The Wasteful Sower

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!

"Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."

We planted a full garden this year for the first time ever. We have tomatoes, cucumbers (pickle and eating), eggplant, yellow squash, zucchini, watermelon, hubbard squash, honeydew, cantaloupe, peppers, red and green cabbage, lettuce, swiss chard, spinach. sunflowers, turnips, kale, basil, carrots, cilantro, rhubarb, raspberries, and, let’s not forget, pumpkins. Giant pumpkins.

All this in a backyard that measures 15x25 feet.

Buying seeds this spring, there were two things I didn’t expect: first, the price. I was surprised how much it cost us to buy seeds for most of those plants. Seeds don’t come cheap. Second (and the gardeners among you have figured this out by now), I didn’t anticipate how BIG all these things would get! Our backyard is full of of greenery and yellow flowers, just packed to the gills. We can hardly walk now. In another month, we’ll need a machete to get through.

So, clearly, I’m a novice gardener. But I’m nowhere near as novice as the sower in this parable. I prepared my beds of rich soil by turning them over and watering them. We carefully planted the seeds in little cups indoors before transferring them outside. I planned the garden to be in places that receive just the right amount of sunlight and rain.

I did not plant any seeds in the pathway from the house to the chicken run. I did not plant any seeds in the chicken run (chickens love seeds - and anything green). I didn’t plant any seeds on our driveway or sidewalk. I didn’t plant any seeds on the north side of our house that receives no sun. And I didn’t plant any seeds on the south side of the garage that is covered with rocks and receives all sun. I was not going to waste a single one of those precious seeds. It was all I could do to thin the carrots and lettuce.

Yet here we have this story that Jesus tells, this parable, in which the sower casts the seeds indiscriminately, with no apparent concern for where they end up. What kind of wasteful gardener is this!? What kind of deep pockets are behind this type of sowing!? As Jesus goes on to explain, nearly three-quarters of the seed never bears fruit.

Scholars debate the value of the seed that does bear fruit. The majority these days say that yields of a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold are average to above average. Others argue that this is a magnificent, miraculous yield far beyond anything possible.

What they don’t debate is the waste of seed. Whether in our day or 2,000 years ago, seed was a most precious commodity. And yet here is the sower casting it carelessly on every type of ground.

It’s like the wise sage, maybe an aunt, uncle, or friend, who came along and offered you some career advice early on because of the gifts that person saw in you and what they knew about the world after years of experience. In pride and stubborn independence, you couldn’t, or wouldn’t even consider taking such advice. Seeds sown, seeds wasted.

It’s like friend you made for awhile. The two of you were close. But then she took an unpopular public stand. Or he befriended someone you couldn’t stand. That which was once valuable passed away. Seeds sown, seeds wasted.

It’s like your zeal for changing the world, be it by eradicating poverty, ending homelessness, creating beauty, saving the environment, or fighting for justice. That was all well and good for awhile, but then the practical affairs of living life got in the way: bills to pay, family to take care of, politics, the law. A little change happened, but never a full yield. Seeds sown, seeds wasted.

Yet the Divine, the Universe, God, the Great Mystery, the Wasteful Sower, continues to fling seed at us, hoping some will stick and start and grow and bear fruit. The great 20th-century mystical theologian Thomas Merton writes:

“Every moment and every event of every person’s life on earth plants something in her or his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men and women. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.”

Carl Gregg goes on to comment: “Merton is inviting us to see that Jesus’ Parable of the Sower is not about the occasional moment when God or a human evangelist sows a seed about God. Rather, everything at every moment of every part of our lives is a seed suffused with life-giving spiritual import. This claim is not to say that everything that happens is good or controlled by God; instead it is to say that the sort of soil that we are — good or bad, rock-filled or thorn-infested — in each arising present moment effects how we receive the seeds of experience that are always being sown around us and within us.”

In other words, why is it when that sage advice comes around again later in life we accept and relish it with joy? Why is that when a friend challenges you the next time, you learn from it and grow and the friendship deepens? Why is it that when another chance comes along to change the world, you leap at and cling to the work like your life depended on it until it’s finished?

