Today’s
Gospel reading is a very familiar story, one of Jesus’ most famous parables. If
you’re a gardener – and many people seem to have taken up gardening during
lockdown – then you probably know all too well the scenario Jesus describes.
You start out hopefully sowing your seeds in little seed trays or out in the
garden as the gardening gurus tell you to. You wait and watch. Soon, if you’re
lucky, some energetic little seedlings poke their heads out of the earth! Success!
But not so fast…! As the weeks go by, some shrivel and die, some are overcome
by weeds. Even if you mollycoddle them indoors until they are sturdy little
plants, the first night you plant them out they are often reduced to ribbons by
slugs or caterpillars or birds or rabbits, or dug up by cats or squirrels or
another of God’s wonderful creatures who, quite reasonably from their point of
view, look on them as a generous gift you put there just for their benefit.
It’s enough to drive you to despair…
It
was ever thus. As the old saying goes, “One
for the rook, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow.” Jesus description of the wide variety of ways
a crop can fail is something every one of his listeners would have been
familiar with, just as we are.
And
yet, there’s something odd about his little story, and as a gardener it is
glaringly obvious when you spot it. Frankly, this sower sounds a bit daft. What
is he doing sowing seed on the path, and in the thorny ground or among the
rocks? Surely he knows his land. He knew where the path was. He could see that
some of the land was rocky. And those thorns are, according to the Greek word,
acanthus plants, Bear’s Britches is their common name. They are huge, tough
perennials – you can’t miss them if you ‘ve got them. I can imagine Jesus’
audience shaking their heads in bewilderment. In fact the whole scenario is a
bit comical , , over the top. If this sower is meant to represent God, what
does it say about him? What kind of person
behaves like this, let alone an all knowing deity?
They
were right to ask those questions. Humanly speaking, this sower is acting
stupidly, because human resources are limited.
If we are sensible we take care of what we do with our resources. We
ration them out , whether they are seeds or time or money or love. We’re afraid
we’ll run out if we don’t.
You
can only behave like this sower if you know your resources are limitless,
infinite. God, says Jesus, throws his love around with reckless abandon,
because there is no end to his love. He doesn’t need to ration it out, only
planting it in lives that are perfect. He lets it fall wherever it will, in the
hope that one stray seed might find a gap among the weeds or an unseen pocket
of richer soil between the rocks, or be missed by the birds and grow on the
path anyway.
This
story is meant to sound a bit ridiculous, like many of Jesus’ other parables.
We often read them in a po-faced, serious way and miss that. But what kind of
shepherd abandons ninety nine perfectly good sheep in the wilderness to go
after one who has been daft enough to wander off? What kind of father gives half
his money away to his prodigal son, and when he wastes it on parties, welcomes
him back again without a word of “I told you so”? How does he know that he
won’t just sell the robe and ring he’s been given and do it all again? How does
he know he’s really learned his lesson? He doesn’t, is the answer. But the
father does it anyway, because he loves him.
Jesus
tells stories, again and again, of a God who is ridiculously generous to human
eyes, who gives and gives and gives again, beyond anything that we would think was
sensible or proportionate. It’s meant to shock and challenge us, just as it did
his first hearers.
Of
course, human beings are limited, with finite resources, but God isn’t.
We sometimes forget that, or never get our heads around it in the first place.
That’s why Christians have often been so determined to set boundaries on God’s
love, conditions that they say people must meet to receive it, and to police
those boundaries, as if they are God’s guardians, as if God needs guarding.
They tell others that God will only love and accept them if they live in
certain ways, observe certain rituals, believe certain doctrines, say certain
prayers, belong to a certain group… Those who’re on the receiving end of that
sort of judgement often internalise it, convincing themselves that they deserve
it. People tell me they aren’t good enough to come to church. They tell me that
they aren’t certain enough of their faith, that they might do the wrong things,
or not do the right things. They worry that because of something they’ve done,
or something that’s happened to them, God really won’t want to be bothered with
them, that he wouldn’t want to waste his time and his love on them.
But
all those assumptions rest on the idea that God’s love is a scarce resource
which must be hoarded, rationed, doled out carefully, after a proper risk
assessment and cost-benefit analysis to make sure it’s not being thrown
anywhere except the 100 per cent pure and wholesome soil. This parable tells us
otherwise. God’s love is limitless. He is quite content to scatter it about
with reckless abandon, on the off chance that a stray seed might find an
unlikely, overlooked pocket of soil to grow in. He doesn’t need to hoard, guard,
or reserve it for those who can prove they know what to do with it, and we
shouldn’t try to do it on his behalf either. The ultimate demonstration of this
reckless generosity is in his gift of Jesus to us, the grain of wheat that
falls into the ground and dies at Calvary, and is buried in a stony tomb – the
unlikeliest of unlikely soil. And yet, from that death comes resurrection, and
new life which is thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold greater, spreading out
through the world and across the ages.
God
will win some and lose some as he scatters his seeds of love in our hearts and
in our world. There’ll be times when we don’t respond, when our hearts are
stony, or choked with weeds, times when the seed never germinates at all, but
it only takes one seed to germinate and grow. One plant can fill a field, if
you give it long enough. One act of kindness, one word of encouragement, one
decision to trust in the goodness of God, to hope rather than to despair can
change our lives, and the lives of everyone around us too.
Our
God is a God whose generosity is beyond anything we could ask or imagine, a God
whose resources are limitless, and whose love is limitless too, a God whose
“paths overflow with plenty” as the Psalm reminded us. May we rejoice in that
plenty, and walk in those paths, generously giving as we have generously
received.
Amen
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