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What in the world does God think he’s doing?

If the farmer in this parable is supposed to be God – and he is! – this God goes against almost every economic principle we humans most highly value. This farmer-God throws seed around like Jeff Bezos throws money around. Not only that, but this God is utterly incompetent at marketing, recklessly broadcasting his seed in no particular direction where most of it has almost no chance of taking root and growing. This God is wasteful. The ROI – return on investment – of his enterprise is almost nothing!

What in the world does God think he’s doing?

We know better than to be reckless and wasteful. Many of us were brought up in families where you weren’t allowed to get up from the table until you’d finished every last scrap of food on your plate – including the vegetables. My mother used to remind us kids that there were starving children in India who would love to have the food we were wasting. I offered to help her pack it up and put it in the mail to India. But my mother wasn’t budging. Food was NOT to be wasted.

And that kind of frugality applies to other things, too. During these times of economic difficulty and environmental sensitivity, some of my socially conscious friends have a bumper sticker that asks, “What Would Jesus Drive?” It’s not really a question that seeks an answer because my socially conscious friends are answering it for you by the kind of vehicles they drive and put these bumper stickers on! Obviously, they believe Jesus would drive a Toyota Prius, or a little SmartForTwo three-cylinder shoebox of a car, or maybe Jesus would have no car at all – maybe Jesus would just ride a bike to church to reduce our dependence upon foreign oil and keep the planet from hydrocarbon disaster. Jesus would conserve natural resources and live more frugally to save Mother Earth because – after all – Jesus saves, Jesus saves, Jesus saves!

But not Jesus’ Father!

Not God – not the wasteful, spendthrift, throw-seed-around-like-its-going-out-of-style farmer in today’s parable! Oh no! If Jesus is putting around town on a little motor scooter in order to conserve, God is zooming down the street with the pedal to the metal in a gas-guzzling Hummer! Look at God in this story, so recklessly tossing that seed around without any concern for waste!

What in the world does God think he’s doing?

“…some seed feel upon the path…some fell on rocky places…other seed fell among thorns…still other seed fell on good soil where it produced a crop…”

What a thought-provoking parable! What do you think Jesus is getting at here?

Maybe Jesus is telling us this parable of the wasteful farmer to jar our sensibilities and create some tension around the values we hold so dear. Maybe Jesus is showing us that there is more to life than the bottom line – that life is not measured in terms of Return on Investment, or in terms of dollars and cents. Maybe Jesus is teaching us that the central issue for us should not be our sense of economy, but rather our humanity.

Perhaps the parable is asking, “What is the worth of a human soul?”

This is a haunting question. I know it exposes the truth about how I often look at life and other people. Maybe it shines a light on you, too. Maybe it confronts us with the thought that our lives are often much more centered around secular economic values than around the lavish extravagance of the Gospel of God’s grace.

A little church I once served had a longstanding mission partnership with a little impoverished community way back in the mountains of Kentucky. The people there had worked in the coal mines for several generations, but when the coal ran out the coal company shut the operation down, leaving the people without work, without medical help, without a school, without any of the basic necessities of life. This is the story of many of the tiny communities up in the mountain hollers of Kentucky and Tennessee.

At some point in time, a Christian missionary family came to try to organize the people of this community and to work with them to find ways of improving their life. They formed a development corporation and learned skills that enabled them to build canoes and kayaks that they then sold. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and the people developed a sense of purpose and pride. They were a humble people living in tiny ramshackle cabins without many of the things you and I would consider basic necessities. Were it not for the financial support provided by churches like ours, they couldn’t have done what they were able to do. And through their hardworking efforts and these partnerships with caring people, the folks of this community found a somewhat better life and a little bit of hope for themselves and their children.

Well, one summer, a couple from our church was vacationing in Kentucky and decided to drive up into the mountains to visit this community. It took them forever to get there, driving along narrow winding roads with switchback after switchback and occasional logging trucks coming in the opposite direction and nearly running them off the mountain. But finally they arrived.

Well, they were shocked by what they saw. This was not success as they understood success to be. The poverty was obvious – houses not fit to be called houses – barefoot children in tattered hand-me-down clothing – outdoor plumbing – even the factory where the canoes and kayaks were manufactured was more like a rundown barn. This was not how people from the affluent suburbs of Massachusetts had imagined it would be like.

Their hearts sank. When they returned home they told the story to our Missions Committee. They said, “When we saw what an awful place it is, we wondered if we’re just throwing our money away.”

And that very night, the Missions Committee decided…to throw no more seed onto that hard, rocky, thorny soil.

It was just a matter of economics.

