Careless Grace

My grandfather was a story teller. He had memorized many of the great poems written by Robert Service – The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Cremation of Sam McGee. He could recite by heart Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer: “Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light, And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out.”

Up at the cottage where there was no television and no electricity, we sat up late into the night by the flickering light of the kerosene lantern, as my grandfather recited that poetry and told us the stories of his life.That was really our favourite—the stories of his life: stories of his childhood, how he and his brother would swim across Toronto Harbour to the Island; the difficult years of living and working through the Depression; trying to raise two small children while his wife, my grandmother, recovered from tuberculosis for over a year in the sanatorium; and his hard life as an engineer for CN Rail. We could listen all night to his stories, as we hoped my mother would not remember it was already past our bedtime! He would tell us the same stories over and over again, but most of the stories would have a twist at the end, and everything would work out okay. I was an adult before I realized that my mother was well aware it was past my bedtime. She let me keep listening because she wanted me to hear the stories over and over again until I owned them. She knew that later in life I would discover how difficult and hard life could be, and I was going to need those stories to get through.

Even to this day as I think of my grandfather’s old family stories I sometimes feel like a jeweler who’s just holding up a gem, looking at it from different facets and different sides of this same story, and every time I do, I see something different in the story. Sometimes I see the obvious and clear point they wanted me to get, “that life is hard and challenging and difficult and you wait until the grace twist comes, and you realize you’re going to be all right.” And then I turn that story around a little bit and then all of a sudden I find myself focused on the waiting part of the story, and how they were made strong through the waiting. Turn the story around again a little bit and all of a sudden I’m thinking about how important the family ties were during that waiting and during that hard time, and how the ties were strengthened through that. And then I turn the story around another time, and I see the importance of just telling the story.

So when Jesus tells a story about a Sower who scatters seed with what looks like holy carelessness, he is not simply asking us to work harder at being good soil. He is inviting us into the family posture of faith: listening, waiting, and trusting that the harvest belongs to God. That’s something of what the parables of Jesus are all about. These are family stories. They are not illustrations, and they are not ornaments hanging on Jesus’ theology. They are the theology itself, told in the ancient Semitic tradition of rabbis who proclaimed truth through story—often through stories left open enough to keep turning in the listener’s heart. Anyone with ears to hear, anyone in tune with the holy spirit, can hear them. You can hear them. You’re in the family. The stories belong to you, they tell you who you are. All you have to do is sit on the warm summer porch of worship … and listen …

A Sower went out to sow. He strapped a bag of seeds on his shoulder, and he went out to his little strip of land. This sower would know nothing of my grandfather’s apple farm he shared with his brother, no, these ancient sowers had land carved out of the hillside, it was terraced with rock walls holding up their little strip of land, next to someone else’s strip of land. The Sower begins the very familiar task of casting out the seed from the bag. He’s not overly careful where this seed goes. The point here is just to get the seed out. Some of it inevitably falls upon hard ground. That seed doesn’t have a chance! It’s not even going to germinate before the birds come and get it. Some of the seed falls by the rocky wall, and the soil near that wall and underground will allow the seeds to germinate – to spring up, but the rocky ground isn’t going to allow the plant to have any root. When the sun comes out it’s going to scorch that thing right on the spot. Some of the seed, the sower knows, will start out all right, then weeds are going to come along, and just snuff it out. But thankfully, some of the seed falls onto good ground, and that’s where the harvest comes from.

That’s the end of the story … time for bed now. You can go and lie on your back in a darkened room, stare at the ceiling … and wonder what that story was all about. You can just keep turning it over and over and over in your mind and heart … What was it about?

Well, where would you like to find yourself in that story? Are you the sower who’s come to this church trying to find out why sometimes your life is successful … and sometimes it’s not? Or is Jesus the sower? Are you the seed trying to figure out how you landed on this hard path where everyone walks on you all the time? Or is the Bible the seed? Are you one of these options of ground here – a rocky wall perhaps – too defended for the love of scripture to make its way through? Or have you been nurturing some weed, choking out the seed of hope? Have you come here to this church service wondering what it would take to become good soil, so something wonderful could happen in you … and through you? Well, there’s about twelve sermons there and any of them will work, but it’s probably best for me to preach only one at a time.

That’s the blessing of the parable … like a gem, it has all of these facets. But you know what, I still want to look at a different facet of this parable ... When Jesus gets done telling this story, he says, “Let anyone with ears to hear … listen!” Listen … listen to the parable. Jesus told his parable not to a family on a Muskoka cottage deck, but to a very large crowd by the sea. In fact, the crowd was so large that Jesus had to get into a boat to speak to all of them. It’s a wonderful image, because this was a very diverse crowd. Some of the people were clearly not on board with Jesus yet. There’s a fun visual image – Jesus is on the boat by himself … the crowds, not on board. According to Mark, Jesus has already run into trouble with at least two groups of people by this time. The Pharisees, who are all in a lather because he keeps healing on the Sabbath. And his own biological family has already tried to come and take him home because they are embarrassed. People are saying he is out of his mind, and they think the most responsible and loving thing they can do is bring him home and take care of him. That’s when Jesus looks around at the disciples and the other people sitting with him and says, “this is my real family from now on. These are my brothers and sisters. This is my kindred.” So … all of these people are listening to this parable. We have a crowd that is at best curious. We’ve got the Pharisees who are already opposed to Jesus. We’ve got the embarrassed family of origin. And then we’ve got the new family, but as Jesus makes very clear, he expects only the new family to be able to listen.

