Text: Norman Olsen (1932-2023) Tune: Fred Jackisch (1922-2022)
1. When seed falls on good soil
It’s born through quiet toil,
Where soil receives,
The earth conceives
The blade, the stem, the fruit, the leaves
Good soil, oh, mother earth,
The womb, where seed takes birth.
2. God’s Word in Christ is seed;
Good soil its urgent need;
For it must find
In human kind
The fertile soil in heart and mind.
Good soil! A human field
A hundred-fold to yield.
3. Plow up the trodden way,
And clear the stone away;
Tear out the weed,
And sow the seed.
Prepare our hearts your Word to heed,
That we good soil may be.
Begin, O Lord, with me!
REFLECTION
Most stories, a famous critic Northrup Frye once noted, go from beginning, middle to end, from life to death. The Christian story, however, goes from middle to end to beginning. That is the good news and mystery of our faith. The poet Dante knew that—his great epic The Divine Comedy begins with his near drowning. As he is going under, a light from heaven comes to him and raises him up into new life.
The seed is a major image for Jesus. It is a central parable of the kingdom because it tells the story of the death and then life of the seed. It first of all describes faith, but he also uses it to describe himself. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John 12:24
It helps to be a farmer when one listens to Jesus—most everyone around him worked the land and understood his imagery in a way that today’s people may not. I can think of no better hymn than this one for Sunday. It is written by pastor Norman P. Olsen, a crusty, no nonsense Lutheran pastor, who served congregations that were filled with farmers or whose livelihood was directly affected by the weather and the flourishing of crops around them. This is where all eyes were looking west to see what the weather would bring.
Norman died last year at a ripe old age while living on a farm near Cyrus, Minnesota, where my mother grew up. He was a dear friend and colleague of mine.. He could see around him the way the seed was planted, how it took root in the rich soil, and then sprouted up into golden fields of wheat, waving under the blue skies of summer, then the harvest, the stubble plowed under and then winter. His earthy sense of the world around him and the Gospel makes this hymn so profound. This isn’t something that happened only in Jesus’ time and place; it happened as he looked out at the fields around him.
The notion of being fruitful is richly Christian. Our story which has a goal and a journey in it, is not about one triumph after another, a progress from lowly to holy. It is really a story of growth and fruitfulness on that journey—of savoring the life around us, of seeing what needs to be done and doing it, enjoying it fully, knowing there is a new world up ahead that will beggar our imaginations.
We can enjoy the present because we know the future which is present to us in Jesus. St. Augustine said that Jesus is not only the country where we belong, but the way to it. To use a phrase from a translation of Paul Gerhardt's hymn, "If God Himself be for me," when Jesus is with us, our heaven has begun. So pray that God’s work will begin in you, as Norman has it in the hymn, and enjoy each phase of growth along the way.
HYMN INFO
Born in New Jersey to Norwegian immigrants, Norm came to Minnesota when he enrolled at Concordia College in Moorhead. He served congregations around Minnesota. Norm and I worked for several years on the ReClaim hymnal. He knew how to write prayers with the kind of syntax that made Cranmer’s prayers in the Book of Common Prayer so powerful. They have that orotund sound and breathe the truth of faith into their hearers.
The LBW committee found this hymn to be one of the few contemporary texts they could use. A composer in his congregation had set it, but the LBW wanted another tune. So the chair of the music committee, Frederick Jackisch wrote the tune in the LBW. The text’s tight rhymes made for a good tune. Another piece of hymn trivia, the name of the tune: Walhof--Karen Walhof, secretary to the project, from Augsburg Fortress press who helped put the hymnal together, was much beloved by the LBW committees. Giving the tune her name was a nifty way to honor all her work.
LINKS
United Methodist Congregation
Congregation and choir
NB: To read my sonnets on Augustine's notion of Christ being the Country and the way, buy my latest book which has twelve sonnets on the idea, reflecting on Augustine's On Christian Doctrine. It is availabe at FinishingLinePress.com or Amazon.cpm, Barnes and Noble, plus several other sites. Thank you.
