Failing the Christian Way: July 16, 2017

Year A, Pentecost 6                                                  
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23                                                                                                

Steven Spielberg, Walt Disney, Fred Astaire, Thomas Edison.  What do these four men have in common?  They were/are incredibly successful in their endeavors. Yet they have something else in common. Before their successes, they failed. Steven Spielberg was rejected by film school multiple times. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas." In one of Fred Astaire's first screen tests, an executive wrote: "Can't sing. Can't act. Can dance a little."  Thomas Edison's teachers told him he was "too stupid to learn anything." Thankfully, not one of them gave up.[1]  They kept pressing on despite the failure and  rejection.

            In the last decade, there has been a lot of conversation and research about failure.  I became interested in this topic after reading an article about a conference called: FailCon. Apparently it was quite popular for a few years. The website describes it as a conference for startup founders to learn from and prepare for failure, so their businesses could grow quickly. It was an opportunity for people to share their failures and how they learned from their failures.  Most of the attendees were people who were technical entrepreneurs—the idea being that if you are starting something or inventing something, failure is inevitable.  But just because it is inevitable, does not mean that failure has to be the end of the story. It’s just a chapter of the book, not the conclusion.

            Moses, the Prophet Isaiah, King David, the Apostle Paul. What did they have in common?  They are leaders of our faith.  They are essential parts of our Christian story. They also failed.  Moses got lost in the desert for 40 years and never made it to the Promised Land.  The Prophet Isaiah was ridiculed, despised and miserable most of his life.  King David had an affair and had Bathsheba’s husband killed.  Paul went from being a leader of the Jewish faith to being a man without a home who was jailed and beaten numerous times.  Some might even say that Jesus was a failure.  He was God in the flesh and he was killed by humans.  Failure is part of the Christian story.  It is part of our story.

            It is also part of the Parable of the Sower. Many of us know this story well.  At least we think we do.  It seems obvious.  The sower scattered seed.  Some of the seed fell on a path and were eaten by birds.  Some fell on rocky ground, sprouted and then died quickly.  Some fell on thorns and when they sprouted, they were choked.  Then finally, there were seeds that fell on good soil.  Those seeds brought forth grain in abundance.   If you look at this story logically (which is rarely a good idea when reading parables), it seems like this sower was not very good at this job.  Three out of four of the areas he chose to scatter his seeds failed to produce grain.  He was incredibly inefficient and he was wasteful.  You have to wonder, what he was thinking.  He must have known which was the best place to plant seeds. Why not focus on the good soil instead of messing around with the thorns and rocks?

            Despite the sower’s apparent lack of skill, the seeds that fell on the good soil had an amazing yield. Some of that grain brought forth a hundred fold.  That is an exorbitant amount.  It is far above what would be expected with fertile ground.  Jesus wanted those listening to this story to know that the yield was so great—that there was an abundance where there should have been scarcity. Given the fact that ¾ of the seeds failed to thrive, it is remarkable that there was any harvest at all.  Yet there was and it was extraordinary.

            The vast majority of us are afraid of failure to some degree.  That fear affects people different ways.   Some people won’t take any risk, won’t try anything that might end in failure.  Others will take those risks but give up quickly when they sense failure or experience any kind of failure.  And some people will be like Moses.  They will wander for 40 years because while they seem to be going in circles, but they keep going because they know that the Promised Land is there.  It’s just going to take some patience and tenacity to get there. 

            About one year ago, we embarked on the Come and See program.  It was a program that entailed training and education about inviting others into our midst.  Virtually every church or faith community tells its members to invite a friend to church.  It sounds so simple, but few people ever do that.  When we first started the conversation, we talked about our fears.  Why are we so scared of evangelism of talking about our faith?  For many, it came down to a fear of rejection…of putting yourself out there, allowing yourself to be vulnerable.  This can be especially scary when the thing we are sharing with someone is precious and sacred to us and that person rejects it.  It leaves us a little raw.  There were some people who chose not to participate.  There were many who did. The majority of people who were invited never came.  Some came for a couple of Sundays and left.  A few stuck around. 

The lack of response was frustrating to me because we put a lot of time and energy into the program.  I was so nervous that I was sick the morning of Come and See because I was so afraid this program would fail.  Mark reminded me that this was about more than a couple of Sundays.  This was about changing the way people think about church and evangelism. It’s about teaching people to take risks.  That was helpful to me.  However, in preparing this sermon I realized that it is also about failure and learning how to move past that failure.  It is about experiencing rejection and not letting that rejection cripple us.  Of course this lesson applies to more than just a church program.  It applies to our whole lives.

            That sower could have been more careful about where he scattered his seeds.  He could have tested the soil and only spread the seeds on the soil he knew would produce a harvest.  He didn’t.  He threw it all over the place.  The reason he felt free to do that was because he knew there was an abundance of seeds.  He knew that as long as he kept planting them, God would keep providing them.  He knew that if he worried too much about the seeds that might fail and whether the soil was or was not fertile, then he would never plant anything.  So he just kept throwing the seed, knowing that there would be a lot that would produce nothing, but all God needed was a few. God would turn that small number into an abundance. 

So it is with the way we share God’s love with others.  If we worry too much about how our words are perceived—if we worry too much about the person who we are talking to, we will never accomplish anything.  The best we can do is put everything we have into our efforts.  Those efforts might only yield a small amount.  They might not appear to yield anything. It might even seem as though we have failed.  But if we keep trying, praying, hoping, believing---God will take our meager attempts and he will make them great. 

