“God Wants to Let You In” July 16, 2006

Psalm 24, Ephesians 1: 3-14, Mark 4: 1-9

(Note: this sermon was also preached at the Fellowship of UM’s in Music and the Worship Arts, 7/16/06, Williamsport, Pa. Some of the material on the parable of the sower is adapted from a sermon of 7/14/02)

I once heard about an interview with Carl Sandburg, in which one of the questions posed to the poet and biographer was something like this: “Mr. Sandburg, what do you think is the ugliest word in the English language?” After a moment’s thought he said something like this, “The ugliest word is Exclusive........” If you’ve ever been considered not good enough, not worthy, not the right color, not the right gender, not the right orientation, not the right class, too old, too young, too (whatever) you might understand what Sandburg was saying..... ..... If you’ve ever been shut behind some lines of prejudice and discrimination – large or small...... If you’ve ever had people who don’t even know you make negative assumptions about what you are like, because they have a generalized impression about people of your sort..... perhaps you’ll understand what he meant. “Exclusive” is a harsh word that creates harsh realities and we live in a world which is often governed by its power. We’re surrounded by sharp and arbitrary lines of division – in or out, good or bad, acceptable or deplorable - in which differences often are not a pleasant variation of life but a value-laden source of conflict. You can name the categories (rich and poor, white and nonwhite, male and female, Americans and foreigners, red states and blue states, etc...........) and we all suffer because of it. Even those of us who generally live on the privileged side of “Exclusivity” have a diminished life.

Reading over the Psalm and the Epistle for this week it occurred to me that a person who was unfamiliar with the scriptures, or our faith, could read those texts and assume that God runs an exclusive operation, an operation designed to weed out the unworthy and welcome only those who have proved themselves good enough to come in.

From Psalm 24 we read “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in his holy place?” Who gets to enter the house of worship? Who gets to join the church? Who is considered a member of the family of God? Who’s going to heaven? ...... The Psalm says, “Those with clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false and do not swear deceitfully. They will receive blessing from the Lord.”..... “You’ve got to be good enough to get in with God,” one might think. “Those who don’t pass muster need not apply.....”

And from Ephesians we read Paul’s thankful words that God chose his people in Christ before the beginning of time, that God had an eternal intention of adopting his people into the fellowship and family of God. A logical, though in my opinion erroneous, assumption might be “Oh, since God has chosen us to be in he must have chosen all those other folks to be left outside.......”

What a terrible caricature of the Church we draw if we think God is a gate-keeping God whose greatest desire is to weed out the unworthy and associate only with the proper sort of people, and when we live by that assumption. Those of us in the church – if that’s our worldview - can get warped with egotistical, self-congratulatory attitudes that make us spiritually flabby, morally shallow, hypocritical and self-righteous, and a terrible advertisement for the faith. Some of those outside the church may be fooled and intimidated by our supposed virtues, and others may be angry and turned off by our obvious hypocrisy, but their response is likely to be “You can’t keep me out because I’d never want to join such an outfit.”

Oh, it’s true that God does have standards. God does want people to have “clean hands and pure hearts,” to live a moral, peaceful life, a life of wholeness and harmony....... But all through the Bible, Old Testament and New but especially in the gospels, the basic message is not exclusivity. It’s grace, amazing grace – for God’s great desire is not to keep out the unworthy but to do everything possible to open the door and let people in.

One of the places in which I see that grace is in Jesus’ parable that begins with the words, “A sower went forth to sow; a farmer went out to plant his seeds……”

Most of Jesus’ hearers would be very familiar with farmers and their methods, but perhaps a few of us need to be reminded that farmers in that era planted by tossing their seeds out, sowing them, as they walked up and down their fields. The fields were small by modern standards, but big enough so that planting each seed individually would have been impossible. Farmers would load up a sack, and broadcast their seeds by hand, so that the situation Jesus described in his parable – the uneven results and the waste and loss of some seed – was inevitable.

Some of the seeds, he said, fell on the footpaths where the ground was hard and almost impenetrable. They never had much chance to get rooted because hungry birds swooped in and gobbled them up…… Some of the seeds fell in rocky ground where the soil was pretty thin, and they did sprout and begin to grow, but they didn’t last very long when the hot sun came out. Amidst those rocks they just couldn’t develop the roots they needed for survival……. And some of the seeds fell amidst thorns and briars, which choked those little plants as they were trying to grow…… So a lot of seed was wasted, but the farmer’s faith was rewarded because some seed fell into good soil. It took root and grew up to produce grain – a bumper crop that made all his work worthwhile.

The point of this story? What was Jesus trying to say? He was saying that God is like a farmer who wants to get his message, his truth, his word out. The seed represents the truth of God, the message of the kingdom - and the soil? The soil is us – human beings, in whom God wants the message to take root.

