third Sunday of Lent
Year C | Luke 8:4-15 | The Story of the Soil
My four-year-old son, Isaac, declared on the way home from school last week that he wanted
to be a kindergarten teacher when he grew up. He then asked me, “Mom, what do you want
to be when you grow up?” I said, “Isaac, I think I’m already grown up, and I’m already doing
what I always wanted to do!” He said, “Oh yea, what’s that?” I said, “You tell me. You know
what I do.” He said, “Oh I know! You’re a mommy! You take care of me!” Yes, that was sweet,
but of course, I was just sitting there feeling judged by my inner feminist. How could I have
failed at showing him that not only can women be known for their careers, but that women
can be ministers?! I replied, “That’s right, sweetie. And I love being your mommy, but what
else do I do? Where do I work?” He said, “Oh yea, you’re a pastor!!” Breathing a sigh of relief,
I said, “That’s right. I’m a pastor. I always wanted to be a minister when I grew up, and now
I am!” Yes, it’s true. When I was in elementary school, I would come home from church and
put my baby dolls on the floor in front of me and preach to them! It was an exciting day when
I was called to be a Senior Pastor, finally living into a calling I had wrestled with for a very
long time. We pastors, though, never really know what we are getting ourselves into. It is an
odd and wondrous calling indeed. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve lost our minds! In a time
where many claim to be Christian but few people go to church, it can feel a little ominous to
think that anyone is going to show up, much less follow your leadership!
A great crowd of people had gathered around Jesus in our text for today. People from town
after town had come to him, but Jesus does not seem impressed by the amount of people who
were flocking to him. In fact, he is suspicious of it. Jesus is about to begin his journey towards
the cross, and he knows all of these people will not follow him there. So, in typical Jesus
fashion, he tells a parable. The practice Jesus describes in the parable of the sower was
common knowledge about farming. Galilean farmers threw out seed first and plowed it
afterwards; they knew the precarious nature of farming on their rocky, arid, and shallow soil.
But what Jesus says next would have made no sense at all in their context. Some of the seed
fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold!
2
A harvest of four or five times the seed planted would have been exceptional, but a harvest
of a hundredfold would have been a miracle. No one would believe it could happen. Justo
González says it would be like telling us that pigs could fly!i But as the parable makes clear,
God can do the impossible! “God’s harvest will come to fruition, and…neither rocks, nor the
birds of the air, nor even the devil himself can prevent it!”ii
This parable is an ominous warning in a time when Jesus is heading towards the cross. It
might be tempting to get caught up in the excitement of the great crowd that is following
Jesus around right now, but Jesus is warning them all that following him might not be what
they imagine. Jesus knows that even some of his most trusted disciples will be fickle. Judas
will soon betray him. Peter will soon deny him. All the rest will abandon him during his time
of need. Jesus is conveying that following him will not be an easy journey; he’s sorting out
admirers from followers. As Kierkegaard says, Jesus “never asks for admirers, worshippers,
or adherents. No, he calls disciples. It is not adherents of a teaching but followers of a life
Christ is looking for.”iii Those seeds that fall on the path, the rock, and the thorns are people
who simply become admirers of Jesus. Those seeds that fall on the good soil are the followers.
There are moments in the life of a congregation that test whether people are followers or
admirers, times when the followers start agitating the admirers. I had only been the Senior
Pastor at Greenwood Forest for a year when Gilles Bikindou, a member of my church since
March of 2006, came to us distraught because he had been informed that the temporary
status that he had been living under since 2010, would not be renewed. He did not know how
he would live and work and obtain medical care for his complicated health needs. Gilles sat
in the Fellowship Hall one morning and shared his story. We began to explain to our
congregation what it might mean to declare our church a sanctuary for Gilles, and we were
just trying to fertilize the soil, to lay the groundwork for important decisions that might need
to be made.
When the time for Q and A began, a man named Alex said, “Lauren, I don’t understand why
we don’t just vote right now to let you as our Senior Pastor declare sanctuary for Gilles. You
are not going to have the luxury of calling the whole church together when this need arises.
