Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
“Extravagantly Wasteful”
Preached July 16, 2023
My preaching professor at Divinity School always told us that most preachers really only have one to two sermons in them and every time they preach, it’s really just a variation of that same sermon theme. That’s not saying that it can’t be reiterated in a hundred different ways, that a pastor can’t branch out and preach on a new topic or idea every now and then. AND, deep down, at our core, preachers pull from the same source material. Because preachers are called to preach and proclaim the Good News. And however that preacher defines the Good News - that is going to influence every sermon they ever preach. And so how I define the Good News is simply this: You are a beloved child of God and God loves you so incredibly much, that we can’t even fathom how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is for us. And when I say you and I say us - I mean every person who was ever created and ever born. God loves ALL more than we could ever imagine. THIS is the Good News, the Gospel, through which all my sermons find their source.
So - if you ever doze off during one of my sermons - hopefully not because they were boring but because you were really really tired and God knew you needed the rest more than you needed a sermon - and someone asks you what the pastor preached about, here’s a get-out-of-jail-free card: you can just say “God’s Love” and you will most likely be right.
And so today, we are going to look at the parable of the sower through the lens of marveling at how much God loves us - all of us, all of everyone ever created. So often when we look at today’s Scripture we get stuck in the different types of ground - the path where the birds ate up the seeds, the soil with no depth, the thorny ground, and then the good, fertile soil. We get caught up in classifying our actions and mindsets as different types of soil - or even typing other people as certain types of soil - the desire being to transform our hearts and the hearts of others to be more fertile, to be more open to the seeds that God plants. And that’s important, to work on ourselves and open our hearts - and…I think it also misses a huge point of this parable and that is found in the sower’s actions.
In order to understand the sower’s actions and their meanings - we must first look at the seeds. And here’s my disclaimer: I am not a farmer. I am an amateur vegetable gardener. But I am by no means a professional farmer so everything I am about to share with you I learned courtesy of google. So - we know today that many farmers buy their seeds from certified seed sellers. One of the reasons for this is to produce uniform crops for our grocery stores and consumption. Studies have proven that perfectly shaped potatoes and carrots sell better in the store. And for the backyard gardener also, seeds are fairly readily available. Not just Home and Garden stores but in the bargain section at Target, the checkout at the Dollar Store, local library seed banks - seeds for planting are readily available to whoever wants them.
Now I know even less about farmers in Biblical times than modern times, but from what I gather, farmers did not have big government agencies or research labs to buy seeds from. Every year they had to save seed from their crops. These crops would have been carefully selected - the very best fruit yielding crops. And then, those seeds would have been diligently harvested and stored with great care - after all, those seeds had to wait through the winter, safe from mice and other creatures and insects that could eat or ruin them. And then when it came time to plow and prepare the fields, time to plant, the farmer whose livelihood and the survival of him and his family and maybe even the survival of the whole community - all depended upon a fruitful harvest… that farmer would just take those painstakingly picked and preserved seeds and just… toss some seeds here, toss some seeds there, maybe over here….The farmer would haphazardly throw the seeds around - some would land on shallow soil, some on the path, some on thorns...and some, LUCKILY, would fall on good fertile soil. Phew! Their family could eat this year…
Wait...no! That doesn’t sound right! That’s not what the farmers would do at all. A farmer would carefully plant the seed in the prepared and fertile ground to produce the best harvest and provide and care for himself, his family, and his community. That’s what a responsible and good farmer would do… And that’s not what the Sower in the parable did.
I tried to come up with a modern day parable that might relate to us better to get to the same concept.
Listen! A Church Mission Committee went out and carefully raised funds to do some good in their community! There were a lot of meetings, careful planning and recruiting of volunteers. Everything was organized and there was a successful fundraiser where people were generous with their time and wallets! All the hard work had paid off. When it came time to disperse that money to local missions and charities, the Mission Committee members just walked along 224 and Market Street and threw some into every shop! Some money fell on the sidewalk and commuters and people experiencing homelessness picked it up! Some money fell on the street and got washed down sewer drains. Some fell into big box stores and workers pocketed it to compensate for their poor pay. Some fell into local shops and it boosted the local business for a while but was quickly forgotten. Some money got tossed into bars and businesses of ill repute! And some money got put into the hands of good people, and good organizations, and went on to help so many people struggling, that money boosted the church’s mission field thirty, sixty...maybe even 100 percent!! Let anyone with ears listen!
And you’re all probably going...wait, what? That’s crazy! That’s not how things work! It’s ridiculous! It’s downright wasteful! ...but that’s the point of the parable. Jesus’s listeners would have been shocked at the downright wastefulness of the sower in the parable. Many of us, so removed from their understanding of farming and seeds, miss the shock effect of Jesus’s teachings. But when we start to talk about throwing mission money into the street…we get closer to what Jesus was trying to provoke in his listeners. Through a story that surprises or shocks us - it teaches us something about the Divine.
Because, as Jesus reveals, the Sower is God! But haphazard? Wasteful? These are not terms that we are used to thinking about in connection with God! Could you imagine if I started our morning prayer saying, “Haphazard and Wasteful God, we lift our hearts before you…” You could tell who was really paying attention and listening closely by how many heads would whip up in surprise. What did she just say about God?? Haphazard and wasteful…no…we tend to think just the opposite of God! God plans. God is a good master who calls us to be good and wise stewards. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if I prayed to “God, the Divine Planner of Our Lives.” And God wants us to use our resources wisely...and yes, this is all true… God is a Good Planner, Master, Ruler…
But when it comes to God’s grace, when it comes to God’s love… God is extravagantly wasteful! I wouldn’t say haphazard because God’s extravagant wastefulness is planned and intentional. The Divine Sower is throwing some seed here and there and everywhere - spreading the seed all around - because the seed that God throws is God’s Love. The seed that God throws is God’s Grace. When Jesus explains the parable to his disciples he says the seed is “the word of the Kingdom of God.” And what is the word of the Kingdom of God? This goes back to what I said when I started today’s sermon that every preacher is called to preach the Gospel, is called to preach the Good News - and how the preacher understands the Good News of the Gospel, that is the foundation of every sermon they will preach. The well they draw from. And so, the word of the Kingdom of God is this: You are a beloved child of God and God loves you so incredibly much, that we can’t even fathom how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is for us. And when I say you and I say us - I mean every person who was ever created and ever born. God loves ALL more than we could ever imagine. THIS is the Good News, the Gospel, the Word of God that the Sower so lavishly and extravagantly throws everywhere.
