Shoots from Dry Ground

Raise your hand if your grass is looks dead. If you were to come to "Town by the Lake" and drive by my house, you would think, “Boy, those people aren’t very good at taking care of their lawn!” To be honest, we have not had the responsibility of lawn maintenance for several years, and last year, we were more concerned with taking care of the inside of our new house: buying furniture, ripping down ugly wallpaper, painting walls, and hanging window treatments, so it wasn’t until this year that we even thought about lawn maintenance.

But this year we decided: this is our year! Early in the spring, you see, we bought a cabana-like tent to put on our back deck. We got a couple of pots that Wonder Girl planted some flowers in, and we bought some inexpensive but nice chairs and tables to put out there, and we even planted some trees to block the road. So we have a lovely little outside room right off the back of the house. But our grass is a disaster. It’s brown and dry and it crunches when you walk on it.

We made a conscious decision not to water our grass on a regular basis. We water our trees, because we have a great deal invested in those. Those new trees, we figure are going to get us a nicer return on our investment when someday years from now we sell this house. And they make sitting out on the deck much more pleasant, especially with the road construction going on out there this year. But the grass…well, its just grass. Even if we neglect it a little this year, it will come up again next year, so we aren’t going to use precious resources on it. Besides, turning brown is a natural part of the life cycle of a blade of grass. Almost all of our neighbors have made similar decisions this year, except for one the owners of one house. They’re kind of show-offy about their lawn if you ask me.

Or maybe I’m just jealous. You see, we’ve never been very good at taking care of ordinary grass. Most of the houses we’ve lived at, we’ve killed the grass. We are responsible, kind, generous people, I think. We pay our taxes and vote, and go to church but one thing we’ve never mastered is grass. We may even be clinically grass-impaired.

We started with the best of intentions this year. We did the weed and feed at the appropriate time, which choked off the dandelions, just like it said it would on the package. But the re-seeding…well, we were going to do it, but then it rained too much, and we had to put it off, and then before we knew it, we were in the middle of a drought that we weren’t counting on and it was too late. Let me stipulate, for the record: we have moved a veritable mountain of mulch bark this year, expanded mulch beds, dug up dead trees, transplanted sod, laid pavers, etc. So it’s not as if we don’t work in the yard. So it must be that we are grass-impaired. I mean, its just grass. And there’s so much of it.

As I write this, the world is in shock over some apparent terrorist attacks, which have taken place in London. At least 50 people have been killed, and that number will probably rise. Hundreds of people have been injured, property has been destroyed, the mass transit system in one of the world’s busiest cities has been compromised, and people are scared. What if it happened on a major subway system in our country? My family and I had the pleasure of riding the DC Metro for an entire week last spring. Its a wonderful system: easy to ride, convenient, clean, safe, continuously running. If it were compromised, thousands of people would be stranded, and it would cause a citywide panic. You can be sure that the President and Vice President would be moved to secret, secure locations, and the whole eastern-seaboard would be on red-alert.

I was having a discussion about the London tragedy, and someone pointed out to me that today, and every day, 3,000 people will die of malaria, 6,000 people will die of AIDS, and 10,000 people will die of hunger-related illnesses. Most of those will die in Africa. Most of those will be children. That’s about 19,000 people dead today from preventable causes. During the fifteen or so minutes today that I will talk to you, almost 200 people will die from those three causes alone.

I’ve got money invested in my trees. I’m hoping my trees will bring me financial reward at some point. But grass is just grass. If I neglect it, it’ll grow back next year.

You can’t really delve into one of Jesus’ parables without coming out of it with more questions than you had when you went in. Today’s parable is no exception. For example, why on earth is the sower in this story just outside casting about seeds willy-nilly? I don’t know a lot about horticulture, or agriculture, but even I know that you don’t plant seeds on rocky ground, or in a thorn patch. If you want a fruitful harvest, you cast them on good soil, under the ideal conditions, and you nurture them until they produce, and you harvest carefully. Why on earth plant where you know it will never take root?

And even on the good soil, why does some seed produce thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some a hundredfold? Jesus doesn’t even explain what a sower could do to make that one seed come back a hundredfold. Wouldn’t that be the goal for every seed? Do you see what I mean? More questions than answers.

Our economic impulse is to use our resources to their best advantage. Its why we do things like budget, and invest for the future, and comparison shop. This impulse is based on the economy of scarcity. In other words, being smart about what you have will pay off when you don’t have, or when things are scarce.

There is a lot of talk about scarcity these days. There is talk about the Social Security Fund going broke, there is talk about the use of funds going towards the war effort instead of towards the budget deficit. There is talk about the fact that those 19000 people who will die in Africa today will do so because of economic scarcity. Closer to home, there is talk about the roof that needs replacing on this building, and where that money will come from. And I’ll be honest: we don’t water our grass, in part because we don’t want to use up a finite resource, and in part because we don’t want to pay a huge water bill. An economy of scarcity is at work here.

So what, then are we to make of this parable? For a farmer in the world of the ancient Near East, seed is the most precious commodity that he has. It’s not easy to come by, and how this farmer uses it will determine whether or not his family survives another year. It may even determine the future of the farmer’s whole village. We might expect a farmer in his position to carefully hoard his seed, and plant it one at a time, only in the choicest of locations. And instead he plants freely, generously, and optimistically.

It’s not surprising that not all of the seed comes up. If you’ve ver planted anything, you know that that is just the reality of farming, or herb gardening, or tending raspberry bushes. Once you plant a seed, you are dependent on other forces at work. So we nod our heads in agreement when we hear that seed on rocky soil, thorny ground and near the birds didn’t yield anything. “Well, of course” we say.

But the amazing twist is this: God rewards the farmer anyway, as much as a hundredfold! Twice what he planted would have been cause for celebration, and five-fold return on his investment would have made the entire village throw a party, but this man receives an amazing affirmation from God in the form of an incredible harvest!
What would it look like if we used our most precious commodities in this way? What if we were luxurious in our giving of our resources in places we aren’t quite sure will return a good portion? What would it look like if the powerful and wealthy nations of the world went ahead and scattered seed in the hot, dry, dusty environment of the African continent? What would it be like if we were downright foolish in our generosity in spreading the gospel to our friends and neighbors? What if we lavished one another with love, friendship, compassion and grace?

God has lavished us with love, compassion, and mercy in the person of Jesus Christ. Those things—the blessings from god—are as valuable to us as the seed was to the farmer. And how we use them—because they are no good to us if we do not share them—just may determine whether and how we survive in the long run. It’s not a matter of having or not having—because we definitely have. It is a matter of doing.

The world’s reaction to the attacks on London will show the world’s priorities. I was stunned when I heard a television pundit declare that the events of that day proved to him that the G8 participants should stop talking about aid to Africa and start concentrating on the real problem for the world today: terrorism. Even though I recognize those words as a fear-based reaction, I can’t help but wonder what Jesus really would do with a handful of seeds, or some water, or a large portion of the world’s economic resources.

We’ll have to wait and see what the rest of the world chooses to do with the blessings from God. But for now, I’m going to try to pay as much attention to my grass as I do to my trees. Thanks be to God.