Let’s vote right now!” I start stuttering, “I mean…. I didn’t ask you all to come down here
today to make that decision. This is against our bylaws. We must give one week’s notice for
a business meeting. Our chair of deacons is out of town, and he might kill me when he gets
back! I mean…how many deacons are even here right now?” Then, someone said, “Let’s vote
to break the bylaws.” “Oh dear!” I thought. Person after person said, “This is the right thing
to do. We need to do it now. You have our blessing. It’s how God would have us treat our
brother. It’s what the gospel is about!” The soil was far more ready than I imagined. So,
deacons came to the front of the room and wrote a motion to offer our church as a sanctuary
for Gilles should he need it. The motion passed unanimously, and we ended the morning
gathered in front of the altar laying hands and praying over our brother, Gilles. The soil was
fertile, and yet we would learn that receiving seeds is one thing, but growing a plant is
another. We would need a whole lot of patience and endurance. This gospel story had only
just begun.
3
Gilles had fled his home in the Republic of Congo in 2004 because he witnessed a state
sponsored act of violence and murder. There was a civil war in Congo in the late 1990’s, and
Gilles fled with his family only to see what is now known as “the Beach Massacre,” where 350
people were murdered in cold blood. Gilles managed to survive by miraculously talking the
soldiers out of killing him. But later they asked him to lie during a nationally televised trial
about what he had witnessed. The government officials promised they would pay for his
education at an American university if he would do what they asked. So, Gilles immigrated
to the US on an educational visa in 2004, but his country eventually pulled his funding
because he refused to lie about the murder of his people.
It was clearly not safe for Gilles to return home, so he filed for political asylum, but he was
denied. Afterward, he was placed on an order of supervision, a legal status under which he
lived, worked, drove, and paid taxes, and that order was renewed without incident until
- Besides the fear of political persecution, Gilles also had another reason he needed to
stay in the United States. Gilles is HIV positive and has kidney disease and diabetes, and the
specific drugs he needs are only available in the US and Canada. Gilles was understandably
terrified to be sent back to Congo where he could not get these medicines, much less get
adequate health care. At the direction of his lawyer, he applied for a stay of removal, that if
granted, would have allowed him to remain in the country for one year, to prepare for what
would come.
Gilles was told many times his case was not a priority and he would not be detained without
warning. But we were about to witness the consequences of the current administrations’
targeting of people living with temporary legal statuses. When Gilles did what he was
supposed to do and went to check in at the Charlotte ICE office on January 9, 2018, to submit
his stay of removal application, he was immediately taken. Within two hours, his stay of
removal was denied. They didn’t even take the time to read it. He was quickly moved to the
York County Detention Center and then to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, GA, an
arduous journey some of you traveled on during your immigration pilgrimage. Gilles was
hospitalized three times during his detention; Stewart was not capable of managing his
diabetes, let alone his HIV. On February 7, 2018, Gilles was moved to the Atlanta City
Detention Center, and even after filing for humanitarian parole because of his dire health
needs, Gilles was deported on February 23, 2018. Two days before he was sent back to
Congo, my associate pastors, Stephen and Wes, and I got to visit with Gilles. We stood in a
cold, dark, musty cinderblock room looking at Gilles through a glass window, talking to him
through a telephone. We could not touch him or hug him goodbye, so Gilles stood there and
held his hand to the glass, and we held our hands up to his as we cried together and prayed
a parting blessing on him.
Gilles’ story is a gospel story. It is a parable. It is the seed of the good news that Jesus favors
the last and the least among us, which means that in our world today, Jesus loves the
foreigner and welcomes the stranger and the immigrants. Jesus is on the side of those our
country is casting out! The seed of this gospel was thrown at us, and I must tell you, I wasn’t
sure I was ready. I was in my first year as a pastor, and I was about to find out exactly where
my congregation stood and how much they were willing to fight against injustice. I wasn’t
sure my congregation was ready, but it turns out their soil was fertile.
4
And thankfully it was because none of us were prepared for the journey ahead. We had been
preparing to offer sanctuary, but we had not prepared to engage in a public battle with ICE.
