Lavishly Sowing the Seeds of God’s Love
[Parable of the Sower - Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 & Romans 8:1-11. Preached at Brunswick Baptist on 13/07/08]
Many years ago when I first went to university, my grandfather who was a fantastic gardener gave me one of his orchids to take back with me and look after. I thought I did a great job watering it and the like but it never had flowers. A number of years later he was visiting me and he decided he would see how well I was doing with the orchid. He had a look at it and promptly told me he was taking it back home with him. I assumed it was sick and he was going to give it some extra tender loving care. Then he announced that the reason he was taking it home was because clearly I had no idea about gardening and had not cared for it properly in the first place.
I have been a very nervous gardener since, and parables about sowing seeds make me nervous still. Jesus often talked about the kingdom of God and the love of God in parables. Sometimes he even explained them too!
In this parable we have a sower, some seed and four types of soil. Traditionally this story has been understood in the following way. The sower is God, the seed is his message primarily understood as the life and love of Jesus his Son and the four types of soil represent four types of people or responses to the message of God's love. The path represents people who hear but don't understand. The rocky ground represents those whose faith is short lived. The ground full of weeds/thorns represents those who allow the cares of the world to get in the way of their faith. Finally the good soil represents those who hear the message and stick with it and eventually they bear fruit or bring others into faith.
I don't know about you but it seems to me that I have been all of those kinds of soil at various times in my life. Sometimes my relationship with God, or my hearing of God's love for me, has been put on the back burner as I have allowed other things to take priority - work, family and friends, materialism and the like. Instead of letting those aspects of my life be founded on God's love for me, they have snatched away the opportunity for me to reflect on God's love. They, or perhaps I, have let them act like the birds and taken the seed away.
Other times my knowledge of God's love has been eroded away, like the seed planted in the rocky soil. Life and faith are good for a while but then it seems to wither. Erosion occurs as one faces criticism, doubts, lack of time and sometimes our own success.
Other times my knowledge of God's love is choked by other things - anger, bitterness, selfishness, my ego, my pain, my sense of injustice. Faith grows a little but then is forced out by these other cares.
Whilst I suspect this parable says something to us about stages of faith, types of faith and responses to the story of God' love revealed in Jesus, I wonder if there is more.
I wonder if we can place ourselves in the parable in a different place? Perhaps we see ourselves as the sower? Perhaps we see ourselves as the seed? Perhaps we are all three at different moments in our lives or in different situations?
Let’s look again at this parable. Let the seed be God’s love. Let’s place ourselves in the parable as the sower, the one who scatters the seed in different soil. Let us notice what the sower does. The sower scatters the seed – generously, lavishly, extravagantly, haphazardly, everywhere. The scattering is almost wasteful. The seed falls on the path, on rocky ground, near the weeds and on the good soil. There is an extravagance here, no favour is shown and the sower seems to be open to see what happens. Perhaps there is a model for us here. As we share our stories and Jesus' love for others however we might do that, in words or deeds, let us do so extravagantly, without favour and with an openness to see what happens. To use a Bishop Spong phrase - let us love wastefully. Perhaps the parable is a challenge to us to love wastefully.
I wonder if you might indulge me for a while whilst I tell a story of an encounter I had with a client last year. Ken was somewhat of a ‘grumpy old man’ when I met him. I had been called in to help him work through some disturbing memories from World War II that had surfaced and he was finding difficult. The war memories were not his only problem – he liked coke with his whisky and preferably at about 10am and his other medical conditions were starting to take hold. After a few weeks he found out I was a minister of religion; well in no uncertain terms did he tell me about his views of the church and they were not complimentary to say the least. Any way he allowed me to visit him weekly despite my church connections. Over about seven months we built a relationship – I was one of only four or so people he was happy to see. One day he told me how when he was in the War he used to go off and sit under a tree and yell at God about what he was seeing – I told him I couldn’t think of a better place to yell at God and I reckoned God was okay about the yelling too.
