Profligate Blessing
Proper 10 Year A
12 July 2020 8 a.m. Said Mass on the Labyrinth
And 10:00 a.m. Said Mass with Sung Antiphons
Live-streamed from the Chancel
Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)
The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, homilist
In today’s gospel, Matthew gives us
one interpretation of Jesus’ Parable of the Scattered Seed. It sees the saying
of Jesus not as a parable, with one point of comparison, but as an allegory, a
coded treatment where different elements of the story stand for different
things: the seed is the word of God, the sower a preacher of sorts, and the
various soils different people who react differently to the word depending on
their circumstances. This interpretation
is almost certainly the product of an early Christian pastor, concerned about
how his preaching might be received.
But this misses the point the
historical Jesus almost certainly was trying to make. Jesus gave many other
parables comparing God’s Reign to some kind of seed.
In one parable, a seed sprouts and
grows all on its own regardless of whether the person who planted it knows or
understands why it grows (Mark 4:26-34).
Jesus thus says that God’s kingdom comes primarily through God’s acts,
not ours, and arrives despite our unawareness.
Elsewhere, a tiny mustard seed
sprouts and grows into a huge tree-like shrub (Mark 4:31; Matt 13:31; Luke
13:19): tiny, almost imperceptible in
its beginnings, huge, overwhelming, and sheltering in its full growth. That’s God’s Reign.
In yet another, God’s Reign is like
a field sown with wheat in which is mixed noxious weeds whose young plants are
indistinguishable from the good wheat plants (Matt 13:25-40): we mustn’t try to rip out the bad ones lest
we destroy the good ones as well in the process, but rather let God and the
angels do the sorting once the plants are fully grown. Again, God is in charge of the Reign of God,
not us.
In the Parable of the Scattered
Seed, Jesus pictures a farmer at work, broadcasting seed in the standard practice
of that place and time, far removed from our careful planting of seeds and
Chinese intensive care of plants.
“A sower goes out to sow seed and
casts it all over the place. Some falls
on hard, thin ground with hardly any soil.
It doesn’t sprout. Some falls on
ground with soil, but little water. It
sprouts but quickly dies. Some falls on
rich soil infested with weeds, and they crowd it out. Only some falls into good soil with adequate
water and sun and not too many weeds.
But there, the crop yields are so high that they justify the apparent
waste and loss in broadcasting seed.”
We would say that this farmer is
foolish: he wastes his seed stock by
casting it carelessly. But Jesus argues
that the bumper crop that results vindicates the practice: 100 times back from
the seed broadcast.
And this is the heart of the matter
for Jesus. The farmer spreads those
seeds with abandon. And the result is
good indeed. Those who might point to
the barren bits of ground, the rocky and sun-burnt soil and claim that no
harvest is coming are wrong. The
profligacy of the sower, while causing the mixed results, is also what ensures
success.
Jesus’ point is that when we’re
talking about the Reign of God, we’re talking about God. And God is good. God is compassionate. God is loving. God is fruitful. God is reliable. God is provident. God’s blessing is profligate.
“God gives the blessing of rain and
sun on the wicked and righteous alike” says Jesus. Like that crazy loving father with the two
wayward sons, the prodigal and the priss, or the crazy woman who throws an
expensive party to celebrate finding a lost coin, or the shepherd who goes out
after one sheep while forgetting the 99, the sower seems foolish, especially to
bean counters who worry about wasted seed stock. But the bumper crop vindicates the profligate
sower.
God is like that sower. We cannot
judge God and say that God’s reign is hopelessly delayed, that good is losing
and bad is winning. The sower cannot be judged by the wasted seed. The garden’s
success is not judged by the bad bits.
We often are uncomfortable with the
idea of a profligate, seemingly wasteful God.
But a God who is too calculating and careful, the God of the
bean-counters, is an idol. One of the
reasons that Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species through
natural selection was so devastating to many people of faith was that they had
been encouraged to worship that idol.
The divines of the age said that nature reflected its author, God, in
its order and design, and that nature’s supposed lack of wastefulness showed the
parsimony of God’s economy. But Darwin’s
perceptive and careful accumulation of data revealing nature red in tooth and
claw, natural selection driven without apparent design by wasteful death and
suffering on monumental scales over the eons gave a death knell to the image of
God as an orderly and rational designer of nature.
Jesus’ view that God is like a
profligate and wasteful broadcaster of seeds is perhaps closer to the
truth. As Annie Dillard writes, “Nature
is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical
and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper
to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is
a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless
capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once…. This is a spendthrift
economy. Though nothing is lost, all is spent” (Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek [HarperCollins, 2007], p. 66).
Sisters and brothers, if we are to
have faith at all, we must have trust and confidence in God. We must have patience
and be able to see through the dry times, the sparse soils, the apparently
wasted seed. It must have a heart full
of assurance that in the end, love wins. We too must be wasteful, must be
profligate. We must open our hearts and
hands, and forgive, love, and broadcast the seeds of God’s love regardless of
what the immediate results look like.
Our hearts must be faithful because God
is faithful. God’s ultimate
intention is to love, to heal and to save.
God’s Reign has come. God is in
charge, right here and now. Simply
because we cannot see this at all times and places does not mean it is not so,
or that somehow God is stingy, picky, or capricious. Much of what prevents the clear showing
forth of God’s reign are those pesky weeds we ourselves cultivate. “Rejoice for God’s Reign has come” says
Jesus, “change your thinking and get out of its way!”
Amen.
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