Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23 13 July 2008
“SACRED IMPRACTICALITY”
I confess to a spiritual struggle that too often becomes a wedge between myself and God. I love efficiency. I admire practicality. I adore it when everything is in its place and the steps to getting something done unfold in an orderly fashion. I like focusing my attention where it matters most and my efforts can be most productive. I abhor waste, not only in fuel and money, but also time and energy. Hey, what can I say, I’m German and it is probably hard-wired into my DNA.
Sometimes I make this into a little game. For example, as I make stops when I do my errands, I shuffle my list and number my stops for smooth progress. If I miss a task and have to backtrack, wasting precious gasoline and fighting the traffic, I get frustrated with myself and then subtract from my imaginary score. But if I recall something not on my list as I drive around town—“oh yeah, I have soiled suits in the trunk and there’s the dry cleaners”—then I give myself extra credit.
Increasingly, efficiency becomes so deeply ingrained in me I cannot change it. Do any of you find multi-tasking addictive? Time was I could just sit and watch a baseball game on television. Not anymore. I have to be folding laundry or filing old bills or doing my ironing simultaneously to feel like I am not a slouch. Once we become interminable efficiency experts, a kind of righteousness creeps in, doesn’t it? As though we could do so much more living and get so much more out of life, if only we could manage to do more and more all at once. But the more I try to listen to the news on the radio while I answer email on my computer while I talk to my mother on the telephone, the more I realize it is patently untrue.
I admit this is not a juicy confession. I mean, as a vice separating me from God, it would never make it into People Magazine, even if I were a celebrity. Still, the parable of the sower, our lesson from Matthew, reminds me that my deep-seated practicality poses big challenges when it comes to me participating in God’s reign
Let me explain. In our parable, Jesus tells of a man going forth to sow. Normally, farmers are practical and efficient people. But not this farmer in Jesus’ parable. He had to be one of the most inept farmers ever to plant a field come springtime.
Did he carefully remove all of the rocks and weeds first? Did he create nice neat straight furrows? Did he place the seed in the furrows, carefully covering up each seed with a quarter inch of soil, each planting about eight inches from the next?
No, this guy went straight out with no preparation and started slinging seed in all directions. Once the seed germinates and harvest time rolls around, you know that his crop will have to disappoint. After all, most of the seed has been wasted! This farmer threw seed upon the rocky hillside. What was he thinking just then? Birds ate much of the seed. That is what happens to insufficiently covered seed. Other handfuls of seed ended up in clumps of weeds, choked out by the thorns.
The amazing part of this story is Jesus’ claim that a miraculous harvest resulted. Right. A miraculous harvest when only about ten percent of the seed has actually germinated. Jesus enthuses the amazingly rich harvest brought joy to the farmer.
Isn’t it interesting that the sort of farming I call sloppy, inefficient, and wasteful Jesus declares an outright success? Jesus sure sees things differently than I do.
Waste seems very acceptable in God’s plans. Valuable seed gets frittered away. So what kind of a redemption plan is this? I want to ask God. Maybe it is not so different from God’s original creation plan. I mean, why did God create so many different species of flowers, all shapes and sizes and scents? So few colorful blossoms are ever seen and appreciated by anyone. And why are there so many varieties of birds, each with their own markings and calls? I was in a backyard for dinner this week and they were amazing. Why do the gulls gobble nearly all of the tiny cute green sea turtles as they emerge from their nest eggs and scramble down the beach to the safe ocean? Most are devoured having just been born.
Frankly, it seems like such a waste of excruciating beauty, agonizing effort, and valuable resources. But here’s why: any truly creative impulse in life requires ex-travagance and disorder to bring brilliant, sublime and precious things into being. I used to feed my daughters baby food a few times weekly. What did they do? No sooner did I put that rubberized spoon between their gums, and they blew orange squash dots all over my white shirt. I would put pureed green beans in their mouth and it would spew back out from their cheeks down their chin. I would put in some turkey and it came right back out too. It was a little game we played. I was never sure whether they actually ingested any food. Back then it seemed like such a waste. Of course, today I have two lovely, smart, strong daughters.
It seems great extravagance is built right into the grain of the universe. So what we call wasteful is but the effusiveness of creation. Jesus calls it a divine wonder.
Much of the great good God does is unseen by human eyes. It goes unnoticed and unacknowledged. Take the Bible, for example. Thirty-nine Old Testament works: poetry, history, aphorism, narrative, songs, and discourses. Twenty-seven New Testament books: letters, sermons, tractates, and gospels. How much of it do we ever actually read in the course of a lifetime? It’s like trying to fill your teacup by standing underneath Niagara Falls. God has just said too much to us, on far too many different subjects, at too many diverse occasions.
