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And Jesus said, “A sower went out
to sow.”
Now really…what do we know about sowers
and sowing? Most of us were raised far away from the farm.
And even if we have spent time on a farm, we’re more
familiar with tractors and plows, cultivators and combines.
What do we know about sowers sowing?
Oh sure enough, we know about
gardening—those carefully-cared-for flowerbeds and
grow-for-fun vegetable gardens which give us the joy of
fresh tomatoes. But if the begonias don’t bloom and the
rabbits eat the radishes, we are hardly worse for the wear,
and we certainly won’t go without either flowers or food.
Our lives hardly depend on our form of gardening.
And even though we know in our minds that
food comes from the soil, milk from a cow, eggs from a
chicken, and bacon from a pig—that we are in fact dependent
upon the earth for our very being—on a day-to-day basis, we
are really more dependent on Kroger than we are the soil,
the seed, the sun, the rain, and the good earth. Maybe the
fact that we are so removed from the earth and its resources
makes it easier for us to waste and despoil it, to abuse and
overuse it, to plunder and pollute it, rather than to care
for it as a trust from God and the very source of our lives.
Maybe our distance from the creation blinds us to seeing
global warming and climate change as spiritual problems.
Maybe our disconnect from the creation is part of our
disconnect from the Creator.
So John Indermark says, “God fashioned us
in connection with the created order, and we find in
creation signs of God’s purposes and grace.” He invites us
to “…listen to these parables of creation. Through them
listen to and honor the earth, sky and air—all of which bear
the mark of God.” (Parables and Passion, page 55)
Jesus said, “A sower went out to sow.”
In contrast to our lives so removed from
sowers sowing, Jesus’ hearers would have understood
immediately. They would have known exactly what he was
talking about. When Jesus said, “A sower went out to sow,”
they could smell the scent of freshly plowed soil. They
could feel the weight of the bag of seed grain on their
shoulders. They could rub their palms and touch the blisters
of the plow on their own hands. They knew what it meant to
spend their days scattering seed, praying for rain, hoping
for a crop as if their lives depended on it…because in fact,
they did.
1. A sower went out to sow, and Jesus says when he did, he
sowed generously.
To our way of thinking, it sounds
downright wasteful. It sounds like he went out there and
just scattered the seed all over the place, scattering it by
hand, one handful at a time. He just let it fly. It sounds
like he scattered it so freely, so generously, that Jesus
said some fell on the rock-hard pathway between the rows
where the birds could pluck it up. Some fell among the rocks
where the sun baked it dry. Some fell along the hedgerow
where the weeds choked it out. A sower went out to sow, and
like an extravagant, spendthrift, prodigal God who scatters
his blessings as far as the arm can reach, he sowed
lavishly, generously.
What a contrast to the way most of us
live our lives most of the time—cautious, careful, planning
every move, predicting the outcome. We’ve even got a name
for it: “risk aversion.”
ndermark says he did a Google search for
“risk aversion” and got 1,210,000 hits! Risk aversion might
be a good way to invest our funds, but it’s a terrible way
to live our lives.
Frederick Buechner described one of his
characters, Brownie, as a person who “played it so safe all
his life and never really lived—holding life in, letting
life slip out sideways a little at a time, hoping no one
would notice.” Tight, narrow, constricted, afraid to risk,
unwilling to stretch and live with gusto and abandon,
therefore unable to experience life to the fullest. What a
shame…
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when Jesus says his
joy would be in us and our joy would be full.
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when Jesus promises
we would have life, life more abundant.
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when Jesus invites us
to sow generously.
Somewhere along the way, I picked up a
little piece from Brother Jeremiah. He looks back over his
life and says:
If I had my life to live over again, I
would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this
trip. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers, watch
more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and less beans.
You see, I am one of those people who
lives prophylactically, sanely and sensibly. I’m one of
those people who never goes anywhere without a thermometer,
a hot water bottle, a raincoat, aspirin and a parachute. If
I had it to do over again, I would go places, do things and
travel lighter than I have. I would start out bare-foot in
the spring and stay that way till fall. I would play hooky
more often; I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I’d pick more
daisies.
One of the things I love about Methodism
and about this church is the willingness to risk, the
willingness to try new things, the willingness to seek out
new avenues of ministry.
Just look at our “StreetTHREADS”
ministry: twice a week walking the streets of inner city
Detroit to give away coffee and coats, sandwiches and
socks…and we have more volunteers than we can pack in a van.
It reminds me of John Wesley and what he called “field
preaching.” In a day when it was unseemly and almost
sacrilegious for a priest to be seen outside the church,
George Whitfield challenged Wesley to try preaching at the
coal mines and on the street corners. Wesley considered it
“vile.” But once he tried it, once he experienced the power
of actually taking the message to the people, once he saw
people respond, he wrote in his journal, “I determined to be
more vile” for the sake of the Gospel.
