Facebook has a function where you can sort all your friends, and put them on different lists: close acquaintances, family, school, church, soccer team. Isn’t that how our brain works anyway? We see someone, and we classify them – we make assumptions about what we can see: race, gender, class, age, etc. We decide if they fit in with our world or not – if they are different from us, or the same as us. It makes life easier to have these shortcuts in our brain, these ‘friend lists’ to help categorize the people we meet and live around every day.
Read Psalm 119:105-112 and Matthew 13:1-9,18-23.
In Matthew’s parable of the sower, as Jesus tells it, it is easy to jump to categorizing people into the four soils. We want to put us and the people we love into the ‘good soil’ category – the kind that receives the Word of God and bears abundant fruit, the kind that uses God’s word as a light unto our path as the Psalm says. As we think of the hard soil, the shallow soil, and the thorny soil, people probably come to mind that we would put into those categories. Someone who just won’t listen to the Gospel, or refuses to believe. Someone whose faith will not endure tough times, or who only shows up when it is convenient. Someone who gets so caught up in this world they lose sight of the kingdom of heaven. As with many lists, it becomes ‘us’ and ‘them.’
While Jesus spends a lot of time talking about the results of the different soil and the seed attempts, I wonder if this parable is not so much about the soils but about the sower. Most of us would come to the conclusion that the sower is a terrible farmer. Shouldn’t he be plowing the good soil before seeding it? Why is he wasting seed on bad soil where no good harvest will appear? What kind of reckless farmer would just throw seed out before checking it? Doesn’t he know what bad soil looks like? Can’t he see the birds are going to eat that seed? Shouldn’t he be spending all his seed on the good soil? This sower is a bad businessman, wastefully extravagant with his seed.
And how lucky we are that our God, who sows the seed of Jesus Christ in our hearts, is a prodigal sower. The real truth is that categorizing people isn’t that easy. We all have days when we are more like shallow soil, or thorny soil, or hard soil, rather than the good soil we are called to be. How lucky are we that God doesn’t turn away from bad soil but instead shares his love extravagantly with all. This prodigal sower watched His son die while we were still sinners. This prodigal sower offers us grace time and time again, even when we don’t deserve it – especially when we don’t deserve it.
If God is a prodigal sower, then we too are called to be prodigal with the Good News. We too are called to waste the love of Jesus Christ on all types of soil, we too are called to this inclusive kingdom where all are given a chance to bear fruit. For maybe this prodigal sower is a better farmer than what we think. After all, the good soil bears thirty times, sixty times, a hundred times more than what was planted – a harvest beyond our wildest dreams. A small seed of grace and love on our part, empowered by the Holy Spirit, can forever change someone’s life.
So are you ready to sow? Are you ready to see God’s kingdom as an inclusive area where all are welcome to experience the love and grace of Jesus Christ? Are you ready to be as prodigal with love and grace as our Sower is? Are you ready to help God’s seed reach even the broken places in the world? For the harvest is one that can transform the world – the harvest is one that will produce even more seed for our prodigal sower. And thanks be to God for Her prodigal love.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Kate
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