Because then, we are receptive soil. Our lives, in Merton’s words, are open with “freedom, spontaneity, and love.” The seeds are always raining down from the Wasteful Sower. And finally, by God’s grace, we are not too attached to our ego or to the bottle or to needing to maintain appearances or to a certain lifestyle. We are ready. We are free, spontaneous, and loving. We read a book we’ve read before, and suddenly it’s meaning is clear and forceful. We choose to give up an addiction we’ve tried to give up before, and this time it sticks and a new day dawns. We sing a song we’ve sung a hundred times before, and this day it brings us to our knees with tears in our eyes. Grace, pure grace, and a yield that is a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold. The seed sticks, grows, and bears fruit. Whether that yield is average or way beyond normal, seeds bearing fruit is ever a miracle.

As we consider and prepare the soil of our lives, the soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love, take heart also in the fact that no matter what kind of soil we are at any given moment, God is still working. Remember this, too, when trying to live with challenging friends, family members, and coworkers. You and I might not waste our efforts on the downtrodden, the thorny, and the hardened, but God does.

And even in my well-planned garden, tomatoes are springing up on the pathways, cilantro is growing up between the cracks in the cement, and snapdragons push up among the weeds.

What Yoke Have You Chosen to Wear?

Preached July 3, 2011, at Douglas Congregational United Church of Christ (www.douglasucc.org) by Rev. Andy DeBraber

Matthew 11:25-30 (Inclusive Text)

Jesus exclaimed, 'I bless you, O God, Ruler of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. It is true, Abba, because you have graciously willed it so. You have given everything over to me. No one knows me but you, Abba, and no one knows you, Abba, except me and those to whom I choose to reveal you.'

'Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.'

My friend Kate moved to Germany at the end of April. Some of you may remember her. She visited us here once or twice. She was the interim director of the Triangle Foundation and previous to that led the AFSC LGBT Issues Program, a statewide faith group working for inclusive justice of which I was a part.

About living in Germany, she recently wrote: “It's been almost two months since I came and I am finally feeling like I am not just functioning on adrenaline anymore...ahhh... It's so good to have the mental space to listen to the birds again, sleep soundly (not just pass-out because of exhaustion) and to have time to share with people.”

Doesn’t that sound like a picture of life lived well and fully? “To listen to the birds, to sleep soundly, to share with people.” We could make an advertising campaign out of it: “Tired? Overburdened? Weary? Come and listen to the birds. Come and sleep soundly. Come and share life with those you love.”

For some of us, this is a choice we can make each day. Just as I put on this stole each Sunday morning to mark my being yoked to the Spirit of God, so too each one of us has taken a yoke upon our shoulders this morning. The question is: are we aware of the yoke? Are we laboring under and with the masters we desire?

One of us got up this morning and put on the yoke of worrying what other people think: how will I look if I wear this? what about my hair this way? or that? If I wear red, white, and blue, am I too patriotic looking? If I don’t, will they think I’m disloyal or unpatriotic?

Another of us got up this morning and put on the yoke of keeping up with the Joneses: I’ve got to have that kind of car, this kind of wine, that brand of clothes, and a dwelling place that is just so.

A third person got up this morning and put on the yoke of all the things that need to get done: dishes and dinner, mail and email, pay the bills and polish the brass, pull the weeds and mow the grass, sweep the floor and call my mom, the list goes on and on.

A few lucky ones of us might have awakened this morning and asked, “How can I live in Love today?” A few lucky ones of us might have awakened this morning and put on the yoke of Love, saying, “Today, I hitch myself to the one who calls me “Beloved...the one in whom I delight.” The burden of this yoke is simple, easy, and light: love God, love neighbor, love self. All who are weary and heavy burdened, come to this place. Hitch on to this yoke, and find rest for your souls.

