An Embarassing, Reckless, Irresponsible, Inefficient God

Reflections on the parable of the sower

Sounds like a foolish waste of valuable resources if you ask me!

I’m referring to the parable of the sower in the 13th chapter of Matthew’s gospel.

I hear this popular parable again. I’ve preached it several times. And almost every time I reflect upon it, I find myself staring at the ground.

I say to myself, “Don’t be bad soil.”

I instinctively examine my life, looking for rocks, thorns, distractions, arrogance, or complacency. I search for behaviors that might explain why the seed isn’t growing.

But why do I do that?

The more I sit with the story, the less convinced I am that Jesus is inviting us to obsess over the dirt.

The story is about the farmer. The sower of seeds.

Which means I suppose I should critique him instead. And that shouldn’t be too difficult.

He doesn’t seem to know the first thing about farming economics. If he had any sense at all, he’d inspect the soil before scattering all that seed. He’d avoid the path and skip the rocky parts. Ignore the thorns, etc.

Instead, he just throws seed everywhere like an idiot. That’s right, an idiot! What an inefficient strategy. What a reckless waste.

And then I begin to connect parable dots…

My criticism of the wasteful farmer is the older brother’s criticism of the wasteful father.

“Just look at those dilrods. Have you no shame?!”

The older brother watches with disdain as his father throws a ridiculous feast for someone who squandered everything. The farmer throws seed onto the ground that has given no indication it will produce anything at all.

Both are irresponsibly extravagant. Both offend my every instinct for efficiency.

Because beneath my knee-jerk obsessions with behavior is something much psychologically deeper: scarcity. Here we go again… the flippin’ terror of scarcity.

There’s never enough.

This week alone, I spent more than $3,000 replacing the alternator and timing belt on our Odyssey. I hate that feeling. I hate watching money disappear.

It’s the same feeling I have watching the farmer toss precious seed onto rocky ground.

Dude, stop wasting resources!

People who haven’t come to trust how deeply they are cherished often become preoccupied with making impressions. With merit. We obsess over ranking systems. Measuring stuff. We manage behavior and unconsciously decide who deserves another chance and who doesn’t. That’s the American criminal justice system in a nutshell, but I digress.

When I catch myself wrapped around the axle of scarcity, I always discover something just a whisker-thin layer beneath it.

A belief that divine love is scarce. And that it’s gotta be sufficiently earned.

But the farmer never stops to examine whether the ground deserves the seed.

The father never measures whether the son deserves the big embrace.

Both simply… give it away. Recklessly. Irresponsibly. With no second guesses about efficiency.

Friends, whether it’s our relationship to the Bible, to history, or another human being… what we focus on determines what we miss.

If all we see is the condition of the soil, we’ll completely overlook the overwhelmingly extravagant heart of the sower.

May we catch, even just a smidgen more than yesterday, the reckless generosity of the One who scatters grace without calculation, loves irresponsibly without measuring, and delights in bringing you back to life over and again.