So apparently listening is the mark of being in the new family of Christ. Like listening to my grandfather, it was the pathway into my own family and understanding who I was. Isn’t that unfortunate? Because that’s not what we’re particularly good at … is it? – listening … listening? It’s not exactly passive. Listening takes hard work—but not the kind of hard work we usually take pride in. We are more comfortable speaking, doing, acting, and making things happen: “You can count on me. I’ll take responsibility. I’ll get it done.” That is our cherished self-image. In fact, I think most of us would probably rather identify with the rocky wall or the weedy ground, rather than just listen to the parable. Because if we identify with the problems, then we at least still get to be responsible, “yeah … yeah … it’s my fault, I was the weed!” I’m responsible! Because then we have some measure of control, and we think we know how to fix this – we can turn this around, “I’ve just gotta get rid of the weeds! Then everything will be all right!”

But our first responsibility, our primary responsibility, our foundational responsibility to this parable is … just listen! Don’t try to figure out what to do with this. Don’t figure out how you’re going to use this – how this is going to turn you around right now. Just listen … You take it in. You meditate over it. You brood over it. You wait on it. You wonder about it. And the seed of the gospel in its own time … grows. It does the shaping, the changing of your life.

As I’ve been trying to listen to this Parable of the Sower, this is what I wonder about … Isn’t it a wonder to us responsible, careful, hardworking, elder brother members of the family, that the sower is not particularly careful with the seeds? Listen, he’s just flinging it! And he lets it lie where it falls. And then he waits to see what happens … Uh oh … Another one of our least favorite words, waiting! We’re not good at listening, and we’re certainly not good at waiting. Waiting may be the greatest indictment to our “make it happen” inclinations. We know, don’t we - We’re not responsible for making the Christian faith come to fruition, either in our own lives or in the lives of others. We don’t grow the seed, we don’t even ensure what type of soil it falls upon. We certainly don’t control the sun or the rain the seeds are going to need in order to grow. LISTEN … LISTEN!

All the necessary work for the gospel to bear fruit has already been claimed. Between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the job descriptions are full. “We’re glad to have you here!” but what’s left for you and me is witness – isn’t that what Jesus called from us anyway …“you will be my witnesses.” Witnesses are not necessary. They don’t make things happen. We’ve got this word all turned around. We ask people to go be witnesses, and what we really mean is go out there … and be Jesus … go convert people! … Make things happen!… go change things! Witnesses do not make the thing happen. They watch, and then they tell the truth about what they have seen.

Ask any courtroom judge, the judge will tell you, “the last thing we want is for the witness to be creative!”

The witness says, “I saw this … I saw this … I saw the seed start to grow, but … whoops! Nailed by a weed!” “I saw this seed fall on good ground, and all this came out of it. It was amazing, the harvest.” We wait … and we see … We wait … and we see … As anyone with ears to hear knows, that’s how the story goes. Like most of the parables, this one too, is open-ended. We wait … and see … How many times do we hear that phrase … wait and see?

Some of you may be worried about a health issue – you’ve had some very scary medical tests. You get home and everyone says, “What did the doctor say?” “I don’t know,” you say, “we have to wait and see …”

The husband has been out of work for quite some time. They’re getting down now to the bottom of their savings. They’re worried about being able to hang onto the house. Thankfully he gets an interview. He goes and gives it his best shot. He gets home. As soon as he walks through the door, his anxious wife says, “Well! How did it go?” He says, “I don’t know … We’ll have to wait and see …”

Parents have to wait and see how their young children turn out. Children have to wait and see what happens to their aging parents. The whole world has to wait and see what happens with the environmental mess we are in, and with the violence and uncertainty in Iran, Israel, Ukraine, Gaza, and so many other places.

It’s actually one of the things we know best. It’s a very familiar story isn’t it? Listen! Listen to your waiting! It’s a parable of the kingdom. If nothing else, waiting to see what happens as witnesses means this: the future, and whatever harvest there may be, belongs to God. The future belongs to God—clearly—otherwise we would have pulled it off on our own by now. But we can’t do that, we have to wait on it – the waiting makes it clear that the future belongs to God … And isn’t that good news? After all that we have seen of history, do you really want the future to be in our hands!? I don’t want it in my hands; I can tell you that! No—as everyone in the family knows, our hope, our only hope, is in the Savior who flings grace with extravagance and love.

Just wait … You’ll see …