When we had our house built in Joliet, we were required to put sod down in the front yard, and sod or seed the back. So we had someone come in to lay sod in the front yard, and I personally seeded the back.
The front looked good.
The back – not so much.
A couple of years later, the back yard looked better than the front.
It turned out that manually seeding the yard with a mixture of grass varieties allowed for a rather lush back yard, and laying already growing grass of all one variety wasn’t as effective in the long run.
Let’s go to God in prayer.
God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds, help us to continue to grow into the people, and the church, that you have dreamed us to be.
Amen.
Lawns are weird.
Wealthy Europeans had manicured lawns, but most people farmed all the land they could, especially because in most cases it was owned by the same wealthy people and those farmers could only retain a portion of their crop.
But as a middle class began to grow, those people wanted signs of wealth. And one sign was a lawn of grass, mowed to a uniform height. It’s become so common now that Home Owners Associations and municipalities have rules about how much of your yard must be grass, how tall it must be, et cetera.
But if you had land in first century Palestine, you farmed it. You might have olive trees, or vineyards, but you definitely had wheat fields. Wheat was ground to make bread, and I’m not talking about sliced Wonder Bread.
When you sowed your wheat, you spread wheat seeds – the same wheat you ate – on the ground. They didn’t have broadcast spreaders. This was a much more manual task.
So the wheat that you harvested was split between what you sold, what you ate, and what you sowed for the next crop. If you know any game theory, this is a zero-sum game.
If you sell more, that has to come out of your own food and what you plant next year.
If you eat more, you’ll sell less or plant less.
And if you plan to plant more, you have to sell less or eat less.
It’s very much like pie.
So in our Gospel reading today, Jesus is talking about someone sowing seed, and he sounds… irresponsible.
3b Listen! A sower went out to sow.
4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up.
5 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.
6 But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away.
7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.
8 Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
Matthew 13:3b-8, NRSVue
He’s scattering seeds where they”re not going to produce fruit.
Why?
The first house we rented in Eureka was sold and we were evicted.
The property management company was unhappy with the condition of the lawn. The lawn, such as it was, was largely weeds and dry grass when we moved in.
Apparently we were expected to re-sod it?
We did have pictures, though, and they relented on that challenge to the security deposit.
To avoid this issue in the future, I’ve put seed down in spring and fall to cover spots that were bare when we moved in. I paid for the seed myself.
One thing I learned is that I can make all the seed fall on good soil, but I will miss a lot of good soil. I will miss the soil next to the driveway, next to the sidewalk, next to the mulch under the bushes.
So I have to make a choice:
Do I want to cover all the good soil, or do I want to conserve seed?
This becomes a more important issue when we read what the parable meant:
18 “Hear, then, the parable of the sower.
19 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.
20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, 21 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.
22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.
23 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.”
Matthew 13:18-23 NRSVue
Some would take this as a caution to not to waste time talking to people who don’t understand it, or who would let trouble or persecution turn them away, or those who would be lured away by wealth.
But there are two problems with that:
One: If we don’t spill over the edges of the good soil, we will miss some of the good soil.
Two: WE DON’T KNOW WHO IS GOOD SOIL.
So we have to carry our message to those we think may receive it, and those who don’t. Not because we want to waste the message, but because we don’t want to waste those hearing the message.
And here’s the thing about sharing the message: it’s not a zero-sum situation.
If we tell someone “God loves everyone,” we haven’t used up any of the message.
If we proclaim to another person “God’s grace is without limit,” we’re not going to run out.
Grass seed is like pie.
God’s love is not pie.
Our message is not pie.
So when we share the message of Jesus, we can be extravagant because that message is abundant. When we share the message of Jesus, we must be extravagant, because we don’t want to miss anyone.
Most of us live in greater abundance than we realize. We may not have unlimited resources, but most of us have a lot.
Yet we imagine ourselves to live in scarcity. We only have a little time, a little talent, a little treasure. We can only offer a limited amount of prayer and presence. And those resources are like pie: what gets used somewhere doesn’t get used somewhere else.
A spirit of scarcity asks “how do we make sure the seed isn’t wasted?”
A spirit of abundance asks “how to we make sure the ground isn’t wasted?”
This is why we keep replacing the banner out front: not because we have so much money to spend on banners, but because we don’t want to miss witnessing to people who pass by.
It’s why we have community dinners: not because we all have extra time and money to cook and serve food – and clean up afterward, but because we don’t want to miss being a witness of God’s love to those who would come.
So my challenge this week is for us to take an honest look at what we have – time, talent, treasure, presence, and prayer – and see whether we’re holding back when we could be doing a little more to speak of God’s abundant love for all creation.
Maybe we can be a bit more extravagant.
Amen.
Let’s sing CH 566 Be Still My Soul
* Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue
* Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James version of the Bible.
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