We didn’t really talk about God that much after that. Ken got sicker and after a number of hospital admissions in a quick space he was told he needed to go into a nursing home – ‘grumpy old man’ again. During my visits to him in hospital I let him vent a bit and again he spoke about God. For the first time in six months I summoned some courage and asked him if I could pray for him – as I held his hand and prayed he cried. I then visited him a few times in the nursing home even though he wasn’t my client anymore – I told him it was a bit naughty but he promised never to tell. During my last visit he told me he knew his time was near, I asked him how he felt about that and he simply said okay, he’d sorted it with God and it was okay. He died six days later.
Ken was perhaps in the terms of this parable the various soils - the path from which the birds gathered the seed or maybe the rocky ground where it was hard for the plant to grow or maybe surrounded by weeds and thorns that choked out God’s love. Ken was the unlikely place for the seed to take root. I think as I look back my job was to just keep on sowing the seeds even if they were laughed at or rejected or too hard, my job was just to remind Ken of God’s love for him day after day. And God; well God did as God does and took the unlikely soil and the ordinary sower and enabled the seed to flourish, enabled Ken to come to some understanding of his place before the God of love. How important it is to scatter the seed of God’s love almost wastefully because we don’t know how God will surprise us all.
If we are the sower perhaps we need to do a bit of professional development to hone our sowing skills some more. If we are to sow the seed of God’s love all around us, it might help if we can begin to identify that which gets in the way of people experiencing and knowing such great love. Perhaps we need some contingency plans in order to build up people so that they are the good soil in which God's love takes root.
We might need a bit of knowledge about what to do in times of drought or how to get rid of the weeds. Maybe part of the sowing role is see what appears to stop God's love from taking root - what are the pests, what causes erosion and what are the weeds/thorns in our society. Some of the pests might be materialism, or individualism. Secondly, the task might be to identify the causes of erosion. What causes an awareness of God's love to be eroded away? Is it criticism, doubt, time, success, injustice, racism? Thirdly, we must identify the weeds that threaten to choke the life out of the seed as it makes its way in the world. Is it anger or bitterness or pain that strangles the awareness of the love of God?
We might then, if we are to be good sowers, need to know what helps seeds grow and flourish. What will help to build up the soil so that the seed of God's love can take root and become a reality in the life of a person, the community and the world? The taking seriously of anger, doubt, criticism, injustice, racism, materialism - all those things that threaten the life of the plant and takes them on is important. These things need to be killed off or the seed strengthened to face these obstacles. This is all done to ensure that the life of the plant flourishes. We must take seriously all that assail people and work hard to fight such things, so that the love of God might flourish in their lives.
I have this morning wanted to suggest that no matter where we see ourselves in this parable it can speak to us.
If we see ourselves as the soil we might begin to identify the types of pests and hazards that stop God's love from taking root in our lives and guard against them.
If we see ourselves as the sower we might learn to love wastefully, extravagantly, lavishly. To scatter the message of God’s love into every nook and cranny hoping it takes root. And as we do that, to also take steps to help seeds flourish even in the midst of erosion, weeds and drought. And as we have sown the seeds we need to give them every chance to flourish, so we might need to walk alongside someone reminding them of God’s love until it really takes root in their lives. And then leave the rest to God – be open to God letting his love take root in seemingly unlikely places.
So go out and love wastefully – in so doing we are setting our minds on the Spirit which is life as Paul reminds us in our reading from Romans.
Sow lavishly, guard against those things that might erode, choke or take away an awareness of God's love. Be creative and find ways to deepen the soil so that others might grow in there awareness of God' love. Fertilise with great care and compassion. Be open and wait and watch for the harvest, be open for the ways in which God's love flourishes and is made manifest in the lives of people, in the life of the community and in the life of the world. Amen.
Benediction
Go out now into the world, lavishly sowing the seeds of God’s love everywhere you go.
And may God who loves wastefully, Jesus who sets us free and the Spirit which is life go with you and keep you until we meet again. Amen.