Creekside Church Sermon of July 11, 1999 "What A Waste!" Matthew 13:1-9	Rev. David Bibbee
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I especially remember the pride I felt when my name was read on TV as an inductee into Flippo's "Clean Platter Club". If your parents testified that you had finished everything on your plate for a month, you were in. To me it was a medal of bravery and valor for having eaten foods I abhorred like boiled turnips and orange glazed carrots. Being a Clean Platter went hand in hand with the ethic I was raised on which said, "You shouldn't waste anything." If cleanliness was next to Godliness, then wastefulness surely shaved points off your record in the book of life.

"Don't waste your food! People are starving...and we'll have a casserole from leftovers tomorrow night." My grandfather butchered a lot of hogs and he was fond of saying, "We eat everything except the squeal." "Don't waste your time on frivolous things. Use it constructively." "Don't waste your money. Use it for what you need, not for what you want. It doesn't grow on trees, you know." And we mended socks and underwear, and we saved bread bags and rubber bands and twist ties and remnants of soap bars.

There is a lot to be said for saving and conserving. We live in a disposable society. We make things that can't be repaired so we'll throw them away and buy new ones. We build mountains outside our cities filled with trash. We have places called ghettoes where we put disposable people. Wastefulness is not a good thing. But I found something in the Bible that I was never taught at home or in Sunday school. Our God is a wasteful God.

God wasted a beautiful garden on a couple who couldn't keep their mitts off the fruit of one tree. Time and time again God delivered His people Israel, and they returned their thanks by continuing to turn away. Such a waste of mercy. God could have been a little more frugal and economical. "Look at the universe in which God has placed us," someone said. "So much space for so little a planet. So much time for so little history. So many people for only one person like Jesus." Such waste!

It should come as no surprise then that Jesus would take after his Father's wastefulness. A woman poured fragrant, very expensive oil over his head and the disciples had a fit. "Do you know how many homeless folks at the shelter could be fed on the money dripping from your head?" But Jesus thought her waste was a wonderful thing...an extravagant outpouring of love. He told parables about a shepherd who left 99 sheep unattended to look for a lost one, and a woman who wasted a whole day dismantling her home looking for a single coin, and a father who handed over his money and his heart to his playboy son who cared more about a good time than his good father. What a waste!

Then there is the parable before us today. "A sower went out to sow," Jesus said. The sower walked along flinging seeds every which way. He didn't seem too concerned about where the seed landed. He threw it along a hardened path, on thin soil with rocks below, in thorns and on good ground. This is not how my grandfather taught me to garden.

You don't throw corn and bean seed like confetti and expect a harvest. You till and prepare the soil. You plant in straight furrows; you fertilize, prune, weed and water. Not like the sower who wasted three- fourths of his seed on ground that didn't produce. But this sower wasn't into efficiency or economy. Jesus the Sower knew that not every kernel of truth he sowed would bear fruit. This was a hard lesson for the disciples to learn. Jesus drew a great crowd, and gave great sermons, but by the time he was done, the multitude was nowhere to be found. People didn't understand him. Think of all that Jesus did, and what did it get him? The cross. Jesus was wasted by and for the likes of folks like us.

This is a parable about our response to the gospel. We are the hard, thin, thorny and every so often, fertile soil. But it's also a word for disciples like us who are prone to discouragement over the lack of tangible results. We're called to be sowers in a world full of rocks, weeds, and crummy soil. From the looks of a typical Sunday morning, it appears that softball, soccer and golf are bigger draws than worship. The Christian faith is so large and the implications are so great, but we are content with such tiny pieces of it. All that power and all that promise gone to waste.

I know pastors who have called it quits because they have toiled long and hard only to watch the seeds they have sown be devoured, shriveled and choked. Instead of a vital faith and a passion for quality ministry, they see churches enamored with the petty and the inconsequential. As one pastor told me, "I've seen more positive results in two years of selling insurance than I saw in twenty years of ministry." I understand. With dedication and determination you sow many seeds... you broadcast them, hoping and praying that God will nourish and bring them to fruition, but much of the time it's difficult to see how your labors have impacted one life, let alone an entire church.

Sowing for Jesus is hard. I know very well that most of my sermons are forgotten. Suggestions are positively heard, then dismissed. Invitations are declined. Challenges are lost in some committee. In your daily walk you try to witness to others that your life is guided by a higher call than the lowest denominator, and it feels like people could care less. Just like Peter, we find ourselves saying to Jesus, "Lord, we toiled all night and caught nothing."

Failures outnumber our successes, but the successes far outweigh the failures. Just a few of the sower's seeds fell on fertile soil. But what a harvest the good soil yielded...thirty, sixty, and one hundred fold. Sowing is our task. The harvest is God's. Much of Jesus' ministry met frustration and failure. Far more rejected his message than accepted it. But what a harvest he has given because he remained faithful. Jesus takes all our wasted efforts and turns them into a harvest. We may not see it or know anything about it. This is why Paul told the Galatians, "Do not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." (Galatians 6:9)

While visiting Vera Eastman this week, I noticed a paper among her magazines and newspapers. At the top it said, "When Life Doesn't Turn Out as You Hoped." It was a sermon by Theodore Ferris who was rector of the Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston. "How did you get this?" I asked. Vera said one of the nurses gave it to her. Just then the nurse walked in. I asked where she found the sermon and she said she was a member at Trinity Church before moving to Elkhart. She heard Dr. Ferris preach this sermon. Said it made a tremendous impact upon her, and that she often gives copies to patients on the rehab unit who need extra encouragement.

This nurse understands that not every person will accept it or find it useful. But someone will. She's a sower. "I look at giving this sermon to patients as planting seeds of hope and faith." So following her lead, let's not grow weary in our sowing. Take risks and be wasteful. Waste your time. Waste your gifts. Waste your money. Waste yourself for the cause of Christ and his Church. And above all remember. Nothing we do for God is ever lost or wasted.

This sermon was inspired by the sermon, "Why This Waste?" by Ian Pit-Watson.

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