So we hire people—you’re looking at one—to plow through the Bible and then reduce it to, I don’t know, the “Ten Keys to Spiritual Happiness” or the Four Spiritual Laws. As though it is our job, or as though it is possible to comprehend all of God. If we pursue that agenda, we end up reducing God, diminishing God. Lowest common denomination theology always makes bad religion, the kind we put on bumper stickers and feel smug about. There’s always so much more. Is that a waste too? No, it is the same mystery of life we have been talking about.
Sometimes people emerge from church mumbling, “I didn’t really get anything out of worship today.” I know because I’ve heard it before. When I was a young preacher, I would get very down on myself, like I had failed the person. Older and wiser, now I simply hear the Gospel of Christ on this matter and take it to heart. I’m given good seed to sow. I sow it indiscriminately and all directions and God is pretty happy with that, even if it only takes root in ten percent of those present.
When I say that I sow the seed of the word indiscriminately in all directions, what I mean is that at times I write sermons full of struggle and tragedy. Those whose life is smooth sailing just then say, “Wow, he is too dark and serious. I don’t need to hear that anymore.” Other times I write light and airy reflections, and those walking on fire in their personal lives say, “How superficial. I’m not coming back.” Because “they didn’t get anything out of it” it’s deemed a waste of time and effort.
Talk about creating a wedge between ourselves and God with efficiency and practicality! I can’t think of a more dramatic example than constantly asking ourselves at every step of our pilgrimage, “how much am I getting out of this?” Any church filled with souls asking that question will be dead in one generation.
So what’s the alternative? Well, let me give you two. How about asking, what is my neighbor getting out of this? I know she had a rotten week. How can we (notice I said we, not just the pastor), how can we respond to her? Or here’s a better question: what’s God getting out of this? Remember, worship is always a performance, yes. But not a performance of those in the chancel for those in the pews. Rather, it is a performance of everyone present for the God who sees all. What does God see in your spirit, your soul, as you are seated here? Is it some-thing that warms God’s heart and makes God smile? Or is it “what’s in it for me?”
In effect, maybe what we’re saying is to be a faithful disciple you must discipline yourself to sit through a lot of church that seems, frankly, like a waste. But in the larger scheme of things, like sea turtles getting wet or toddlers learning how to eat, its not so much waste as it is God’s holy mystery of creation and redemption.
Someone once said, the kingdom of God has no enemy so much as practicality. We could add efficiency. For what we mistake as waste is God’s holy mystery. I close with a story. Years ago my young niece from England visited Michigan for a wedding. Many things caught her eye in this strange new country, ranging from the sirens of ambulances to the ‘McDonald's cafes’, as she called them. Little Anna was especially taken aback by something odd in that downtown Catholic cathedral.
As we filed in for the rehearsal, everything was dark, musty and cool coming in out of the bright sunshine. The scale of that vaulted space and rich adornment inside was unlike the small, ancient country parish where Anna worshipped weekly. We paused before the chancel steps waiting for the rehearsal to begin. Anna stood there transfixed. For hovering high above the altar she spied the large crucifix that spared little detail of our Lord's suffering. She had seen crosses before, but never the sight of Jesus the Christ writhing upon one. She found the sight troubling and confusing. Looking at her mother, Anna echoed in a voice that belied her small size, throughout that cavernous cathedral, "Mummy, what is God doing up there?"
Way to go, Anna. If I were saving the world, I wouldn’t have done it through the crucifixion of a nobody carpenter in the backwaters of the Roman Empire either. God’s plan may drive crazy the accountants, efficiency experts, and managers. But through the mouths of babes and infants, Lord, you’ve brought perfect praise. Amen.
Lord our God, as the church gathers now deep into summer, as our numbers thing a bit after a big spring, help us not to become discouraged. We work, we speak, we testify, and we witness. Then sometimes the results can disappoint us. There are never as many people here as we might have hope in creating this space. There’s never enough money to do the good we hear you calling us to do. There’s never enough time to get through the distractions to reach the essentials.
Help us, Lord Jesus, to see you silently working behind the scenes, despite good intentions that get fouled up, despite inept performances to bring your reign here and now to the world. Give us patient to let you work as you work and not as we would have you work. And not to redeem and save as we would have you do so.
We remember today Walter and Jeri Chenault, both recovering from surgeries. Also, we bless Becca Hinds, returning from her tour of duty overseas in Iraq. We also pray for Mike and Kristen Antonio, wed in this very space just yesterday. Hear now….
