Matthew 13:1-23
With this love comes a bit of heartache, because I'm not a good gardener.
It's not like I try. I will go to a store and by some plants and I try to water them as often as possible and they end up looking like I had done nothing to them. The brown thumb strikes again.
Last year was like previous years, I had bought a few plants and took care of them. I gave them plant food, checked all the proper websites on how to take care of prennials and still the plants looked like...well, it's another word for fertilizer.
But this spring, something happened: I started to see green shoots. I realized that even though I thought I did a terrible job taking care of plants, here were several examples of growth. Through spring and into summer, the plants have grown and some have even bloomed. It seems like in spite of what I've done, these plants grew into visions of beauty.
When I realized that this Sunday was the Sunday of the Parable of the Sower, I started looking at past sermons. I remember preaching a sermon six years ago about how I started to look at this parable from Jesus differently. You see, this story was one of my least favorite and I'm someone that loves the Parables of Jesus. It puts me back in college, where my campus pastor would talk about what kind of soil we are and how we need to be good soil. The passage always left me with sadness, because I thought I could never measure up.
I will let my younger self take it from there. Here's part of the sermon I preached on July 10, 2005:
Today’s gospel text is about a sower who throws his seed hither and yon, landing on different types of soil. We then see how the soil takes to the seed. There are some good results and some bad results. Now when I was younger, I remember how the pastor or teacher would focus on all the different soils. We would spend time figuring out how the different soils related to the spiritual temperment of the different people. Some people worried to much, some didn’t take the good news seriously and some were good adherents of the Word. The message here was that we needed to be good soil and work on not being bad soil to God’s word. For some reason, I can remember how I felt when we talked about this passage. There was a sense of dread. I mean, how could I ever be good soil? There was no way that I could be that perfect. I’m going to be honest with you: I didn’t want to even preach from this text today for the same reason.
Then I started to think about something. This is called the parable of the Sower, but we never really talk about this sower, who is God. We talk about us, but God gets the short shrift. Has anyone wondered just how incredibly wasteful a sower God is? I mean he is just throwing seeds everywhere, without any regards as to whether the seed grows or not. I know there are a lot of gardeners among us this evening and I know many of you would never, never do this. I mean, if we saw someone throwing seeds everywhere, on the lawn, on the sidewalk, on the parking lot, we would wonder about the wisdom of this person. And yet that is what God does. For those of you who come from farmer backgrounds, you know that seed is precious. A farmer takes care of their crops so that they can have a plentiful harvest. The farmer in this story was probably considered a poor, tenant farmer who has to have a good return to feed his family. Now with all this substandard farming practice, throwing seeds wherever they may go, you would probably think that this farmer would get a poor return.
You would be wrong.
The seeds that did fall on good soil produced a harvest beyond anyone’s expectations.
So what was Jesus getting at here? Well, it’s that God’s love is extravagant. It seems wasteful to some, showing love to those who might not love back. It seems even dangerous to others, showing love to those who are different or who are our enemies. Why would God waste God’s time on such people?
That is the message here. We all receive God’s love, no matter if we are deserving or not. Yes, some will ignore God’s love. But that’s not the issue; what’s important is that God gives love to everyone.
This message of extravagant abundance is out of place for us because we live in a world defined by scarcity. If you’ve filled up for gas recently, then you have some idea of what I’m talking about. If you are like me, then you’ve probably set up an IRA and/or 401k to prepare for retirement, again, because money is scarce and because Social Security can’t fund all of our golden years.
We live in a world where resources are scarce. That’s a reality. What is sad is that we allow this valid principle to seep into our faith. Love becomes conditional and limited. Followers of Christ decide who is worthy of God’s love and who is not. We open our churches to those who are acceptable and close it to those who are not. Better to now waste our precious seed on “bad soil.”
But while scarcity is an important part of the science of Economics, it has no place in faith. God’s love is abundant and is freely given to all-good and bad. In Isaiah 55, we are given a clue to God’s abundance when the prophet proclaims that all who are hungry and all who are thirsty can come to God. Don’t worry about money; because God will take care of you.
My prior understanding of this text was one where I had to do all the work. Be a “good Christian” and the seed planted within will grow. That is a gospel of works, of trying to do good things so that God will like you. The thing is, none of us will always be good soil. We are human; we sin. We are tempted by the things of the world. We worry about the future. There are always “weeds” that will interfere with our seeds.
But if this parable is about God, then it doesn’t matter as much about my condition. Through the good times and bad, God’s love is always present. In times when I’m a wonderful garden and in times when I’m a weed infested backlot, God always love me.
And that is how God’s people should be. Let us go out and love the world regardless of how good or bad people are. Let us throw open our churches and our hearts to people.
It's easy to look at this story and see it as a moral about how we have to be "good Christians." The problem is that as Russell Rathburn has said, that makes this story a tale about "works-righteousness" instead of the wonderful grace of God.
This might be a "low Sunday" for your congregation as many folks are on the highways and byways. But I hope you still take the care and the time to communicate the awesome love of God to those who do make it to church. If you look out into your congregation, there are probably a lot of folks feeling a lot of guilt. Maybe some of it is well-deserved, maybe some of it isn't. Either way, they also need to know that they are loved, loved by a God that loves extravagantly.
I always end this with my tagline "Go and be church." I mean that. Go and show people your love. Go in the power of the Spirit and love wastefully. Some of the seeds won't grow, and some will produce a bumper crop. The results don't matter as much as we show love...as we are loved by a big, lovable and relentless God.
Go and be church.
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