“A farmer went out to sow…some seed feel upon the path…some fell on rocky places…other seed fell among thorns…still other seed fell on good soil where it produced a crop…”

I wonder why God would throw so much seed into so many hopeless places? Wouldn’t God have been more responsible if he just cut his losses and stopped throwing good seed away after bad? Wouldn’t the number crunchers back at the home office give God a raise and a pat on the back if he could produce bigger harvests with less seed?

This is one of the deepest struggles we Christians face. In a world that measures value in terms of economic efficiency, God calls us to take up a different value system. The question to God is not, “How much does it cost?” but rather “What is the worth of a human soul?”

Our faith is first and foremost about GRACE!

And then the question turns to economics. What are we willing to spend and expend to bring God’s life and love and hope to others?

If my little church gave in to the temptation to stop sowing seed, just the opposite sort of thing happened in a later church I served. The church building was built into the side of a hill with most of the parking adjacent to the lower level, but the sanctuary was located on the third floor at street level on top of the hill. There was very limited parking on that street. But there was an elevator that carried people from the lower parking lots to all three levels of the building. But all too often that elevator decided it did not have to work on the Sabbath. This was not a problem for most of us, but for those in wheelchairs, it made the sanctuary totally inaccessible. So a proposal was made to build a handicap ramp and provide handicap parking on the upper street level where the sanctuary was located.

Trouble was – this being in a big city with very limited space to work with – the projected cost of the ramp and the new parking was extremely high. A church meeting was held to debate the issue. Most of the conversation centered on the economics of the project and whether it was really feasible given the fact that there were so few wheelchair bound parishioners. In fact, on most Sundays only one wheelchair-bound woman came to church. Why would the church spend so much to serve just one, or just a few?

That’s when Don stood up. Now Don at the time was dying of bone cancer. He didn’t much care anymore whether he offended anyone with what he said. In fact, on another occasion, Don had actually stood up in the middle of a sermon and said he disagreed with it! He stood right there in the middle of the church service and voiced an opposing view! Everybody sat there in stunned silence! I was just glad I wasn’t the one preaching that day! My colleague was in the pulpit. I remember sitting there thinking, “Okay, Rev., let’s see you get yourself out of this one!”

Now, don’t any of YOU get any ideas about dialogue sermons!

Well, at the meeting that night, Don started off by saying he was ashamed to be a member of a church that counted everything in terms of money. “From the time this meeting started,” Don exhorted, “all you people have talked about is money, money, money!” Then Don went on to say that, in his opinion, the measure of a church’s faith was not what it did for the many, but what it was willing to do for the few. Then he re-told the Bible story of the day some caring friends literally took the roof off a house just to lower one paralyzed man into the room where Jesus was teaching.

Remember that story?

And then Don said, “Even if only one person would be helped, we should build that ramp.”

And so the ramp was built – for the one…for the few…and now for the many who have used it since that time to come and worship.

May Don rest in peace!

The parable of the sower tells us about a God who is unafraid to waste his resources in the effort to bring life to others. He scatters the seed of his Word east and west and north and south. He sows among believers and doubters, good people and bad, those who are ready to receive the Word and those whose hearts are hardened. He spreads the seed on the pathway, and on rocky soil, among thorns, and …

…every once in awhile, that seed finds fertile ground, and it takes root, and grows, and produces fruit for the kingdom of God.

And while we secular human beings might consider this as waste, it is not waste at all!

It is GRACE!

It is lavish, extravagant, unmerited love poured out for us and our neighbors and for all creation!

This is what God is like. This is what we are called to become!

Will Willimon asks why God didn’t create just one species of flower. Have you ever wondered about that? One kind of flower would be miracle enough wouldn’t it?! But God didn’t stop there! God made flowers of all sorts, of different shapes, sizes and colors. And do you know what? You and I will never see most of them! Why did God waste so much beauty that most people will never get to enjoy?

Well, for the few who WILL see and enjoy!

And think of all the good that is done in this world. Can you measure it? Most of it goes unseen and unnoticed! Why does God waste so much good that most of us will never experience?

Well, for the few who will benefit from it!

Lavish, extravagant, wasteful love!

This is GRACE!

God is a “grace-guzzler”!

And the tipping point that makes the difference between our human values and God’s values is simply this: economics produces a faith that is all about us and our personal well-being – grace produces a faith that is all about others and their well-being.

What in the world does God think he’s doing? What in the world does the Church think it’s doing? What in the world do Christians think they’re doing?

Saving the world. That’s what.

For the Bible tells us, we are saved by grace, and grace alone.

Go and spread some grace this week! Be generous and extravagant with it! Spread it far and wide!

Some will find its way to fertile soil.

And God will win a soul.