Delivered on Wednesday, March 7, 2018 as part of the Medina Ministerial Association ecumenical worship.

I’ve been around growing things long enough to know what’s good practice and what’s not. I know enough to be dangerous. I know that today’s parable is bad farming.

This sower is just sloppy. He didn’t prepare the ground. There’s nothing about fertilizer or compost in the parable. He didn’t till the soil. Maybe he didn’t even clear away the dead brush from last year’s crop.

This sower has terrible aim as well. Just scattering seeds everywhere. Abundantly. He throws this stuff everywhere that some fell on the path and the birds ate it. Some fell on rocky ground, and it was scorched by the sun or choked out by thorns. Nothing grew.

Yet those seeds that fell on good soil brought forth way more than was expected. A harvest of four to tenfold was considered normal in First Century Palestine, fifteen times what was sown was exceptionally good. Yet this seems almost like an accident. Good farmers know that this is a waste of good seed.

This parable must have sounded completely ridiculous to people who knew about farming. They were one meal away from starvation. Yet Jesus tells stories of bad farming.  Would a shepherd really leave the 99 to find the 1? What gardener doesn’t weed his or her garden, but lets the weeds grow along side the crops until the harvest? Did Jesus really mean to draw such pictures of the kingdom of God or was he simply a bad farmer?

Later in this chapter, Jesus explains the parable saying that the various grounds are how the word is received. Some hear but the evil one snatches the seed away. The rock ground are those who are really passionate at first but spilt when the going gets tough. The thorns are those who are lost to the temptation of wealth. The good soil are those who hear and understand the word and then bear fruit. This whole thing is bad farming. And it’s no way to run a kingdom. Jesus’ audience probably didn’t like the parable any better than we do. What good is it to hear the kingdom and bear fruit when you’re surrounded by bad soil? What good is it to be a good Christian when everyone else isn’t going to understand?

It doesn’t take long for people who thought they knew more than Jesus to redefine the kingdom. The disciples themselves had a hard time with Jesus’ vision. Some of them argued about who would be the greatest; they protested when people who weren’t part of their group cast out demons. Jesus didn’t seem to be concerned with the competition. He kept talking about the first being last and the last being first.

After he was assumed into heaven, the disciples kept on arguing. How Jewish do these Gentiles have to be to be proper Christians? James says “Totally Jewish” and Paul says, “Not at all. Let the Gentiles join.” Peter isn’t sure.

We developed doctrines and creeds to argue and spilt over. We argue over how we baptize and when and how often. We form denominations. Then we spilt those denominations over fights on who gets to be ordained, who gets to preach and teach, and who gets to marry who. When that’s not enough, we pick fights we each other and argue how to load the dish washer after our potlucks. We as the disciples of Christ often think we know better than the sower and his bad farming. In all our arguing and thinking we know better, we forget.

We forget how powerful these seeds are. This seed, in the weakest return; will double what anyone thinks of as an exceptional harvest.

We forget that when a farmer goes to plant, they plant a specific crop. They don’t plant corn and expect to get apples in the fall. There’s a plan, a specific harvest in mind.

We forget about the harvest. The harvest of when a stranger comes into our buildings as a visitor, and they hear something, they feel something, they meet someone and they want to join.

The harvest of when the sick are laying in their beds and they are surrounded by get well cards and flowers from their church, and they recall the words, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…”

The harvest of when new life is welcomed with a casserole to bewildered first-time parents.

The harvest of welcome when all someone has known is isolation and exclusion because of who they are or what they carry, and they find release from whatever they were bound by.

The harvest of finding new friends, mentors, teachers, parents and grandparents in this faith family. This is especially meaningful for those who have been kicked out of their own families due to their mental health, who they feel they are, or who they are attracted to.

Yes church… in all our fighting and bickering and thinking we know better, we have forgotten.

The good news is that the sower plants expecting. The sower has reckless expectation that this harvest is going to be so overwhelming the world won’t be able to handle it. Yet we listen but never understand, we look but never perceive. Our hearts have grown dull. But some of us will remember the harvest as we sit in a Bible study and hear a life story poured out for the first time and the beauty overwhelms us.

Some of us will remember when we listen to a new member tell about what they have found in our church and why they were compelled to join.

Some of us will remember when we spend time with the confirmation or youth group and see how passionate the teens can get about mission. Or when we hear a baby squeal along with a hymn, making a joyful noise to the Lord. Or the infant that cries during a prayer with sighs too deep for words.

Some of us will remember when are about the work of the kingdom, and the scales will fall off our eyes, and we will remember the harvest. The trick is not forgetting. The trick is remembering.

So remember church, that Jesus, who knew hearts, sowed liberally with reckless expectation–how much more should we sow? We don’t even know which soil is which. We’re the farmers who think we know who the good soil is, but the people who responded to Jesus were the opposite of who everyone thought the good soil was…

Sow with reckless expectation. For we shall plant. And we shall water. But God will make grow and the harvest will be beyond anything we can imagine.