I would love to end this homily right here and practice putting on this yoke. Some of us can do that. Many of us. In fact, it may be helpful for you to have a rope or piece of fabric or wood that you can take each morning and place around your shoulders, remembering, “Today, I yoke myself to Love. Now what can I do to live in that space?”

But I can’t stop there. You know the saying, “Give someone a fish and they eat for a day; teach them to fish and they eat for a lifetime”? Well, as I’ve said before, that’s all well and good as long as they have access to a lake or river. In other words, who owns the lake? Will they let us on it?

There are some here (or more likely not here) because they cannot rest. They work on Sundays and holidays. We live in an United States of America on this Independence Day weekend that is for so many not the land of the free but the land of the overworked. There is no time for rest.

One of the reasons my friend Kate finds Germany to be a place where she can “listen to the birds, sleep soundly, and have time to share with people” is that we in America work an average of 378 more hours per year than those in Germany. That’s nearly 10 forty-hour work weeks, almost a week off per month. Six weeks paid vacation is the norm there, and working on the weekends only happens by strictest necessity.

On the contrary, at the altar of efficiency, we worship the God of productivity. More and more, people are being asked to take on two jobs as people are let go or retire and are not replaced. And without some kind of assurance of continued employment, when the boss says you have to work the next two Saturdays in addition to two hours overtime every day for the next month, what choice do you have? Say no and get demoted, docked pay, or fired. One might argue that corporations love high unemployment because they can so easily find replacement workers.

This is the great American Speedup, according to an article in Mother Jones Magazine. Formerly a household word, Webster's defines speedup as "an employer's demand for accelerated output without increased pay.” Bosses would speed up the line to fill a big order, to goose profits, or to punish a restive workforce. Workers recognized it, unions (remember those?) watched for and negotiated over it—and, if necessary, walked out over it.

The writers of the article continue: Does this “Sound familiar: Mind racing at 4 a.m.? Guiltily realizing you've been only half-listening to your child for the past hour? Checking work email at a stoplight, at the dinner table, in bed? Dreading once-pleasant diversions, like dinner with friends, as just one more thing on your to-do list?”

Sounds like time to check the yoke, to me.

“To balk at working hard—really, really hard—brands you as profoundly un-American. Who besides the archetypical Japanese salaryman derives so much of his self-image from self-sacrifice on the job? Slacker is one of the most biting insults available in polite company.

“And so we kowtow to—nay, embrace—a cultural maxim that just happens to be enormously convenient to corporate America. "Our culture has encouraged me to only feel valuable if I'm barely hanging on to my sanity," one friend emailed as we were working on this article. In fact, each time we mentioned this topic to someone—reader, source, friend—they first took pains to say: I'm not lazy. I love my job. I come from a long line of hard workers. But then it would pour out of them—the fatigue, the isolation, the guilt.”

I don’t need to tell you how dangerous this is to our society and how unhealthy it is for individuals and families. We are talking about people working in professions in which one mistake can have tragic effects, such as surgeons, air traffic controllers, and firefighters.

If you are in this camp, know that it’s not just you nor is it a personal failing. It’s happening everywhere - to hotel maids and sales clerks, to project managers, engineers, and doctors.

And we can do something about it. One, we can practice healthy habits ourselves: putting on the yoke of Love at all times, even when the yoke of work is much easier and concrete and, sometimes, more rewarding (it can be easier to answer emails than deal with the real live person in front of us). Relationships suffer when we’re constantly online or checking email or have no time for anything but working, eating, and sleeping. Our society, culture, and nation suffer.

Two, if you are in corporate leadership or business for yourself, take the lead of firms like Mule Design Studio, a web-design shop with a number of blue-chip clients, which has the following policy: "Our office hours are Monday through Friday 9-6. We do not hand out our cell phone numbers. On the weekend, we cease to exist."

Three, we can advocate to change three dubious statistics we hold as the US: We are one of 16 nations that don’t require time off each week; one of nine that don’t require paid annual leave; and one of six that don’t require paid maternity leave.

