Sermon: The Extravagant Sower

Matthew 13:1–9, 18–23

If you grew up around gardens or farms, or if you’ve ever grown so much as a tomato plant on a balcony, this story you just heard might seem confusing from the start. Because this sower Jesus describes doesn’t seem to be a very careful or wise farmer. 

What do we know about growing things? You prepare the soil first. You test it, amend it, clear the weeds, pick out the rocks. How many times did I pick rocks out of my family’s potato patch when I was growing up? Sometimes I thought it was growing rocks, not potatoes. You don’t just walk out into a field, wasting precious seeds by flinging them every direction — onto a hard-packed path, into rocky places, right into ground overtaken by thorns.

And yet that’s exactly what Jesus describes, a sower who scatters seed on the path, where the birds are waiting. On rocky ground, where there’s no depth for roots. Among thorns, where anything that sprouts will be choked before it matures. And — finally, almost as an afterthought in the story’s economy of words — on good soil, where it grows and yields thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.

For most of my life, and I bet yours too, when I’ve heard this parable, I’ve heard it as a story about soil types. About us. Am I the path — too hardened by cynicism or despair for anything to take root? Am I the rocky ground — quick to feel something on a Sunday morning, quick to lose it by Tuesday? Am I choked by thorns — by my worries, by my to-do lists, by the endless, distracting algorithmic scroll? Or, on my better days, am I good soil? If we’re not careful, this kind of spiritual soil analysis can become one more spiritual improvement project — one more way of measuring our own worthiness, one more source of quiet anxiety about whether we’re doing it right.

I suspect most of us read it that way. It’s a natural response to this story. After all, Jesus himself offers an interpretation to the disciples that encourages this kind of interpretation.

So the soil-typing instinct isn’t wrong. But I wonder if it’s the only point of the story. Debbie Thomas, one of my favorite writers on scripture, points out Jesus calls this “the Parable of the Sower,” but most of us interpret it, as “the Parable of the Four Soils.” But look at who’s doing the work in this parable. It’s not the soil. The soil doesn’t improve itself, doesn’t will itself to be more receptive, doesn’t grit its teeth and try harder to be good ground. The soil is just in whatever state it is. The one who acts — verse after verse — is the sower.

The sower — who walks out into the world with their hands full and let the seeds fly, as if they have more seeds than they could possibly need, as if it doesn’t occur to them to be careful with it, as it it’s OK if not every ground is receptive, they’re just going to plant there anyways and see what happens! This is not a story about efficient use of resources. It is, Thomas says, a story about a God who is extravagant. Indiscriminately, recklessly, joyfully extravagant.

You over there? You seem cynical, possibly despairing. Here’s some of my seeds of joy. You over there? I see you feeling like you’re wasting your time in front of that little screen instead of doing your prayer practice. Here’s some of my seeds of mercy. And you? You have so many worries, I’m not sure where to start. Here’s some of my seeds of the peace that passes understanding. More challengingly for us, perhaps — hey, you over there. You seem like you care way too much about getting ahead in your job and striking it rich in the coming IPO. You’re a MAGA supporter? Here’s some of my seeds of mercy and joy and justice. 

This parable is about a God who is not rationing grace, holding some of it back for the people who’ve proven they deserve it because they’re such good soil. God is not waiting until you’ve cleared your own rocks and pulled your own thorns before entrusting you with anything good. God is the sower who scatters seed onto rocky, thorny, hard-packed ground knowing full well what will happen to a lot of it — and does it anyway, because that’s simply the character of the One who sows. Generosity is not a strategy for this God. It’s a way of being.

I wonder if this is part of what Octavia Butler was reaching for in her novel Parable of the Sower. Her protagonist, Lauren Olamina, is a teenager living in a gated community in a near-future California that’s collapsing under climate disaster, economic breakdown, and violence. When her community is destroyed and her family killed, she’s forced out onto the road with nothing but what she can carry and a set of beliefs she’s been quietly assembling for years — a theology she calls Earthseed, built on the conviction that “God is Change.” As she walks north with a small band of survivors, picking up strangers along the way, she starts sharing these beliefs with whoever will listen, not knowing which of her traveling companions will take them seriously and which won’t. She has no way of testing the ground in advance. She just keeps offering what she has. She sows into uncertainty because that’s the only kind of sowing there is. Waiting for perfect soil means never sowing at all.