My congregation held fast to this good news. Sure, we lost a few people along the way. When
some people are faced with having to change long held views or their faith having real
consequences for how they show up in the world, they wither away and are choked by the
cares and riches and pleasures of this life. They turn out to be admirers of Jesus.
It was not easy for me personally, as the first female senior pastor in the church’s history,
and oh, I forgot to tell you, I was also pregnant with my second child while all this was going
on. But because of the faithful members of my congregation, I was able to do the work I
needed to do in our five-month battle with ICE. Some of my members held a weekly support
group, keeping us organized, doing tasks they could do on the sidelines. The whole
congregation graciously understood that some things were going to fall by the wayside as
we pursued justice for Gilles. They held me up as my days were filled with talking to
reporters, organizing press conferences in Cary and Charlotte and Atlanta, meeting with our
political leaders, working with Gilles’ lawyers, consulting with Gilles’ doctor, and keeping
communication open with Gilles so he could be an agent in the process.
We fought. And we fought hard. Your ministers and your church fought alongside of us. We
made mistakes along the way. Every day felt perilous, like we were holding someone’s life in
our hands. But even with all our power and wealth and privilege, we lost. Gilles was deported.
I must tell you: I don’t like to lose. More than that, I believe in righting wrongs, but this wrong
would not be made right. It’s still not right, and not just for Gilles. There are people having
their lives torn apart every day in this awful immigration system, and we live in a country
where for-profit prisons are making billions of dollars for private corporations because of it!
Kierkegaard says that sometimes admirers of Jesus and followers of Jesus can be incredibly
hard to tell apart. He says, “When there is no danger, when there is dead calm, when
everything is favorable to our Christianity, then it is all too easy to confuse an admirer with
a follower. [But] the admirer never makes any true sacrifices. They always play it safe.
Though in word they are inexhaustible about how highly they prize Christ, they renounce
nothing, will not reconstruct their life, and will not let their life express what it is that they
supposedly admire. Not so for the follower. The follower aspires with all their strength to be
what they admire. And then, remarkably enough, even though they are living amongst a
‘Christian people,’ they incur the same peril as they did when it was dangerous to openly
confess Christ. And because of the follower’s life, it will become evident who the admirers
are, for the admirers will become agitated with them.”iv
We live in a country that claims to be a Christian nation, but most are not followers of Jesus.
Most are admirers. We have domesticated the good news of God’s kingdom; the gospel we
live by in America looks nothing like the good news of Jesus. The gospel of God’s kingdom
has not taken root in the life of our country; the lie of nationalism has. The lie of white
supremacy has choked out our ability to follow Jesus and to turn this unjust world upside
down! During this Lenten season, we are following Jesus to the cross, and Lord knows, we
too, have the capability of being fickle.
5
But, unlike many in our country, we know the gospel. We know the good news of the
kingdom. Myers Park Baptist knows that the gospel is good news for the poor, the
outcast, the immigrant, for those who have been treated unjustly. You are sitting in
good, fertile soil, that is ripe for bearing fruit. And I think you might be a lot like me. I think
you like to win. More than that, I think you like to right wrongs, and I think the hardest part
of this parable to hear is that we must bear fruit with patient endurance. Even if it looks like
the situation is hopeless and we are fighting for a lost cause, we still have to fight, knowing
that we might not win. The truth is, in life and in faith, we don’t always win. In the gospel,
Jesus’ cross looked like loss too. It looked like failure. It looked like hatred, inhospitality,
inhumanity, and evil had won; but God took a loss and made it a win. God can take a tiny seed
that falls and dies in the soil and make it grow up into a movement that transforms the world.
At the end of the day, what we can do is be faithful with what is before us, hold fast, and have
the patient endurance to see God come through! We work toward a future that we do not
have control over. There’s a prayer that was written by another archbishop on the
anniversary of Oscar Romero’s martyrdom, called “Prophets of a Future Not our Own,” which
says,
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only
beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a
tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is
complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. …We plant
the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they
hold future promise. …We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
…We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. v
ms. preacher lady 