Jun 21st: Generosity, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.
You’re welcome to join us online or in person this Sunday, just as you are.
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Generosity with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: More Than You Think: Discovering the Parables of Jesus A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Mark 4:1-9.
Ever feel like the world is meaner, more judgmental, and it makes you shrink a little inside? This week we’re talking about a God whose love looks more like wild generosity than scorekeeping, and how that kind of grace can free us to live with courage and kindness.
You’re welcome to join us online or in person this Sunday, just as you are.
Transcript:
Steven: St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, fear is such a powerful emotion that when we allow fear to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts, and we forget who we are. I mean, one of our greatest challenges right now is to not forget who we are, and one of the best ways to do that is to remember who God is. A while back, there was a man standing on the corner of Highway 20 and 20-Seventh Street with the same stern look my mother used to give me when I was in trouble, before I even knew what I did. This man held a sign, you perhaps have seen it that said, Are you saved? Repent now. Across the street, right across the street, two teenage girls high on one too many white mochas from Dutch Bros were dancing to Taylor Swift, holding a sign that said free car wash. My car wasn’t dirty, but my soul took over the wheel. What’s the catch? Are you selling tickets to a performance? I asked them. Nope, there’s just so much anger out there. We wanted to give people a reason to smile, just because those two girls actually reminded me of a story Jesus told about a sower who scattered seeds with exactly that kind of wild just because generosity, now the purpose of the life of Jesus was never to change God’s mind about us. It was to actually change our mind about God, to introduce us to to a God of extravagant, unconditional love, that’s why Jesus spoke in parables. I mean, the word parable literally means alongside stories thrown off to the side, inviting us to stretch beyond what we think we already know. I mean, if you think you know God, think again. Now, here’s the story that Jesus tossed alongside. A farmer went out to sow seeds. Some seed fell on the path, and the birds ate it. Some seed fell on rocky ground and withered for lack of root, some seed fell among thorns, and and was choked out, and some seed fell on good soil and produced a remarkable crop. Whoever has ears, let them hear. Now, the traditional reading of this particular story assumes that that we’re the soil and the story is about the quality of our souls. Honestly, I recognize myself in all of it, hardened path, some days rocky and shallow, other days choked by worry and thorns more often than I’d like to admit, but making this story about us really turns it into something cynical, you know. We don’t measure up well, we’re not enough. If we could just get our act together, if we could just pull those weeds deep in the soil, then maybe we’d be worthy of the seed that turns our relationship with God into a transaction, and if we believe that that we’re constantly being judged for the quality of our soil, we very quickly start judging everyone else’s soil, and there is so much judgment, there is so little generosity of spirit in our culture, even in our churches, it makes me wonder what image of God are people actually carrying around. So, what if the story isn’t about the soil at all. What if we actually shift our attention away from the soil to the heart of the one scattering the seed? The first thing we notice is that the sower is reckless. I mean, any sensible farmer does. Soil assessment. First, I mean, you don’t waste good seed on a footpath, but this sower, this sower of seed scatters across the whole field indiscriminately, path, rock, thorn, good ground, all of it gets seed without a worthiness evaluation, without calculating the odds. Hannah Mott said, when I begin to realize that fear has taken hold of my life, it’s a sure sign I need to start giving and give more than I’m comfortable giving. Love doesn’t stop to evaluate whether someone is worthy or whether there’s enough. Love just loves. That’s the sower. The sower assumes the best, not the worst. Operates from abundance, not scarcity. Trust that something can take root in any soil, that sometimes a tree really does grow out of a rock, and a flower out of concrete now to us to our way of looking at things. I mean, this looks recklessly inefficient, but what if that’s the whole hope of the story, and I really wonder if the question Jesus is asking, isn’t whether you’re worthy of the seed. The question is whether you can receive it, whether the image of God you’re carrying is spacious enough to hold the possibility that grace really is this lavish, that love really is this indiscriminate, that the sower doesn’t pause to check your credentials before scattering the seeds, because your image of God creates you, I mean, if you believe in a God of scarcity, watching for failures, calculating worthiness, withholding love, until you finally get yourself together, you will live from scarcity, closed, defended, fearful. and you’ll find it impossible to be extravagantly generous yourself, but if you begin to trust, even, even a little, in a God, a God who throws seed on the path, the rocks, the thorns, before there’s any evidence that will take root, something shifts. You start living from abundance instead of deficit. You start risking love, risking generosity, throwing some of your own seed in places that might not produce anything at all, just because you know, I think a lot of us carry somewhere underneath the God who looks like that man on the corner with the sign and the stern face, watching, withholding angry, fearful, judgmental. This image of an angry, judgmental God seems to be standing right in the middle of the room, shaping how we treat each other as a nation right now. When a nation starts deciding which soil belongs in the field and which doesn’t, which people count as real Americans, which families are acceptable, whose love is legitimate, those kind of calculations are almost always backed by a God who blesses some ground and curses the rest. That is not the sower that Jesus describes, a God who has to be defended with power and exclusion is not the god of this parable. This is Pride Month. Every June, someone holds up a sign insisting that certain people. Soul are the rocky ground not worth, not worthy of the seed, not part of the field at all, but the sower walks right past that sign. The sower keeps, keeps throwing seed on the path, on the rocks, on the thorns, on the ground that every gatekeeper said to skip, sometimes a tree really does grow out of a rock, a flower out of concrete, and sometimes that flower shows up at the parade wearing glitter, and the sower smiles and keeps walking, scattering seed the whole way. Look at where the sower throws the path, the rocks, the thorn, places that have given no evidence of being worth the effort, and yet that’s precisely where the seed is scattered. We’re living in a remarkably hard and painful moment, you know. Aquinas was right. When fear takes over, it drives compassion out of our hearts. We forget who we are. We need theology right now that calls forth the best in us, rather than theology that tries to threaten us into compliance. We need to remember who God is, so we can remember who we are and who God is, according to Jesus, is the one who extravagantly scatters seed on the path, the rocks, the thorns, because that is who the sower is, and that is what the sower does. Maya Angelo said, “My wish for you is that you continue to be who and how you are to astonish a mean and angry world with your acts of kindness, so so friends, the next time someone asks, are you saved, you might just say, you know, I’ll leave that in the hands of a god of extravagant, generous love, because I’m just far too busy trying to astonish a mean and angry world with kindness, because that’s who I am, and that’s what I do. May it be so. Amen.
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