Van Gogh and the Sower
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 16th, 2023
“… Listen! A sower went out to sow.” Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
This past May, my husband Robbie and I were blessed to take a two week trip to Paris, and in the middle of our time there, we took a train to Amsterdam and stayed there for 3 days. The main reason that I wanted to go to Amsterdam was to visit the Van Gogh Museum. It was something of a pilgrimage for me, not in the same way as making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to walk the steps that Jesus walked, of course, but it was a sacred experience, because through many of Van Gogh’s works, I experience God at work in me.
The museum was as wonderful as I had hoped. All of Van Gogh’s works were arranged in chronological order, and next to each painting there was information about what was going on in his life at the time to contextualize it. I was completely caught up in wonder, love and praise the whole time. One of the things that I find endlessly fascinating is how this brilliant artist’s style could evolve so dramatically from the time he painted “The Potato Eaters” in 1885 and progress to “The Sower” in 1888. In three short years, he went from painting in very dark, somber tones to brilliant, bold, color.
“The Sower” depicts a farmer with a bag of seed over his shoulder walking through a brightly lit field, sowing seed as he goes. In the background is a huge yellow sun forming a halo over his head, sanctifying the farmer’s work. The whole scene is so alive, radiant with purple, yellow and green sparkling as the sower sows and sows and sows. His work is never finished, but it is not done begrudgingly. His is a labor of love. There is a sense of timelessness, of eternity.
The painting evokes a lot of questions. Is the sower a farmer, or is the sower God? Van Gogh was the son of a pastor, so he spent a lot of time in church, and he had no doubt heard this parable hundreds of times. And perhaps he connected the story with his own search for meaning. He really wanted his life to have purpose and to do what God was calling him to do. His letters to his brother Theo certainly suggest that he understood the sower as a Christ figure. ‘What a sower!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a harvest.’ He was so focused on this image that he drew or sketched it 30 times. It was, I think, his way of meditating on this passage.
In today’s parable from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gets into a boat and starts teaching the crowd standing on the shore. Speaking from the boat would have created a sort of amphitheater effect so that he could be heard more easily as his voiced traveled over the water. ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow.’ And we know that this parable was central to the Gospel writers’ understanding of Jesus’ misson since it appears in all three synoptics, Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Matthew, it falls between two stories of conflict, people rejecting Jesus’ message. And that is an important point. Some of the seeds fall on the path, some on rocky ground, and some in the thorns, and a precious few fall on fertile, rich soil, developing deep roots, producing an abundant harvest. In other words, many people will dismiss or deny Jesus’ message of love and others will embrace it. Some will remain indifferent or decide that they have other priorities. And still others will get excited for a little while but then decide it’s just too hard. But the sower just keeps sowing and sowing and sowing, whatever the response. God never ever gives up on us, even when we have given up on ourselves. And why? Because God’s love is eternal. God’s nature, God’s very essence, is love.
This past Friday morning, I was in a meeting with our virtual house church leaders and the convener, Julie Lindemann, shared a wonderful story from our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry. You will probably recall that he preached a sermon about love at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle back in 2018. Love is the perfect subject for a wedding sermon, of course, but he also preached about how human love is a manifestation of God’s perfect love. After the wedding, on his flight home, and for weeks and months after that, people recognized him everywhere he went. And he said that he was absolutely astounded when person after person after person came up to him and said “I didn’t know Christianity was about love.” How heart-breaking.
Christianity is about love, my friends. First and foremost. Jesus told us and showed us time and again. “Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself. “ That is why the sower in today’s parable keeps sowing. It is out of love. God wants us to receive that love, to return that love, to share that love, but whether we do or not, God loves us still and that love goes on forever.
When Vincent Van Gogh painted the sower with the sun serving as a halo, he was, I think, trying to show us three things at once, God’s nature, Jesus’ mission in the world, and our highest calling. On one level of the parable we are meant to be the fertile soil and receive the seed that Jesus is trying to plant in us and to be fruitful. And on another level, we are being invited to become the farmer, to grow more and more into the likeness of Christ. We are called to sow the love of God indiscriminately and relentlessly, whether others embrace it or reject it. That is the work of the kingdom, sowing and sowing and sowing, persistently, eternally and with abandon. God sows in us and we are called to sow in others, not worrying about the outcome, but trusting God to produce the harvest.
Jesus said, ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow….Let anyone with ears listen!’