Willing to risk
Willing to try new ways
Willing to do whatever is necessary to
reach those he had not already reached
Willing to live large and to sow
generously
2. A sower went out to sow…and
when he did, he sowed generously and he cultivated
carefully.
The second barnyard parable says what we
all know to be true: the weeds and the wheat grow up
together. Blessings and burdens go hand in hand. Joys and
sorrows come to harvest in each of our lives. Sin and
sainthood follow each of us all of our days. Good and evil
seem to rise up side by side.
Oh, you can try to explain it, figure out
why life turns out the way it does, ask the eternal
questions of why evil exists and where it comes from. Jesus’
parable even suggests that maybe an enemy came in and
scattered the bad seed amid the good. Who knows? All we know
is it’s true. In your life and mine, and in our world, it
seems the weeds and wheat grow up together.
In Jesus’ day, there was a certain weed
which looked exactly like wheat in its early stages. It
wasn’t until it was ready for harvest that you could
actually tell the difference. So Jesus says to cultivate
carefully. You just never know when you might pull up the
wheat with the weeds.
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You just never know
when that one seemingly impossible kid in your Sunday
School class will catch the message, a light will
glimmer and new life will take root.
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You just never know
when the seed you thought was scattered and wasted on
rocky soil or overgrown by weeds will come to life and
bring forth fruit.
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Sometimes you can
hardly tell the wheat from the weeds, so cultivate with
care.
At this
point, I just have to pause and give thanks
for folks who did that for me along the way:
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Sunday school
teachers and camp counselors who put up with a
squirrelly, skinny kid and planted in me the seed of
faith—people who sowed generously.
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Wise old saints in my
early congregations who tolerated bad sermons and
bumbling care and were willing to lovingly cultivate,
carefully believing in the gift of good seed.
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Parents who nurtured
me, a wife who loves me, sons who put up with me,
congregations which have supported me in spite of all
the weeds, still cultivating the good crop and trusting
God for the harvest.
Pruning, weeding and trimming are all
important, but Jesus says it needs to be done with care. And
sometimes you just have to let the weeds and wheat grow up
together….until the harvest.
And of course, that’s where this is all
headed, all this scattering and sowing, cultivating and
caring. It’s all headed for the day of harvest.
3. A sower went out to sow, and
when the crops came in, he harvested bountifully.
Jesus says some of the seed in the good
soil produced a bumper crop…some 30 fold, some 60 fold, some
100 fold! A bountiful harvest.
Let me be quick to say I’m not preaching
the prosperity gospel. You can hear that on TV every day.
You can even order your green prosperity handkerchief with
the promise that if you follow Jesus, you can get a new car,
a new house, money will just come raining down, you will be
healthy, wealthy and wise….when what Jesus actually promised
us was a cross.
And
yet, the promise of scripture is still true:
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The Psalmist says,
“Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the
morning.”
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One day, says the
prophet, “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.”
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One day, John the
Revelator says, there will be no more tears, no more
sighing, no more weeping, no more weeds or thorns, no
more death and suffering, for the former things have
passed away.
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One day, if you sow
generously and cultivate carefully, there will be a
bountiful harvest of great joy.
All this sowing and cultivating and
reaping in the hope of the bountiful harvest of the Kingdom
of God.
Back in my growing-up days, we used to go
to camp meeting and they used to sing a song which again,
because of my separation from the farming metaphor, I really
couldn’t comprehend. They’d sing:
Bringing in the sheaves,
bringing in the sheaves,
we shall come rejoicing,
bringing in the sheaves.
Well, I had no idea what a “sheave” was,
let alone how to bring one in. What harvesting I had seen
had always been done with combines and harvesters, so
someone had to explain to me that a “sheave” was a big clump
of the stocks of wheat, cut by hand with a scythe…something
else I knew nothing about. In the days before all the heavy
equipment, farmers would cut and gather these large bundles
in the fields, load them onto a wagon and haul them into the
barns. If you make the cultural jump to grasp sowers and
seed, maybe you can also get the picture of the bountiful
harvest:
Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of
kindness,
sowing in the noontide, and the dewy
eve.
Waiting for the harvest and the time
of reaping,
we shall come rejoicing, bringing in
the sheaves.
Bringing in the sheaves,
bringing in the sheaves,
we shall come rejoicing, bringing in
the sheaves.
Bringing in the sheaves,
bringing in the sheaves,
we shall come rejoicing, bringing in
the sheaves.
Jesus promises that one day, those who
sow generously will harvest bountifully. Oh, we may not see
it right now. Right now it may seem far off, and we
sometimes wonder if it will ever come. At this point, all we
can see are weeds and wheat growing together. In fact, at
this point in our Lenten journey, all we can see ahead is
the cross and the tomb. But one day, one day, there will be
a great day of resurrection, an Easter of hope and joy. One
day there will be a bountiful harvest, and we shall all come
rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Let us
pray:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns invest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found, far as the
curse is found.
Joy to the world, the Lord is come. |
