2023-08-01
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
God as a (realistic, extravagant) Gardener
A sermon for Federated Church, UCC
Rev. Jill Harkins Goodman
30 July 2023
Scripture Matthew 13:1-9 (NRSVUE)
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 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 a
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. If you have ears, hear!
Sermon
When my husband and I were newly married and new homeowners, the house we bought had a large backyard with a large spot cleared for a garden. We were really excited to give gardening a try. In the spring, we bought tomato seeds and small flats and placed them in a sunny spot. The seeds sprouted and we waited for a nice day and set the seedlings on our deck - where they quickly all died. So we tried again - this time purchasing pre-sprouted tomato plants and planting them. We bought 6, or so we thought. As we started planting them, we realized we’d actually bought 6 FOUR packs. So now we had 24 tomato plants and, optimists that we were, we were nervous and started planning to make tomato sauce with all the tomatoes we were sure to get.
Except…it turned out these 24 tomato plants were all CHERRY tomato plants. It actually worked out ok - the deer ate some, the weeds took some out and there were still a few for us to eat. We tried again the next year - it still didn’t work. After that, we gave up.
All that is to say that I don’t know much about gardening. My lack of gardening skills means that this parable is somewhat challenging to me.
The yield doesn’t impress me, the image of the sower tossing seeds into the wind doesn’t upset me the way it probably does a gardener…And when we hear this parable, we often get caught up in the outcome AND in the soil. But today that’s not where I want us to focus. I want us to focus instead on the one throwing the seeds.
The picture painted by Matthew is of a sower who isn’t gently, expertly digging small holes and planting one seed at a time. Instead, this parable talks about some seeds falling out, and some seeds landing, which leads me to picture a farmer with seeds in a beat up old bag, tossing the stuff around the way a kid would throw glitter if we would
allow it. And I want us to picture GOD as the sower.
Constantly, the church has been trying to figure out what to do in the face of great change: 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 500 years ago (protestant reformation, anyone?) on that first Pentecost, even that first Easter, even when Jesus was SITTING IN THE BOAT telling this story to the people gathered. The people being taught felt like the
world was falling apart around them. They were working hard and not being treated fairly. They were surrounded by violence, messed up politics, and an economy that benefited a few at the expense of most. (Sound familiar, anyone?) And, in that moment, Jesus spoke in stories hard to understand. Yet these stories are meant to remind us that grace is extravagant and realistic. Grace will shower down on us, loving
us exactly as we are and loving us too much to let us stay that way. Grace invites us into connection with others - others we know and love, others we don’t know and dislike.
God doesn’t expect us to be PERFECT. Instead, God invites us into a shared ministry, a shared community, where we trust God’s unending love. We know that it will be messy, that some things will fail, some will have an average outcome, and others will produce abundantly and we are called to be flexible and look for God in all of it. The sower doesn’t stop to look at the ground before tossing their seeds, and I think THAT is the best part of the story for us today. This act reminds us that God is present with us in the midst of it all as we step out in faith, with God extravagantly tossing seeds and expecting realistic results. The spot where the garden was at that first house eventually became the spot for a swingset. Now another family lives in that house and, last I saw, they too have a swingset there. Everything changes… with the exception of the EXTRAVAGANT grace of God, which is being thrown around like seeds by a gardener willing to toss some seeds into the wind and see what happens.