Date: July 16, 2023 

Scripture: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Scripture Reader: Garth Brown

Sermon Title: “God’s Wasteful Love”

Preacher: Rev. Dr. Bob Jon

You can also listen on Podcast from iTunes and Spotify. Search for “Podcasting from Rev. Bob Jon.”

There is a story about how frugal Mrs. Willencot was. When her husband died, she asked the newspaper how much it would cost for a death notice. “Two dollars for five words.” “Can I pay for just two words?” she asked. “Willenecot dead.” “No, two dollars is the minimum. You will need three more three words.” Mrs. Willencot thought a moment and said, “Willenecot dead. Cadillac for sale.”

I am sure that many of us have several house rules to practice frugality. When you leave the room, make sure that you turn off the light. When you use the water, make sure to turn off the faucet. Frugality is considered a vital means of survival in times of scarcity, war, and or pandemic. When the pandemic started three years ago, think about how people were driving miles for miles to find toilet paper.  

While practicing frugality, we also want to be effective with our limited money, time, energy, and resource. You go to work in the morning and want to get much done by focusing 100% without distraction. You want to go home later and spend your time with your family rather than worrying about what you left behind. This past week, I needed to change the engine oil in my car. So, I went online and made an appointment at noon. I went to the auto shop and wait for two hours. The staff said, “Next time, just call me. I will cut down your waiting time to 30 minutes.”

But listen to the parable of the sower in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus tells us, “A sower went out to sow. He scattered the seeds on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. He sowed some seeds on rocky ground, and they sprang up quickly but scorched later because they had no root. Other seeds fell among thorns which choked the seeds. 

With our virtue of frugality and goal of effectiveness, we might wonder, “Why waste all those seeds when the sower knows that these are not the most idealistic soil for planting? Wouldn’t it be better if the sower reserved all the seeds and just sowed them on good grounds? That would definitely bring about abundant harvest later with much more joy and celebration.  

Investing in what is likely to bring the best results to us. That is common sense. That is how our business operates or even relationship works. For example, Starbucks chooses its new location carefully by researching the demographics. A census demographic shows that Starbucks usually targets location with “wealthier households, more people, younger age, and more educated.”^[1] So, can you guess which state in the U.S. has the most Starbucks stores? It is California with 2,468. Can you guess which state has the fewest? It is Vermont which only has four stores. 

Jesus later explains what he means by the parable. Think of the seeds as the words of the kingdom. People hear it but don’t understand it just like the seeds on the path. The birds come and snatch them away. People hear the words of the kingdom but just like the rocky ground, they have no root, and they abandon them when trouble comes. People heard the words of kingdom but just like the thorns, they are constantly worried about their wealth and love of the world, therefore not being able to yield anything. 

As Jesus indicates that these soils represent the hearers in terms of how they receive the words of God, many preachers often interpreted this allegorically to tell their congregations that it is their fault when they do not find their sermons inspiring or meaningful. It is like they are too worried about what is in their oven. They have no root of faith in their heart… As many Methodist pastors started their new appointment last Sunday, I am sure that they were hoping for good soil, good finance, healthy Sunday school, many children and youth, growing membership… etc.      

But I believe that Jesus is inviting us to stand and look at the world with Christ together. As Jesus said, there is harvest waiting. God needs many workers and asks, “Whom shall I send?” And we Christians are often afraid to respond to such a call and say yes. Maybe it is because we do not want to fail. We do not want to see a lack of response from the community. We are afraid of financial hardship. After all, the church is also bound by limited time, volunteers, and resources. Why waste them? 

But God is God who is extravagant in God’s love. God does not abandon us especially when we are the bad soil. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus describes God as a shepherd who goes after the one lost sheep while leaving ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness and rejoices when he has found it. He lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. God is like a woman who has ten coins. When she loses one of them, she lights a lamp, sweeps the whole house, and searches for it until she finds it. When she does, she invites all her friends and neighbors to come for a party. God is like the merciful father who fixes his eyes on the hill until his lost son comes back home so he can rush to him and hug him. 

To the eye of this world, our worship service this morning may sound like a waste. Why waste your time going to church this morning when you can go to the coffee shop and relax for yourself. Why do you waste your time praying when God does not answer loudly and clearly to your ears? Why do you waste your energy and time volunteering at the soup kitchen when we will always have the poor around us? We will never be able to solve the issues of hunger and poverty. 

Then, Jesus tells us that there was this sower who did not care whether the soil was path, rocky, thorny, or good. As a farmer, he probably had a good idea of which one would produce the most harvest and how to save his time, energy, and even the seed. But he went everyone, not just the good ones, but also the bad ones, knowing that some seeds would be snatched away, take no root, or die. And this strange God is God who was even willing to waste his only Son to die on the cross so his love could give us eternal life. 

A few years ago, our nation was intensely struggling with police brutality against the black community with Eric Garner, who was put in a chokehold by a New York police officer who kept saying, “I can’t breathe.” Facing such disturbing news, Louise, a former parishioner of mine, shared with me the trauma and fear she lived as an African American woman. She and I got together and thought about what we could do for our church and our community. And we decided to host the first Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast in the town so that we could share the prophetic dream of Dr. King that we are not judged by our skin color but by the content of our character.

Since we wanted to reach out to the community and invite anyone regardless of their religion, we decided to offer this program at a third place which was the dining hall of her assisted living house. Another woman from my former church approached me and shared her concern, “Our town is 98% white. Do you really think this kind of event will draw any people? Why waste your time and energy?” I thought about what she said. I mean there are some major towns, such as metropolitan areas that offer some big events with renowned speakers. This is not good soil. This is more like the rocky soil or soil with thorns. So, why even bother to spread seeds in the first place?

I did not have such a strong conviction that this was the right thing to do. Even if it was going to be less than 10 people, however, Louise and I thought that this would provide some channels for people to come and recommit to the vision of Dr. King. On the day of the event, it snowed. And I thought that we would definitely have less than ten people. But driving through the snow, more than 40 people showed up. A couple was touched by the hospitality and ministry of justice of my former church and ended up joining the church.  

Our God is like that. When we are concerned whether our faith and work would bring about some results or make any differences, God calls us to be like the sower who goes anywhere to faithfully sow the seeds everywhere. In his sermon, Howard Thurman says that once the seeds are scattered, it is not our concern whether they will grow or not. He says, “The process of growth and development and unfolding is an inscrutable process.” 

God so loved the world that God sent God’s only Son so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. If God saw the world and noticed how fallen it became from God’s original work, how messed up it became, what bad soil it is, I am not sure God would want to waste the seeds expecting anything good from it. But God sent the only Son to the world because of God’s love, love that is extravagant, radical, and abundant. And God keeps coming and visiting you, our church, and our world today because of God’s extravagant and wasteful love. 

Amen.

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^[1] Jordan Bean, “Analyzing and Predicting Starbucks’ Location Strategy” (https://towardsdatascience.com/analyzing-and-predicting-starbucks-location-strategy-3c5026d31c21, accessed on July 14, 2023)