               

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[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/successful-people-who-failed-at-first-2014-3/#nston-churchill-was-estranged-from-his-political-party-over-ideological-disagreements-during-the-wilderness-years-of-1929-to-1939-1

July 13, 2014: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Year A, Pentecost 5                                                               

                                     

One of the things we saw in Ireland were the fields that were used for the potato farming.  These fields were not on typical flat farmland. They went up cliffs.  Our guide, who was also a farmer, explained that before and during the potato famine, they were making the most of the land and they needed as much as possible.  So they dug the rock out of the terrain and that allowed the land to become better soil.  He said it would have required a tremendous amount of work to remove all that rock.  We heard a fair amount about farming during that trip.  I think that knowing more about farming and agriculture would be helpful in understanding the Gospels because of the imagery that Jesus used.  

The people Jesus was talking to were farmers or people who knew farmers.  In this time and this area, everyone knew where their food came from and generally how it happened.  It is likely that the people he was talking to were not well off and were unaccustomed to having more than they needed. Unlike today, they did not have food stored in their pantry or their freezer.   There were no canned or frozen goods.  If there was a bad crop or a drought, they would very likely go hungry. 

Because of that scarcity, I suspect that this parable of the sower seemed a little ridiculous to them even though the imagery was familiar.  What kind of farmer wastes ¾ of his seeds?  If you only have so many seeds, why throw some on hardened paths that might as well be concrete, rocky ground, and ground covered with thorns? I don’t know a whole lot about farming, but even I know that type of soil is not going to be conducive to a good harvest.  According to this parable, there was good soil present. Why not use that?  Instead of spreading it willy-nilly, put all of the seeds in the good soil. That would be the sensible approach. 

As much as it pains me to admit this, Jesus was rarely about the sensible approach.  Let’s face it, the virgin birth—not sensible, crucifixion—not sensible, the resurrection—not sensible.  This does not make these things any less real, they were just extraordinary.  Yet this is a parable.  Parables are supposed to make sense.  When Jesus spoke in parables, he would take a fairly simple story that people would have been able to identify with and then use that story to teach a lesson about God.  However, just because it was a simple story, did not necessarily mean it was a simple lesson. 

In fact, most of the time the lessons were counterintuitive.  If this was a sensible and realistic story, the sower would have carefully spread the seeds where he knew there was good soil.  That means all of the seeds would have had growth potential.  As a result, there would have been an even greater harvest and the seeds would not have been wasted.  And this parable is about results, right?

Perhaps not.  You might note that when Jesus explains the parable he refers to it as the parable of the sower, not the parable of the ground or the parable of the crop.  It’s about the sower; the person who is tossing seeds around with wild abandon.  Jesus explains that the seeds are the word of the kingdom or the word of God.  He never says who the sower is, but if the seeds are the word of God, it would be safe to assume that the sower is Jesus.  It could also be whoever spreads the word of God, which means it could be any one of us.

One of the things I cannot help but wonder about is the amount of seeds.  This sower could not have had an unlimited number of seeds.  At what point did he run out?  I would think that at some point the bag became light and he would have been more cautious with his seed placement.  If we told this story today, it would be all about how careful we are with what we have.  We might talk about the importance of good stewardship of resources.  In other words, how are we using our limited resources as effectively as possible? Instead of talking about the countless supply of seeds, we might talk about how we could get the most out of every seed.  We would discuss each seed and its chance of success. Then in our modern day version of the story, the careful and practical farmer would develop a machine that would distribute each seed in fertile ground.

But this sower isn’t a farmer and the seed is not something that will run out.  This seed is the word of God. The word of God isn’t just the Biblical text; it’s also the experience of God.  It’s God’s love and grace.  And those things don’t come in packages of 100.  They are countless.  The sack that contains these things is bottomless.  Because of that, Jesus is not worried about wasting because there will always be more as long as we keep giving.  As long as we keep reaching into that bag, there will always be more.  But it’s tempting to be strategic in our faith.  We might talk to some people about faith, but only the people we think would be receptive.  We might invite a couple people to church, but only the people who might say yes.  We take the safe road because we fear rejection and we fear failure. 

Even Jesus realized that he would only reach a portion of the people he was speaking to.  When he taught this parable, the crowd was so large he had to move out to a boat to address them.  Yet in the end, the crowd that sat at the foot of the cross was one or two people.  The crowd that condemned him to death was countless.  He preached to them even when he knew they would not stay with him to the end.  Even his disciples would abandon him in some shape or form.  Yet he kept giving abundantly.

A lot of people read this parable and say the point is that it’s all about God and how God provides.  We can’t change the soil on our own.  We can only pray that God will change it.  Therefore it is not about how we can become better listeners, disciples who receive the word of God more authentically.  It’s about a God who is so relentless with his love that he gives it to everyone, even people he knows will reject it.  I agree with that.  This text is about God’s abundant love.  But I also believe that soil can change.  As followers of Christ, we can change.  When the disciples heard this parable, they were the rocky ground.  We know this because when Jesus was arrested, they fled.  Then, Jesus appeared to them in the resurrected form and they rejoiced. They faced their fears and in the end they became that soil that could bear much fruit.  They were able to face persecution without losing heart.  The soil changed.

This parable is not a perfect analogy.  I would have failed my creative writing class with this parable.  As disciples of Christ we are the ground, we are the sower, and we are the seed.  We receive God’s love, we provide God’s love and in some ways, we are God’s love.  God will love us regardless of what kind of soil we are.  Of that, there is no doubt.  But if we want to be vessels of God’s love…if we want to provide God’s love to others, then we have to participate in the Gospel.  We have to dig the rock out of our hearts.  We have to fling the seeds of love in places we know it will be ignored.  Sometimes we have to reject the sensible and safe approach and be a little fearless with our love.  After all, it’s not our love.  It is God’s love.  God has been pretty clear in what we are to do with that love.