And I use the word wasteful but there is no waste when it comes to God’s love because there is no scarcity of Grace! There is always more than enough to go around! There is no bottom. There is no set limit or finite amount. God’s Grace and Love are limitless and never run dry. And God wants to give Grace to everyone - to give everyone a chance.
In the Methodist tradition, we have a term for this extravagance of God’s grace - it’s called prevenient grace - or quite literally, the grace that precedes, the grace that comes before.
But the grace that comes before what? Before we even knew that we needed grace. Before we even knew that there was grace to be had. It’s the grace that comes before we’re fertile soil. The grace that continuously comes to us whether we are ready to receive it or not. It’s the grace that comes when we don’t want to hear the Word of God or where God is trying to lead us to. It’s the Grace that comes when our hearts and minds are more like a path, a thorny patch, or shallow ground - where the seeds cannot find roots and get eaten by birds. AND the point is even THEN - God still wants to reach us, still wants to offer us grace, whether we are ready or not - God’s grace is there for us. God’s grace and love is there for everyone, regardless of where they are in their lives or if they are ready to receive it. And so the Divine Sower throws his seed - to the birds, to the thorns, and to us - to each and every person ever created, each one deemed worthy by God to be a recipient of God’s Love and Grace.
One of my favorite ways to think about God’s prevenient grace is like the Holy Spirit is continuously tapping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears: psst! Hey, I’m right here! Pssst, hey! I love you! Hey! Hey! I love you! Do you hear me? And yet we don’t feel that tapping on our shoulders, those whisperings of love in our ears. I once had a parishioner tell me it was sometimes less of a whispering in their ear than the Holy Spirit taking a bull horn, putting it right in front of the ear and yelling: HEY! I’M RIGHT HERE! HEY! I LOVE YOU! And they still chose not to hear. But guess what? Our response or our lack of response never deters God. If it was us, we would grow weary of not being heard, grow weary of continuously trying to reach out to someone and getting nothing in return… God never grows weary. God always, always, always, offers us love, whispers in our ears, yells in our ears, throws us seeds of love and Grace.
It is comforting and reassuring to know that God will keep throwing us seeds, keep offering us grace - even if at first we don’t respond. And now, when we do respond, Methodists call that Justifying Grace and then there is Sanctifying Grace…and getting into each of those things would be a whole other sermon but I promise you, we will do it at some point - and probably multiple points. And sometimes we think of God’s grace as this ladder to climb - there is this prevenient grace which is God offering us love and grace before we know there is love and grace to be had. And then when realize it, it’s justifying grace where we consciously choose a relationship with God, and then there is sanctifying grace where God works on us and with us to make us more like Christ. But it’s not a ladder where we move from one stage to the next - no matter where we are in our journey with God, prevenient Grace is still constantly being offered to us. Because there is not a single moment of time, not a single second in our lives, where the Holy Spirit is not whispering - or shouting with bullhorn - in your ear: I love you.
I want to say that last bit again to let it sync in: There is not a single moment of time, not a single second in our lives, where the Holy Spirit is not whispering in your ear: I love you.
That is God’s extravagantly generous, prevenient grace. Always offered to us.
That doesn’t mean that we should sit back and just wait to suddenly become fertile soil, it doesn’t work like that. We can work on our hearts and on our lives to open ourselves up to receiving the Grace of God. We can do the things that open our hearts to God - reading, meditating and studying the scriptures; prayer; fasting; regularly attending worship; sharing our faith with others; and sharing in the sacraments. We also can find that doing good works is a way that we prepare our hearts to accept God’s word. Good works such as visiting the sick; visiting those in prison; feeding the hungry; giving generously to the needs of others; seeking justice; ending oppression and discrimination; and addressing the needs of the poor.
It’s this heart of piety and devotion and these works of charity and justice - these are the bounty that God is calling us to produce. That simultaneously is the harvest of the seeds of love that God plants AND can help us be like fertile soil to accept the seeds of love that God shares with us.
Because when we hear the voice of God in our ears saying, “Psst! Hey! I love you!” We are then compelled to go and be that voice of God to others, sharing with them the Good News - sowing seeds of God’s love for them - and we too should sow the seeds of love in our lives and to all around us like God, the Good Sower, does. With extravagant generosity, sharing love with all we meet.
Because - what I really want to drive home today - the Good News that I want to preach from this pulpit is this: No matter the states of hearts and no matter what our deeds are - God is constantly offering us love. And that, no matter the states of the hearts of our neighbors and no matter what their deeds are - God is constantly offering them love. And calls us to offer love to each other too.
And so, my prayer is that our eyes would be opened to the Grace that is all around us - to the grace that is thrown our way even when we’re not ready to receive it. The Grace that is sowed and given to every single person on this earth. Because God is extravagantly wasteful, extravagantly generous in God’s love and grace - because there is no shortage - and there is more than enough to go around. May we respond in kind, with our hearts and actions - so that God’s seeds of grace may be planted in us and bear thirty, sixty or even one hundred times over the bounty of love.
Amen.
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