One response to this parable is to look at ourselves and ask “What kind of soil am I?” My main focus today will be on the God question, but I’ll say just a few things on the question about us, so that maybe you can preach your own sermon some other time as you think about the soil of your life. “Am I like that hard-packed path, so unyielding, so unwilling to let anything new from God penetrate my life?” one might ask. “Am I just so hard headed that it’s almost impossible for God to get through except by the most extreme catastrophes or crises?”……. Or you might ask “Am I shallow and rocky, willing to hear God but only at the most superficial level? Am I the kind of Christian whose faith wilts at the slightest challenge, demand or responsibility? ….. Or you might ask yourself “Is the soil of my life crowded with too many other things, like the soil that was so full of weeds and thorns that the seed of God’s message didn’t stand much of a chance? Am I irresponsibly busy with relatively good things that collectively crowd out the things of God?” Busyness in this culture is considered a virtue. We meet some one and say “How are things going for you?” and they will say “Busy,” as if to indicate that they are constantly involved in important enterprises. But “busy” is often a “negative virtue,” if it makes the soil of our lives too clogged for anything of God to grow....…….. In short, this story is saying “Look at yourself and take stock of your life. What kind of soil are you? Does God’s message have a chance to take root and grow in your life? If not, what are you going to do about it?”

But the other question the parable prompts is not what my soil may be like, but what out God is like. Jesus says that our God, the one he called “Abba, Father,” is like that farmer striding up and down the field, casting the seeds of his truth out on all sides. What kind of God is that?

This is a wasteful God, a careless God, or (to use a Biblical-sounding word) a prodigal God – a God who is wasteful and careless and prodigal in wonderful ways. Like an ancient farmer who tosses out his seeds, knowing that he’s going to have a lot of losses – on the paths, in the rocky soil, amidst the thorns and weeds, etc. - so the God proclaimed by Jesus throws his truth and love out in seemingly extravagant, inefficient, improvident ways, offering it in places and to people who certainly don’t seem deserving by any objective measurement.

That’s what got Jesus in trouble so many times, this habit of seeking out and befriending the riff raff of society – tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners of various kinds. Good religious folks couldn’t understand this, and if your idea of God is a careful God, a God who measures everything out, who makes sure his seeds go only on good soil, you won’t understand this either. But that’s what our God is like. According to the most familiar verse of the Bible who does God love? “God so loved the (blank) that he sent his only begotten son………” What fills the blank? Not “the religious people,” not “the ones who had shown themselves worthy,” not Jews, Christians, Americans, or any other group. God so loved “the world,” and a love so expansive is guaranteed to be problematic, risk-filled and costly.

We read stories in the gospel about crooks and thieves and sinners who met Jesus and followed him, but do you think there were any to whom he reached out who didn’t give a darn about what he said? I bet there were some. I bet there were lots of them, lots of rejections..... God wants to open the door, with a gracious, forgiving, life-restoring welcome. God wants to help those who do not have clean hands and pure hearts, like Isaiah in the temple who said “Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell amongst a people of unclean lips.........” God wants to forgive, restore and remake us when we are aware of our sins. God wants to get us in, but – as far as we can see, in this life at any rate, there is no guarantee that people will accept God’s invitation.

When Jesus was on the cross there was one thief who humbly appealed to him and another who jeered and mocked him - a 50% success rate if you’re keeping score. We know that among the ordinary, garden-variety sinners there were some who followed him and many who turned their back on him, rejecting him, persecuting him, or just reacting in indifference – but that was the risk God was willing to take. God wanted his message and his love to be offered to everyone – including those who might seem to be unworthy, unlikely, undeserving, a poor bet……. God was so determined to spread his love to the widest possible bounds that he was willing to risk the suffering and death of his beloved son.

One of the teachings that was always emphasized by our Methodist ancestor John Wesley was the conviction that God’s grace is available to everyone. “Prevenient grace,” he called it, though a better word in modern English might be “preceding grace” – the grace that comes before we are even conscious of God. Some Christians of his era taught that God had already chosen those to be saved and those to be rejected – perhaps in the basis of texts like our Ephesians reading - but Wesley preached about this prodigal, wasteful, free-spending God, this God who throws the seeds of truth everywhere. Because all people are included in the ranks of those whom God wants to adopt, Wesley made it his business to preach in the fields, outside coal mines, in the city streets and anywhere else where there might be people who never darkened the door of a church, but who were loved by this prodigal, wasteful, loving God. The Methodist movement flourished because there were so many of these unlikely people, these folks who had been written off as “poor soil” who heard the message, believed it, and allowed God to take root in their lives.

Here’s a verse from a contemporary hymn which speaks about this wonderfully prodigal God, (which I learned years ago at the Fellowship from Carol Doran, who had set Thomas Troeger’s text to music):

A spendthrift lover is our God, who never counts the cost,

Or asks if heaven can afford to save a soul that’s lost.

This spendthrift lover God is like a farmer who wants his message of love and grace to go everywhere, risking the loss of seeds on the path, in the rocky soil, amidst the thorns…… Our God is wasteful, prodigal, free-spending, and “liberal” in the most wonderful sense of all those words, and if that is what God is like, shouldn’t we – God’s people – be striving to live with the same embracing, gracious love?

This is a mighty prosaic way of putting it, but in world that fosters division and exclusivity, and in a culture where some think that God is primarily a gatekeeper, we read Psalm 24 and ask “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall enter his courts to sing his praise?” and all that I can say as a follower of Jesus Christ, is “God wants to get you in.” The most ugly word in English? Perhaps it’s “exclusive,” but the most beautiful? Grace – the grace of God the sower, the grace of God who sent Christ, the grace of God who welcomes us in baptism, the grace of God who loves the world.