Maybe that’s true for us, too — both as those who receive the seed, and as those who are called to scatter it further. We don’t get to wait until our own hearts or our courts or our legislatures or our streets are fully cleared of rock and thorn before God starts working in us. Especially now. If we wait for that, we’ll be waiting forever, and perhaps we’ll have missed the whole point of the parable.

I’ve learned a lot from Sarah Augustine about this kind of indiscriminate seed-casting. Our Coalition has an extravagant multigenerational 100-year vision — we want to build a movement, starting with faith-based peoples, that will undo the laws of colonization that have existed for 500 years by passing a constitutional amendment. We begin through profligate seed-throwing. We cast the message everywhere we possibly can — which is why Sarah says yes to just about any invitation she receives to come speak somewhere — and we see what seeds sprout. Sometimes, seeds thrown on seemingly the rockiest of ground end up being the ones to sprout. Like the person who sat with their arms folded and a scowl on their face while Sarah was talking who ended up becoming one of our biggest allies. Like the time Ted Cruz’s office agreed to sponsor a bill — that ended up passing — opposing loans from international organizations like the World Bank to Nicaragua unless they protected the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Ted Cruz!

I think the upshot of this is: We don’t get to determine what is good soil — either in ourselves or others. That’s actually the Sower’s work, not ours. As Thomas says: Who am I to tell God, the Creator of the earth and all that is in it, what ‘good soil’ looks like? Who am I to decide who is worthy and who is not of the sower’s generosity? Who am I to hoard what I have been so freely and lavishly given? Who am I to look at God’s profligate blessing and call it waste?”

I think about what it means to bring this extravagance to our lives. For myself, I’ve been in a kind of quiet rebellion against my spiritual practice lately. I usually have about 45 minutes of what I call “soul time” in the morning — and I do a combination of spiritual reading, stretching that is also a form of prayer, journaling, praying the four directions. Sometimes I do that inside, sitting on a chair, sometimes outside, going for a walk. I wake up and, after putzing around for about 30 minutes to get my body and brain going, and I say to myself: “Soul, what do you need today?” 

But lately, I have found myself skipping that question and going straight to the computer to start getting some work done, or reading the paper instead. I don’t know why. And, honestly, just by “confessing” this to you, it will probably gently guide me to reinstate hat practice or at least reflect more deeply on why I’m not doing it. But I’m saying this not to confess to you — although that felt good! — but to say that I can feel in myself this subtle sense that, because I’m not doing this soul time practice, I’m not as “worthy” of God’s presence as I used to be. Because when I think of a God who keeps sewing seeds of mercy and joy and peace into my soul where I’m tending it or not — that feels liberating, like the sowing is going on whether I’m pay attention or not, and perhaps it’d be pretty cool to pay attention to that extravagant grace. Maybe that’s what my soul needs.

And, of course, what does this extravagant grace mean in the ways we show up in the world? I think the answer to that question is right in front of me. I can think of several examples of the way we keep showing up — for people, for causes, for a world in need — without first demanding proof that our seed-sowing will “work.” I see us not calculating the odds — or not relying exclusively on those calculations — before we open our doors, or our hearts, or our calendars, or our checkbooks. We just keep sowing those seeds of mercy, joy, justice.

So may we become good soil. But perhaps, even more importantly, may we receive God’s indiscriminate, extravagant, seedy grace in the thorny, hardened and distracted places of our lives. And may we follow ever more faithfully in the footsteps of the Good Sower — tossing our own handfuls of seed indiscriminately across the earth and sharing in the eventual harvest.Carol Bridges, “The Seed (The Fool),” from Medicine Woman Tarot