4th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 10A

4th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 10A
There once was a man who ran a large charity, and one day he noticed that the banker who lived in town had never given any money to the charity. He called up the banker and said, ‘According to our records, you make $500,000 a year. And yet you’ve never given one penny to our charity.’ The banker replied, ‘Do your records also show that I have a very sick mother with very expensive medical bills?’ The man replied: ‘Oh! Sorry! I didn’t know.’ The banker continued, ‘Or do they show that my brother is unemployed or that my sister’s husband died leaving her a widow with three small children?’ ‘I…I…I’ the charity representative stammered in embarrassment. The banker continued, ‘If I don’t give them any money, what makes you think I’ll give any to your charity?”
“And Jesus told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had not depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had not root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!’”
Jesus’s parables are designed to challenge us and our understanding of reality. The challenge of today’s parable, even a bit of the shock of it, really, is found in its radical conclusion. There may be some times in our live when we need to focus on the different types of soil Jesus talks about in this parable, and we certainly know that we’ve all been all of those different types of soil when our souls our inhospitable to God’s word and to faith, we understand that there are times a areas of our lives in which God’s word, and faith do not, for whatever reasons, take root and yield; and it’s all too easy for us to judge ourselves and others according to the parable and the different types of soil and their harvest (or seeming lack thereof).
But the challenge of this parable today is the shocking, wasteful, indiscriminate character of God’s abundance. And this parable challenges us to believe in that, and to give our hearts to that abundance.
The actual parable ends with a miracle. Even after the sower sows seed so indiscriminately, the yield is not just sevenfold, which would be a really good year for a farmer. The harvest is not just tenfold, which would mean true abundance. It is not even just thirty-fold, which would feed an entire village for a whole year, but it is a harvest of a hundred-fold—which would allow the farmer to retire to a villa by the sea for the rest of his life. A hundredfold harvest is miraculous, radical abundance.
If the parable ended with the sevenfold harvest from good soil, then it would be sufficient and a good story of encouragement and hope. However, this parable is not simply cautiously optimistic; it is a promise of a radical kind of hope and the assurance of miraculous generosity, of true abundance.
In the book, Singing with the Comeback Choir, novelist Bebe Moore Campbell writes, “Some of us have that empty-barrel faith. Walking around expecting things to run out. Expecting that there isn’t enough air, enough water. Expecting that someone is going to do you wrong. The God I serve told me to expect the best, that there is enough for everybody.”
Do we live out of abundance, or do we live out scarcity?
Do we live our lives as if we have that empty-barrel faith, or do we live our lives as if we believe in God’s miraculous, radical, outrageous abundance?
Do we worship with a belief in abundance or a belief in scarcity. Do we give—our time, our attention, our money—according to a trust in God’s abundance or according to what the world teaches us about scarcity?
If we ask ourselves about stewardship in our lives—mindful that the definition of stewardship can be “all that you do with all that you have after you say ‘I believe,’ then we have to acknowledge that how we live (either out of scarcity or out of abundance) is directly related to how we believe (or as Ted Dawson says—what you give you heart to. Do you give your heart to this God of miraculous, reckless abundance or do you give your heart to empty barrel faith, that there will not be enough. Do you give your heart to abundance or to scarcity?
It is so easy to give our hearts to scarcity in this life, as the anxiety in our country steadily rises and the conflict and drama around our economic woes continues. It is easy to give our hearts to scarcity as here on the Coast, we cinch our belts up a little tighter every day.
The call of our Lord and our challenge this day, and every day, is to give our hearts, again and again, to abundance.