A story.

There is a picture of us gardening, laughing while planting a tree, my mother is holding a shovel while my grandfather holds the tree straight.

I am to the side, I must be 17 or so because I am wearing Andre Agassi tennis shoes, hi-topped and fluorescent, my jeans are pegged as was the style that was stylish for just a little bit and one I held on to for too long.

I am smiling.

Everyone in the picture is smiling; a laugh captured and held still for thirty-plus years, a happy memory.

A memory planted on good earth, good soil and a dedicated hand who will water the root ball until it spreads out further into the earth.

New roots will web and weave beneath the soil for the soil was well-watered, the soil was rich in nutrients, the soil was well irrigated, water can get to be too much sometimes and it needs a place to go where it can flow away and not rot out the roots.

The earth was well maintained and the tree would someday blossom even if the hands that first straightened it and helped maintain it long after the laughter subsided and smiles returned home left us a few years later on a bright December day.

That tree, I wonder, about that tree that grew in Lakehurst, New Jersey might still be there somewhere in Leisure Knoll on a street of similar looking ranch homes built for retirees.

Built for those who would have more time on their hands to pursue their interests, especially if their interests were gardening and being with family after a lifetime of working overseas.

Yet there were always pictures.

Pictures of flowering tropical gardens in Nairobi or somewhere in Indonesia.

You can see a bush planted just so in a picture of the house in Pompton Plains.

The pachysandra was dense and lush in the backyard of their house in Upper Montclair.

Certainly, these are pictures of people younger than we are today smiling and full of joy and certainly there would be a nice example of a well-kept garden photographed in the background even if the focus of the picture lay on smiles shared outside.

I grew up with gardeners and they taught me what good soil meant and how important it was to growth.

And I knew from their experience and training that good soil is very important.

And I also knew that their training was a life instruction as well.

Plant on good earth and you will be enjoying the juiciest of beefsteak tomatoes and the most flavorful zucchinis (or zooks as my father calls them.)

Plant on good earth and you will raise good plants.

Plant on good earth and you will raise good humans.

And so we do that.

We try our hardest and work our hardest and by doing so, we are able to live in communities that are planted on good soil.

For good soil raises good people.

And then there is God.

God will plant wherever there is the potential for growth.

And our lesson then is to plant as God plants.

For even though on the rocky ground a plant might shrivel and die, some plants do survive.

Though birds might take up some seed placed on the path, other seeds will survive in the cracks and crevices found in that pathway.

Even amidst the thorns, some plants will sprout and even thrive.

And God will plant where faith will grow.

This morning’s reading is about good soil, yes.

It is also about the perseverance required to thrive amidst the bad soil.

The perseverance to seek sustenance when the rains do not arrive; the wherewithal to seek nutrients when the soil is but rocky and sand; to shift when the waters flow too deep and threaten root systems that would rot if kept in place.

Friends, God will plant where there can be growth.

God will plant heroes in the midst of great evil.

A story.

A child was born in a time of evil; great harm was done to her and her ancestors and some of that harm was done in the name of God.

This child was born a slave when slavery was legal.

Her father was separated from his family when she was but small.

Her three sisters were sold as property to another plantation owner.

Human beings sold as property.

Her mother was hired out to work in other farms and fields and forests; she was separated from her mother for longs stretches of time as the mother was forced to care for other children in other fields as their own parents labored away on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

At thirteen she was accidentally hit on the head by a two-pound weight.

That weight caused a traumatic brain injury and she developed epilepsy that would affect her for the rest of her life.

Despite this upbringing, despite the fact she was born into slavery, despite the fact she was planted on rocky ground, Araminta Ross persevered.

And in 1844 at the age of twenty-two, Ms. Ross married a free man named John.

She would take his last name and she changed her first name.

She was now married to a man named John Tubman and she would be called, Harriet.

Harriet Tubman.

Five years later, the person who enslaved her died and Harriet escaped the plantation and fled to Pennsylvania.

And from there she would set out to the Eastern Shore many times eventually leading seventy enslaved human beings to freedom.

When the Civil War began, Ms. Tubman lent her talents to the Union side and even led a successful military foray against the Confederates.

She would also recruit spies and nurses to the cause of freedom for her people.

And after the war, Ms. Tubman continued to work for equality and she’d establish schools for freed persons in the south.

God plants where there is the perseverance, the very will to thrive in the midst of the bushes and brambles of vagaries and evils conceived by humankind.

God planted on the Eastern Shore so that a woman could rise up and challenge a world made evil by the existence of chattel slavery.

About her upbringing, she wrote, “I grew up like a neglected weed, – ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Then I was not happy or contented.”

And being unhappy and not content, Ms. Tubman, through her faith, “…prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.”

Writing in 1859, before the start of the Civil War, she wrote to her friend Ednah Dow Cheney, “God’s time is always near.  He set the North Star in the heavens;  He gave me the strength in my limbs;  He meant I should be free.”

Knowing no freedom at the beginning of her life, knowing hardship and the separation from family, knowing that her sisters were forced away from her, knowing all of this, Tubman knew God.

It is convenient to think that a Sower spreading seed upon the rocky path or amidst the prickers of the thorn bush is rather cavalier about their seed; that they don’t care about where it lands or how it falls.

But if we think of the Sower as not a human but God, then we see that God will plant where even the miserable will prosper.

And still, if we see a plant struggling amongst the thorns, is it not on us to help remove those branches and roots that are choking the plant that would prosper without them?

Is it not our Christian duty to add soil to the seed that lands upon thin earth so it will not shrivel?

We can see suffering and not act or we can seek out suffering and change it.

This story gives us hope that those that suffer can overcome it.

And it gives us the obligation to help those in need.

All that we do in Christ’s name will alleviate suffering, all that we do in Christ’s name will bear fruit thirty-fold, sixty fold, even one hundred fold.

Those who have been planted on the good earth can share that soil and ease the suffering of those planted on rocky ground so that they might persevere and so that they might overcome.

Amen.