What A Waste

Written by Bill Weisenbach

Saturday, 12 July 2008

What a Waste Text: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23    How many of you heard this dialog growing up?  "May I go outside and play?" "Clean your plate first."  "May I watch television?"  "Clean your plate first."  "May I go to the bathroom?"  "Clean your plate first."  "May I go to college?" "Clean your plate first."  “May I get married?”  “Clean your plate first!” The root of this, of course, was not an obsession to overeat, it was a moral lesson.  Those of you who lived through the Great Depression, as did my parents, know better than most of us the good intention behind this clean plate business.  It may not have always come out this way, but what is really at stake here is the fact that wastefulness is a sin.  Anyone who is serious about faithful stewardship of God's gifts knows that wasting those gifts is a sin against the Giver.  It is a sin to waste food, whether we do it by purchasing too much, preparing too much, or eating too much.  It is a sin to waste water when shaving, or washing dishes.  And it is a sin to waste trees by using paper towels when an air hand dryer is close by.  A sin I too often commit.   Yet, just when we thought little else needed to be said on the issue of wastefulness being a sin, we are confronted with the strangest incident. Jesus tells this story about a man who went out to plant his fields.  A farmer went forth to sow seed as farmers have done for centuries.     Jesus says, the farmer goes out to his field and carefully removes all of the rocks and weeds. He then plows the soil into neat, straight furrows.  And then he puts the seed in the furrows, carefully covering up the seed with about a quarter of an inch of soil, each seed about eight inches from every other seed.   Is that what Jesus said?  No!  Jesus says this farmer simply goes out and with no preparation or care starts slinging seed around.   Well, once the seed germinates, and it is time for harvest, the harvest is rather disappointing.  Most of the seed has been wasted.  Exactly what would you expect from this kind of farmer.   Some of the seed had been thrown onto the roadside.  What on earth did the farmer hope to get from that?  Much of the seed was eaten by birds where it was not sufficiently covered by the soil.  Other seed was thrown into clumps of weeds that choked it to death as it grew.     But, the amazing part of the story was that Jesus says there was a miraculous harvest.  About ten percent of the seed actually bore fruit.  Jesus enthusiastically calls this an amazingly rich harvest that brought the farmer great joy.   So, who exactly is the farmer here?   We want to say it is some young farmer who doesn't know what she is doing, who does not yet know how to sow seed; or some old farmer who has lost most of his eyesight.  Or maybe this sower is one of those eternal optimists.  You know the type, anything is possible, even seed sprouting in hard ground, among thorns, in the heat of the sun.   But, what if this sower is God and this seed that is being sown is the promise of the kingdom.  Would God be so reckless in sowing seed?  You bet! Jesus spoke of God as a reckless sower.  We dare not charge God with wastefulness, but what we will say to God is something like, "Why bother? Why bother, God, sowing seeds of love in places that you know won't produce any life or growth?  Let's face it, God, this is a waste."   And if we aren't saying it to God, some are still thinking it, why bother helping the homeless, most of them are a little crazy and they don’t help themselves. Why bother helping that family? They won't appreciate it.  Why bother visiting those in prison, they are criminals and deserve what they get.  Why bother having alternative services?  Our single service is plenty good.   Why should we sling seeds when we know many will fall on dry, rocky ground where they are likely to die very soon?  Aren't there enough failures and disappointments in life without setting ourselves up for more?  Why do we bother?  And why does God bother?   Part of the answer is this: It is what God does and what we are called to do.  We are called by God to share the good news, to embody the Gospel in every moment, in every place.  If we only share it in places and with people that we know will receive it gladly then we have neglected a part of our task.  Instead of a reckless slinging of love and peace into the life of all people, a kind of slinging that mirrors the nature of God, we dump the whole bag of seed only where we know it will grow.  God doesn't work that way.  God offers life to all.   Another part of the answer is this: We live in the midst of hurt and brokenness.  We sling seeds of peace and hope everywhere because, unfortunately, it is most often hurt that is our common denominator as human beings and hope can heal hurt.     You know, we are such poor judges of soil.  Not very long ago people were asking: Why does God continue to sow seeds of peace in places like East and West Germany?  Why does God continue to sow seeds of justice in South Africa?  Why does God bother to sow seeds of hope in the United States where we spend two out of every five dollars to make weapons whose primary purpose is to destroy God's world and God's people?   Had it been left to most of us and our judgment of soil, we might not have bothered.  As a result, there would have been no reunification of Germany, no Nelson Mandela as the first president of a free South Africa, no lives redeemed for ministry, no urgency to control nuclear weapons.   Bishop William Willimon tells the story of a woman who was a graduate of John Hopkins University.  From there, she went to Duke University where she earned a graduate degree in nursing.  She did so well academically that the faculty asked her to stay on and be a professor of nursing.   Willimon did not meet her until she was in her 60s.  By that time she had left the nursing faculty and was working in an inner-city health center, a volunteer, for those who had AIDS.  One afternoon, talking to a friend of hers, Willimon told her that he had so much respect for the work the nurse was doing, for the way she was using her gifts.   Her friend said, “Do you?  Frankly, I consider it a waste.  When I think of all the good she could be doing and I consider the brilliant career that she simply tossed away, I consider her story to be sad, rather than inspiring.”   A waste?  A waste that he came to us reaching out to us in love.  He told us the truth about ourselves and our world and the truth about God.  And we responded by rejecting him, abandoning him, nailing him to a bloody cross, where his life’s blood drained out of him.  And even there, he kept reaching out to us, embracing us, forgiving us.  And then when God raised him from the dead, he came back to us, back to the very people with whom he had failed so miserably.  He came back to the very ones who betrayed him and promised them, “I will never leave you, no matter what.”   What a waste?  Maybe not!  Amen

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