July 13, 2008 – The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
It was reported last week that Starbucks is closing 600 of its stores nationwide. The problem? Essentially, bad real estate decisions. Too many stores, concentrated too closely together, in areas that simply didn’t generate enough purchases of foam-topped lattes. So the chain is replacing its top leadership and getting back to basics, and in the process will whack 600 of its outlets.
If you’re a daily consumer of Starbucks, that news might have inspired a little panic in you, especially since five of those doomed stores are in this area. But if you are an investor in Starbucks stock, you probably applaud this belt-tightening move. Moreover, if you’re an investor, you can thank your lucky stars that Starbucks is run by its current board of directors and not by God, the Sower. In view of this story this morning, can you imagine what would happen if God ran Starbucks?
Well, Jesus isn’t talking about coffee, of course; he’s talking about the Kingdom of God. And according to the writer of Matthew’s gospel his words so far have drawn quite a crowd, so much so that he has to get into a boat and draw off shore a ways to accommodate them all.
As Jesus looks out over those who have come to hear him, he sees in their faces their reasons for coming.
Some are devoted lovers of God, eager to hear more, to get closer. Others are physically there, but they’re distracted, thinking ahead to what’s coming up later in the day. Still others are happy simply to be only spectators. And others are there just because someone they’re close to has said, “C’mon, honey, we’re going.”
Jesus tells a number of parables that are reported in Matthew’s gospel, many of them clustered here, in chapter 13. This is the first one, and Jesus creates it very carefully.
As Jesus looks out over his audience, he begins: A sower went out to sow.
That opening by itself would have produced some expectations among his hearers. They would have expected that he would tell the story of a farmer who walked out into his carefully prepared field – he had removed all the rocks that had worked their way up to the surface, piling them in the corners of his field; he had broken up the huge clumps of clay and dirt; he had plowed neat furrows through his soil, into which he would now drop his expensive seeds.
But that’s not the story Jesus creates. Jesus creates the story of a farmer who walks out into his field, with no care, no preparation; and simply tosses seed everywhere. It’s like he has his head in the clouds; he doesn’t care where the seed falls – how irresponsible! He just flings it, onto what Jesus characterizes as four types of soil, only one of which has even a remote shot at producing a respectable yield.
The classic interpretation of this parable runs like this: The Sower is Jesus, the human embodiment of God; the Seed is the word that Jesus brings, the announcement that the Kingdom of God has arrived, the word that forces the re-evaluation of all human priorities; we are the Soil; and the Yield is the production of good works.
The classic application of this understanding is that we, the hearers, are to locate ourselves in this parable, probably finding ourselves among the good soil (after all, who wants to be a non-producer?); we’re supposed to work hard at remaining good soil; and we’re supposed to understand that those other types of soil exist, that sometimes, despite our best efforts at spreading the word of God, it just doesn’t work out.
Some years ago I had an absolutely “brilliant” idea to expand the membership here at Advent. I put that word brilliant in quotation marks for reasons that soon will become obvious.
We already had a method for keeping a record of visitors – we’d send letters, make phone calls. But I wanted to step that up. I said, “Let’s go visit the people who come to visit us. We’ll visit them on the afternoon of that Sunday morning that they join us for worship. The disciples went out two by two, so we’ll do the same. And we’ll take brownies. A dozen brownies for everybody who visits Advent. The visits themselves will be short and sweet, nothing heavy-handed, something like, ‘Thanks for visiting Advent this morning, it was great to have you with us. If you’d like to know more about the congregation, we’ll be happy to talk with you, or you can feel free to call one of our pastors. In any event, here’s a dozen brownies, just a token of our appreciation for you being with us this morning.’ That’s it. We’ll do this for a month, and then we’ll get our teams together to evaluate.”
So that’s what we did. The month went along, the visiting teams went out, and at the end of the month we got together to see how it went. OK, here’s the interactive part of the sermon: How many new members do you think joined Advent as a result of those visits? That’s right, zero. We had a number of requests for more brownies, but no new members. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out. And it may explain why Pastor Susan is in charge of the evangelism ministry here at Advent.
But this is a parable about the Kingdom of God, which means that it’s primarily a parable about God and only secondarily about us. It’s primarily about God the sower, who looks out on the various types of soil and sees what we do not.
So what does the Sower behold?
Back in the first chapter of Genesis, when God went about the business of creating, God’s crowning achievement was the creation of the human being. God made humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. And God blessed them and said, “be fruitful.” And ever since that instant, God has been incapable of looking at his image-bearers and seeing anything other than people he loves with all his heart, people he would die for.
God loves every field, every plot of land, every heart.
