One Hit Wonders and Parables

Our church custodian is a busy man.  He is continually doing something at the building which involves cleaning, painting, repairing, or something else.  He does have a routine, however, and on Mondays he usually is in the auditorium cleaning up after the Sunday services.  On days when he does this, or if there are times when he will be working some other place for a period of time, he will play a boom box.  The songs are invariably Simon and Garfunkel.

He is about my age, and although I have never asked, he probably grew up listening to them as well as others of that era.  They, however, seem to have a lot more staying power than most of the other groups and individuals that inhabited that era.

There are others, of course.  Peter, Paul, and Mary immediately come to mind.  The Beatles are yet another.  Chicago, John Denver, and others come to mind.  You can make your own list, which may or may not have all of the same groups and performers that mine has.

Then there are the one hit wonders.  Steam, the Cuff Links, Zager & Evans, Lemon Pipers, The Fifth Estate, the Murmaids and many others hit that list.  You can find a complete list at Wikipedia, by the way.  These groups or performers had but one hit on the top 40 charts.  Some of them, such as the Statler Brothers, were hits in their own right in other venues, not all that concerned with being in the top 40; it just happened that way.  Others really tried to break into the industry as a career, but it just didn’t gel.

We had a sermon yesterday on the parable Jesus told about the sower who went out to sow his seed.  As he scattered it, some fell on a hard pathway.  Some fell on rocky places where there wasn’t much soil.  Some fell where there were thorns and thistles growing.  But some fell on good soil and produced a good crop.

The lesson from the parable is, of course, the idea of the message of God being scattered and falling on the hearts and minds of people.  Some are like the hard, pathway soil and the message doesn’t penetrate.  Others are like the rocky soil where the message sprouts, but can’t get a good footing in the shallow soil.  Still others are like the soil where the thorns and thistles grow…the good plants are crowded out by the bad.

But there are some people upon which the message is like the seed that finds its way to the good soil.  The message of God’s love for mankind sprouts, grows, and produces a crop…a child of God and another sower who goes out and scatters seed.

Although the story is old and familiar, the meaning remains fresh to this day.  Our job as Christians is not to determine who will or will not accept the message.  Our job is to “scatter the seed;” spread the message to all who will hear.  It’s up to them to decide what kind of soil they will be in their hearts and minds for the seed of God’s message of love and forgiveness.

The one hit wonders sort of remind me of those people within whom the message of God sprouts, but has no firm footing…those with rocky soil.  They spring up for a short while, but don’t last.  The ones who had a lasting career remind me of the people with the good soil.  They are the ones that have what it takes to produce a crop over time.  I know, that’s not true every time with every one hit wonder and every long-lasting group.  But from now on, I’ll probably connect those two separate thoughts in my mind whenever I think either of the parable of the sower or of the one hit wonders of the 1960’s.