Lessons From Nature: What Is Failure?
David C. Myers
July 13, 2008
Psalm 119:105 - 112
Matthew 13:1 - 9; 18 - 23
Text: "Let anyone with ears, listen!" . . . Matthew 13:9
"You should really hear this one." This is a line many of us use when we are about to tell a good joke or story.
Jesus, on the other hand, tells a really good story and then tells people to listen. Of course, a few verses later the story is explained.
"Anyone who has ears, listen!"
Jesus concludes the parable of the sower and the seed with the line that His story was so good that you really ought to hear it. It is like one of my college professors who used to interrupt his lectures occasionally and say, "Listen now." We knew that he was saying something very important - and perhaps not coincidentally that something he was about to say would find a way to be on the next test. My hunch is that Jesus was trying to get our attention. So let us pay attention to this parable - who knows? - it might just show up on the next test.
Jesus tells stories so that we might learn something about the nature of God and the way God is acting ion our lives. He told His stories so that people might discover something new and different about the grace and mercy of God. The parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, had a father who gave his younger son his half of the inheritance - while he was still living! What kind of father do you know who would do that? Jesus takes His subject matter for His stories from ordinary life, but He changes them just enough so that we are startled by the story into seeing something new about the nature of God's love for us.
Let's hear the story one more time:
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he 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 no depth of soil. 6But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no 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!'
[Later, to the disciples, Jesus said] 'Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.'
So a sower went out to sow. But look at the way he sows the seed! Now, I know that some of you know a thing or two about farming, or try to do significant home gardening here in the Chevy Chase area; but I doubt that any of you would want to be involved with this sower. For, in the parable we are told that he slings the seed around like he didn't care where it goes. The sower in this parable is more like a teenage boy who has this bag of seed he must plant before he can play, or perhaps like a young man who is so in live that he does not pay much attention to the details of his work.
So the sower scatters the seed everywhere without regard to where it goes. The sower slings seed in every direction. He throws it on the established path. He slings some up on the rocks. He grabs a handful and throws it over where the weeds are growing, and fortunately - almost as if by accident - he gets some on the good soil. The sower who went out to sow was not a very careful sower. Good farmers or gardeners would find the sower's action reprehensible. No doubt the sower could use a little of corporate American farming technique to be able to precisely deliver the seed only on productive land.
The biblical commentator, William Barclay, makes every effort to explain that there were two different ways to sow seeds in ancient Israel which would have resulted in the scattering of seeds as described in the parable. Barclay says that both of the methods then in common use could have resulted in the sowing pattern described in the story. I am not persuaded.
Like all of Jesus' parables there is a twist, like the banquet where the guests didn't show up so He commanded them to invite the common folk from the highways and the byways; or, like the miracle at Cana of Galilee, where late in the wedding reception Jesus changes water into the best wine; or, where the hated enemy becomes the savior in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
It is these twists in the story that point out the radical nature of the Kingdom of God. God's realm will be a lot like life as we know it - except for some very fundamental differences - the twists in Jesus' parables. Like enemies revealing God's gracious nature, like the scum of the earth - the people from the highways and byways - being invited to the best banquet.
In this story we are not encountering the average sower anymore than the man left dead by the side of the road expected to find God's grace in the Samaritan. This God Who is sowing seed; and God does it differently. The mark of distinction - the twist in the story - is seen precisely in the recklessness of the sowing.
One of the signs of the great creative love God has for life is God's wastefulness of God's powers and gifts. There is the great creative passion which is seen in every snow flake being different. If there is one characteristic of the creative energy and power of God in the world it is precisely in that wild abandonment of creative joy that does not count the cost. It is God Who made the dandelion so that a thousand seeds are blown into the wind to insure that one seed is able to survive.
In Charlotte's Web, Charlotte, the spider, tells Wilbur, the pig, that in her egg sac of hundreds of thousands of eggs only a dozen or so will survive. It is this reckless scattering of love and life without any holding back, without hoarding, and without a great deal of attention to where the seed may go that is part of the energy and vitality of a creative God.
Annie Dillard, in her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, wrestles with this whole dimension of life in a chapter called "fecundity". God seems just to make too much life. Dillard write, "If an aphid lays a million eggs, several might survive. Now, my right hand, in all its human cunning, could not make one aphid in a thousand years. But these aphids' eggs - which run less than a dime a dozen, which run absolutely free - can make aphids as effortlessly as the sea makes waves. Wonderful things wasted. It's a wretched system."
Only if you're an accountant.
