So in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus begins his third course of instruction with this parable.  In my first few months as your priest, this story has often come to my mind.  I wonder, for example, where is the good fertile soil in me?  Where are the well-worn paths – and are they in fact ruts?  Where are the rocks?  Where are the thorns?  What seeds have a chance of sustainable growth in me?  I have wondered about you as a parish.  Where in this parish are the thorns?  Where are the rocks?  Where are the well-worn paths – and are they ruts?  Where’s the deep fertile soil where new growth can bear fruit?  If we scatter seed, what’s likely to grow – and where?  I think a lot about the best use of resources, given the limitations of time, money, people.

      One of the things that happens when we’ve heard the same story a few times over the years (like this parable), is we sometimes think we know what it means.  And then we notice something new.  Maybe we hear it from a different perspective.  A biblical scholar with an inauspicious name, Eugene Boring, suggests that this is because a parable is more like a musical composition or a painting, than it is like an allegory or any other logical discourse.  As with a musical composition or a painting, in Jesus’ parables, you can’t really separate form from meaning – and there’s never just one meaning, or one interpretation. 

      But one thing that all of Jesus’ parables teachings have in common is this:  they are each surprising – even disturbing – every single one.  They’re about disrupting the order or the framework that the hearer takes for granted.  They are designed to disrupt the way we think things are (or the way we think they should be).

      So when I read Jesus’ parables, I’m always curious to find out what is surprising or disturbing this time.  Sometimes it’s not so obvious.   I’m also aware that when we hear something that disturbs us, we tend to want to resolve the disturbance – we like to figure out the answer – we want to know what everything means.  That’s what I think is going on this morning in this passage from the Gospel of Matthew.  If you look at your bulletin, you’ll notice that it says Matthew 13:1-9 and then 18-23.  Verses one through nine are the parable – it’s very likely that Jesus told this story. (This story appears in the Gospels of Mark and Luke as well)  Then in verses 10-17, there’s some explanation about why Jesus taught by telling stories (it’s because Jesus knew that fiction often carries truth deeper than the facts).  Then the writer of Matthew goes back to the parable to explain it – very unlikely that Jesus provided this particular explanation. (I’ll save you from the Boring – that’s Dr. Boring’s analysis—in this particular sermon.)   But I will say that it’s interesting to me to see evidence of how the early Christians were struggling to apply Jesus’ teachings in a post-Easter situation – because I think that 2000 years later, Christians are still struggling to pin down meaning and resolve the things that disturb us.

      But back to the question of what is surprising or disturbing about Jesus’ teaching in this particular parable.  You know what I think it is?  How many of you have ever bought seeds to plant to grow food?  Now I know that different kinds of seeds require different kinds of sowing methods, and the method in this story was probably broadcast sowing – throwing seed across the ground -- but how many of you would scatter some of the seeds you bought on rocks?  How many of you would scatter some of the seeds in the thorns?  How many of you would scatter some of the seeds on a walkway or a road?  While I was preparing to preach, I kept having this fantasy about buying a bucket-full worth of valuable seeds to toss around inside the church as my opening illustration of this parable.  They’d land on the floor, on your clothes, in your hair, all over the place.  That would be a sermon illustration that you wouldn’t soon forget!

      Jesus is telling a story that would make his disciples laugh about a sower who is crazy extravagant with the seeds and about a wildly improbable harvest that is between thirty and one-hundred times the amount of seed scattered – even counting the seeds that the birds ate, the seeds that the sun scorched, the seeds that the thorns choked.  The harvest is shockingly huge! If we understand the parable to tell us something about the realm of God, here we have a picture or a song about extravagant generosity and abundance even when the conditions are far from ideal.  It seems to me that Jesus’ intent here was to encourage his troubled disciples with a hopeful vision – to encourage them to lighten up!

      Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was martyred in 1980, once said:

      “It helps now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our
      efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the
      magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
      saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer
      fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
      No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

      This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already
      planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further
      development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capability. We cannot do
      everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
      and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an
      opportunity for the lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

      We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the
      worker. We [all of us] are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets
      of a future not our own.”

      Listen, Jesus says.  Listen.  Imagine and understand this.  The seeds of the redeeming love of God, the compassion, the mercy, the forgiveness, the justice of the realm of God are everywhere – there’s so much, that God isn’t fretting about what falls on the road or on the rocks or in the thorns, God isn’t fretting about what the birds eat, what the sun scorches or about the weeds.  God knows that there’s enough good soil in each one of us, in all of us together, in the world, to ensure a mind-blowing harvest.

      So what would it look like if we really believed that?  What if we lived as if it were true that the seeds of love and compassion and mercy and forgiveness and justice didn’t need to get distributed in the good soil only – but that they could get tossed around with reckless abandon?  What if, instead of fretting about the condition of the soil in ourselves, in others, in the community or the world, what if we started imitating the sower?  What are things that we could do with the love of God as a parish that would be crazy extravagant?

      Instead of fretting about our limited resources and placing all kinds of careful restrictions on them that have to do with the fear of “not enough,” or the fear of running out -- what if we explode the notion of what a resource is and assume that we have way more than enough – we have enough to throw seeds everywhere – on the pathways (even in the ruts), on the rocks, in the thorns.  Let’s dare to be crazy extravagant in our ministry together.  Maybe that sounds brave – but I bet for at least some of you it sounds foolish (and to tell you the truth, it sounds like both to me) – and maybe that’s just what we’re being surprised (or disturbed) into becoming – both brave and foolish and crazy extravagant for the love of God.