Finally, we can make choices about our lifestyle, requiring less cash and work, more sharing, and increased time to listen to the birds, sleep well, and be with the people we love.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.” Let us heed this personally and make it possible for all in this great country.

Killing the Gods who Kill

Preached June 26, 2011, at Douglas Congregational United Church of Christ (www.douglasucc.org)

Genesis 22:1-14

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you." So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt-offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you." Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?" Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.

When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt-offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place "The Lord will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided."

Matthew 10:40-42

[Jesus said:] "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."

God has given you the most precious gift. God has given you the thing you most wanted in a all the world, something you thought you could never have. Then God comes along and says, “Nope, I want it back. Go to the holy place and sacrifice that most precious gift to me; destroy it for my honor.” Would you do it? Or would you give God the finger and walk away?

How many people don’t we know who have given God the finger and walked away. And why not? If God acts like the God in this story, I don’t want to serve or worship that kind of God, either. This is a bait-and-switch God. This is a God who tests people’s faith. This is a God who asks us to kill. This is a God who demands ultimate obedience. This is a God who would have a man kill his own son as a sacrificial offering. This is a God who would kill his (and it’s always “his”) own Son as a sacrificial offering.

This is a false God. Honor this God and die.

A story like this one in the Bible asks us to consider not only the nature of our God, but also the nature of our Scriptures. Why include a story like this? What does it mean? What does it have to say to us today? Is it merely to say, “Look, this Abraham guy was really serious about his God-business. He was really faithful and incredibly obedient”?

I don’t think so.

Instead, it is a story about the Israelites changing understanding of God. A “progressive” understanding of God, we might assert.

This could be understood in at least two ways:

First, it could be that this story was written decades or centuries after Abraham and was written as a way to explain why the Israelites did not practice child sacrifice like the peoples around them. In other words, the story never happened, but was inserted into the Scriptures to explain a past decision from a future perspective.

Second, it could be that this story has Abraham hearing one type of God in the beginning and another in the end. In other words, at the beginning of the story, Abraham hears what is essentially the voice of the gods of the peoples around him who practiced child sacrifice, while at the end of the story he hears the voice of the true God, who would never have us kill another human being. In fact, the word used for God at the beginning of the story and the word used for God at the end of the story are different.

What is the nature of your God? Are we willing to have our understandings of God changed? Are we willing to stand up against the gods of the world who would kill their own children and ask us to sacrifice ours? Or are we willing to stand up for a God who would have all killing of human beings come to an end?

I dare say that the gods of this world have asked you to sacrifice some precious goals and dreams and even people and friends on their altars:

“You can’t make a living at that.”

“Did you see what she just did?”

“No one cares about your paintings, your music, your dance, your dreams.”

“How can you hang out with someone like that?”

“Don’t you know what they’ll think if they see you with him?”

“You can come to the family reunion, but don’t bring your ‘friend.’”

How many countless stories I can tell of spineless church executives and pastors who wouldn’t fight for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, despite the fact that those people are their own sons and daughters. I heard just another one this week. Her dad said that now that he’s retiring he would speak out for her. “No thanks,” she said. “Don’t do that now that it’s not going to cost you much and you don’t have the influence you once did.”

No, these are not the gods we serve. We serve the God who says through Jesus, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me and the One who sent me.” We serve the God of the end of the story, who says stop, don’t kill the child, there’s another way. We serve the God who says that whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones will never lose their reward.

Our reward is neither in riches nor in the number of friends we have nor in how people view us. Our reward is in giving life to others, in serving others, in even the simple act of sharing a cup of cold water with those in need. For in so doing, we will meet the God of Living Fully and Loving Wastefully. Who do you know that needs that welcome right now? Make a promise to yourself today to share with them a cup of cold water. In so doing, you will counter the gods of the world, who kill for power and profit. In so doing, you will encounter the God who speaks and acts for life, always and everywhere. In so doing, you might find one person who will lower their finger and return the the embrace of a loving God, who would never kill anyone, much less that God’s own child.