That's God's overflowing, extravagant love. God is the scatterer of seeds and God's love is such that it does not limit nor restrict the seeds. There is an unlimited amount of seed.
The sower went out and sowed. The seed goes everywhere and so we are not surprised to discover the signs and marks of the Kingdom of God in any and all places of the earth. The sower has scattered seeds wildly, but that means that there will be roses growing up in the middle of highways, grace being given in prisons, love growing up in the midst of strife-torn countries. The sower sows excessively, wastefully, but the seed goes everywhere, and the possibility is that the Kingdom of God may grow anywhere.
But the probability - check that, the reality - is that the seed goes everywhere, but it does not grow everywhere. That is part of the story as well. That is the part that usually bothers us the most. Why waste the seed on places like the path, or the rocks? Of the six verses that make up the story, four of them are bent on acknowledging that some of the seed did not grow. This is no Pollyanna parable. God may be a sower Who has great joy in the abandonment of scattering, but not all the seed grows. The Kingdom is much more like a good baseball player, lucky to get a hit one out of three times. There is honesty about the results expected. There are lots of failures, but it is okay. Jesus healed 10 lepers and only one came back to give Him thanks.
There is a story about Thomas Edison, inventor of the incandescent light bulb and so much more. It tells about his difficulty in finding a new source of natural in plant matter. Experiment after experiment yielded no apparent helpful results. Finally after the 50,000th failure, a discouraged, a discouraged assistant said to him, "Mr. Edison, we have failed 50,000 times. We have no results."
Edison responded, "Failure, we have had no failures; and furthermore, we have had good results. We now know 50,000 ways in which you can't find an alternative source of rubber in plant material. And after we get some more good results, we - or somebody else - will discover a new source of rubber!"
So the parable talks about the wild and wonderful excesses of God Who sows seeds of grace and mercy everywhere, and yet the parable spends most of its time talking about how wasteful all that is; how sure to fail much of the work will be. Yet, it is realistic enough to know that as disciples - then and now - go forth they (we) will encounter all kinds of opposition in the raising of the crop.
And yet here at the end there is this fantastic harvest. It is 30, 60, and 100 times the seed. It is a harvest so vast that it makes us forget all about the waste and worry of failure. The seed may be scattered wildly and wastefully. The opposition may look like it is winning; but in the end, the harvest is wonderful.
H is a story that keeps the disciples of Christ faithful and steadfast during the long, dry, weary days. Here is a parable that speaks to the killing despair and hopelessness of the people of God. Here is a parable that gives to the shrinking and bewildered mainline Protestant churches in America a prescription and a hope.
Surely there were great moments of hopelessness, despair and darkness when the missionaries were driven out of China. But now Bibles are allowed there. Surely the scattering of seed seemed wasted in the old Soviet Union. What was the sense of risking being jailed while trying to scatter seed in a state restricted church like Poland? How could the seed of God's liberating power do much good against the evils of apartheid in South Africa? And yet, there were those who continued to scatter seed and now the harvest has come in.
William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas tell the story in Resident Aliens of a southern town about to be terribly divided over integrating its schools. The town had gathered in the high school gymnasium to protest the court's order to integrate. The people were angry and the room was full of hatred. Into the room walked the local Baptist preacher. A much beloved man who had preached in that for most of his ministry. He listened to the speeches for a while, and then he got up and spoke. "I am ashamed. I am ashamed. I have labored here for many years. I have baptized, preached to, and counseled with many in this room. I might have thought that my preaching the Gospel had done some good. But tonight I think differently. I cannot speak to those who are not of my congregation, but to those who are, I can only say that I am hurt and ashamed of you and might have expected more." He left the podium and walked out of the hall.
The meeting struggled to begin again. But one by one the members of that Baptist church slipped out of the room and the rest of the meeting faded into adjournment. The schools integrated the next month without incident.
The harvest comes, and when it comes it is a wonderful harvest to enjoy!
This parable of the Sower and the Seed is a story of great hope and encouragement. It turns around our understanding of failure. Oh, to be sure, the quality of the soil may vary, but the harvest will be fantastic.
The story knows that each of us will hear this story and what kind of soil we are. We will go forth wanting and trying to be better soil, to be good soil, but the promise of this parable is that the harvest far exceeds the seed recklessly and joyfully sown. Doing and being agents of God's forgiveness, God's mercy, God's encouragement, God's love, God's invitation, and trusting that while the process is full of failures, the harvest and the party at the end will be a thing that none of us will want to miss.