Those hearts might be as hard as concrete, covered over by layer upon layer of cynicism and despair and frustration; but God continues to toss his seeds of unconditional love and acceptance their way. Those hearts might be as shallow and thin as paper from too much TV and too little real living; but God continues to toss his seeds of unconditional love and acceptance their way. Those hearts might be as crowded as a thicket of thorns, choked by worries about money and family and the future; but God continues to toss his seeds of unconditional love and acceptance their way. Because it is in the very nature of the sower to give and give and give, without condition and without distinction.
And that fact is what shapes our place in this story.
I’ve come to appreciate very much the work of Walter Brueggemann, an excellent Biblical scholar, specializing in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. He maintains that we live our lives within a contextual framework, and that that framework is not something that we generate for ourselves but is given to us by God.
On one end of that framework is exuberant generosity. That’s what we saw in our First Lesson this morning, from the prophet Isaiah, where God guarantees the ongoing replenishing of creation: the rain and the snow come down from heaven for a reason – the renewal of the earth and the bringing forth of new life. It’s an extension, really, of the creation story back in Genesis, where God says to the creatures, “Be fruitful, be fruitful, be fruitful,” and they are and they continue to be, and they give and give and give, without reserve and without shortage, and we receive it all – as gift. That’s one end of the framework: exuberant generosity.
The other end of the framework is inexhaustible well-being. That’s what we saw in our Second Lesson, where St. Paul says that the believer who is filled with the spirit of Christ is filled with eternal life. And Paul will go on in a few verses to talk about what that really means, and the bottom line is this: Neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come, not anything in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That’s where we’re headed, the other end of the frame: inexhaustible well-being.
That’s the framework within which we live our lives, that’s the context that defines our living. Our context is not our anxiety over security, and the stock market, and college tuition, and the price of a barrel of crude. As important as those things are, they are not ultimate. They must take a back seat to the framework that God has given to us, and it’s within that framework that we engage this story as imitators of the Sower.
After all, St. Paul tells us in the New Testament that we have received this treasure in earthen vessels, meaning that we have received the unconditional love of God into ourselves through our faith in Christ; but we are not to be simply receivers, we’re to let that love flow through us so that God’s creation can continue to be blessed and continue to flourish. We are to imitate the Sower, who gives without distinction and without reserve; and that’s where this story becomes really challenging.
A friend of mine is involved in an organization called FISH. It’s Friends In Service Helping. It’s a nationwide organization with offices in a number of large and small cities; they operate food pantries, clothes closets and a number of other social service functions. My friend happens to work in St. Louis.
Because of these difficult economic times, the food pantry where he serves has been running very low on inventory; it seems as if the demand on their food stocks grows every week. So at a recent board meeting, my friend raised his hand and asked: “When people come to us for food, does anybody check to see if they have a Social Security number?”
Long pause. Then someone said, “We’re here to serve, to help. We’re not here to check to see if someone is in this country illegally.”
“That’s fine,” my friend said, “but our resources are limited. After all, we can’t help everybody.”
And that’s where I have to part company with my friend, based specifically on this parable.
This is not a story about conventional wisdom, not a story that says, “Look, use your head, play the percentages; toss the seed around widely enough and sooner or later some of it is bound to pay off.” No. The harvest Jesus has in mind is far more radical than that: a harvest of 100 fold, 60 fold, 30 fold is a harvest that is more extravagant than anyone had ever hoped for, ever imagined. Who produces the harvest, who comes up with the supplies when the supplies are needed? God, the Sower. Our reliance on that fact is called faith.
Because we are in the hands of a God of exuberant generosity, we can afford to spend our lives in ways that the world might consider foolish. After all, that’s what Jesus did. Jesus’ ministry in this world lasted three years. He gave himself totally to it, day and night. And when it was finished – when he had been crucified and Resurrected and after he had ascended into heaven – there had been no mass conversions, no bumper crop of new faith. When he left this world, it looked pretty much the way it did before he showed up.
But the words he spoke, the actions he took, the seeds he sowed – in time, in God’s time, they took root and sprouted and grew and flourished, and they changed the world. And while he was here, he never saw it.
So we can afford to take a risk and spend ourselves just as “foolishly.” We can speak a word of peace to an enemy. We can speak a word of forgiveness to someone who doesn’t deserve it and doesn’t want to hear it. We can “waste” our time sitting with someone in the depths of despair even as we’re certain that it won’t do any good. Because you never know when the words you speak, the actions you take, the seeds you sow, will take root and grow and flourish and become life-giving.
Because we are in the hands of a God of exuberant generosity, we can fling grace around like there’s no tomorrow – precisely because there is a tomorrow, and it, and you, and in the hands of God the Sower. Amen.
