Enough and more than enough

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (July 16, 2023) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. A video of the entire worship service is available here.

What are we talking about? View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Proper 10, Year A

This beautiful print of the Parable of the Sower is by my Hyde Park colleague the Rev. Cara B. Hochhalter! “A Parable - The Sower” via Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

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Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished. Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stuff, for I am famished!”… Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank, and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright. Genesis 25:29-34

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.

My sister is a journalist; she writes a weekly email newsletter about the people and places and interesting things that are happening in New York City.. This week I was so excited, because her feature story was about a "perpetual stew club"—which I will explain. What are the odds that she would write about this stew club in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the very week when our Sunday reading is all about stew! It's a gift from God! So I promised myself I would try to find a way, hopefully not too awkward, to work the Stew Club into this sermon.

So here's what the Stew Club is about. It's kind of like the "stone soup" fable, where everybody brings something to put into the stew like a sweet potato or some broth or some beans. And the founder of the Stew Club cooks the stew perpetually on her stove in her apartment in Brooklyn. And then once a month they meet up at a local playground to eat the stew. When my sister visited, the stew had been cooking for 26 days. About 30 people came; and everyone who wants to eat the stew brings something to add into the stew pot back home in the apartment. And they all enjoyed the stew and it tasted about how you would imagine it tasted.

And there was opportunity, plenty of opportunity for puns. For instance, when the founder of the Stew Club burned the stew, she said, "I had the heat up too high. It was a STEW-pid mistake.

So not only was there food for everybody, and everybody was sharing and contributing, they were also having fun. As one member of the Stew Club said, "It's not about the stew." It's sweet and a little silly, but it's really about sharing, and making something out of not very much.

The Stew Club stew is is very different from the stew that features in our story today in Genesis. In Genesis, the stew doesn't bring people together at all. Instead, it is at the center of a story about division.

Even before they were born, Jacob and Esau are at odds. They are fighting in the womb: who is going to be greater? Who's going to get a greater share of the good stuff in the world? They echo the first brothers, just a few generations back, Cain and Abel, who also were at war with one another. One brother is a hunter and is loved by his father; the other is more of a homebody, a gardener type, loved by his mother. The two vie for the affections of their parents.

There's a 18th century Jewish commentator who suggests that Jacob, who is the homebody, makes the tempting vegetarian stew that features in today's reading as a way to tempt his father to love him. He is trying to make something just as tasty as what his brother Esau can make by going out hunting and bringing home the game. But it doesn't work. No matter what Jacob does, he doesn't quite win the favor of his father. And no matter what Esau does, he doesn't quite win the affection of his mother.

So from the beginning, the world that these brothers experience is not a world where there's enough, not a world where we're sharing, but a world where we have to kind of scrap and tug to get our share, to get what's coming to us.

We certainly know what it's like to live in that world! And we might wonder, as we look at the division around us, whether Genesis is showing us the world as it must be, whether these two brothers are showing us what it's really like to be a human being... Or is there another way, besides tugging and fighting and scrapping for what's mine?

This is where Jesus' story of the parable of the sower comes in. In this parable, Jesus is showing us that perhaps there is another way, a way other than scrapping over the scraps, a way that is more generous.

Jesus tells this story too about the farmer who throws some seeds around. Some of the seeds land on good soil; some land on the rocks; some land in places where they're uncovered and the birds can pick them up; some land in the weeds and they get choked out.

Jesus' audience, especially his disciples, are all fishermen. They don't know a ton about gardening. We have this lovely pastoral image of these seeds being cast out. But in fact, if you've ever gardened, and I have done a little, I don't spend most of my time taking my seeds and flinging them around the yard to see what happens. Why does the sower fling the seeds willy-nilly when the sower knows that a third of them are going to be eaten by birds and a third are going to end up in the bushes and not have enough sunlight? When I garden, you know, I make a row and I put my carrot seeds in there one by one, and I make sure they're spaced apart because that's the sensible way to garden.

And that's the way that we know that we'll bear enough fruit and we'll have enough and we'll get the harvest we need. But this sower is doing something completely different.

What are the results? When we hear this parable, we might think oh, what a loss, all those seeds that choked to death in the weeds. All those seeds that were lost to the birds. All those seeds that fell on the hard soil and never had a chance to take root. But what grows from the generous, the profligate, the ridiculous spreading of the seeds in this parable? The seeds that fall on the good soil--how much do they yield? Jesus says, minimum 30 fold, some 60 fold, some a hundred fold. It yields not just enough to replace the seeds that fell on the good soil, not just one-to-one. It yields not just enough to replace the seeds that fell on the bad soil or in the bushes or getting eaten by the little creatures in the garden. Those are also replaced by what grows in the good soil. And then what grows in the good soil bears even more than that.

So even though the sower is generously casting the seeds out, without regard to what makes any sense and where they will grow best, not only is the seed that falls on good soil replaced, but the seed that seems to have been lost—there is fruit produced to cover all of the seed and none of it gets lost.

I'm gonna tell a story, um, about my son and our Community Garden. We have a community garden here in the northeast corner of the churchyard. Earlier this week, Max and Christopher went over to the garden to do some weeding. They came back with zucchini and lettuce and green beans, and none of this had grown in our community garden plot. But what happened is, while they were there, one gardener said, oh, I have some extra of this. Do you guys want it? And another gardener said, oh, I have some extra of this. Do you want it? And so they came home with this abundant harvest that was the sharing from the other members of the community. And our Community Garden grows food not only for the gardeners who garden in their plots, but every Friday we take baskets over to the Hyde Park food pantry to share. This garden grows thirty, sixty, a hundred-fold! Enough not just to serve the households of the people doing the labor, but also to serve the wider community. And even once in a while to do something really generous for a young boy!

And at dinnertime... we've been reading that children's book, Harold and the Purple Crayon, where Harold draws his world. And so Max at dinnertime, he said to me, what if the whole world was white and we had to draw everything? And I said, what would you draw first? And he said, I would draw a garden like our community garden so everyone would have food.

It's not a mistake that when God begins creation, God puts the people in a garden where there is fruit that is enough and more than enough; the people are placed in a garden that gives them everything they could possibly need. That's the world that God creates for us. And even though a few generations later we found a way to be fighting over scraps, there are still places where we glimpse that alternate world! That world still lives here, still exists among us. A world where you could do something as crazy as throw seeds everywhere and still trust the world to give you back enough and more than enough, not just for yourself, but for everybody.

The question that I want us to carry into this week is, where in my life do I act as though I have to scrap over a bowl of stew because there's not enough? And where in my life am I more like the sower who has the confidence in the fruit that will be borne? When it comes to God's love, especially—because this is the root of everything—when it comes to God's loves, where are the places where I feel like I have to earn it and scrap for it the way that Jacob and Esau scrapped for the love of their parents? And where are the places that I trust that the love I am giving is going to be returned to me with enough and more than enough?

Which world do I live in? Really, we live in both. But the question is how can we invite God to show us where those seeds are bearing fruit: one hundred, sixty, thirty-fold? Materially, spiritually? Where can we trust that what we sow is always coming back as enough and more than enough? And in those places where our hearts are still scrapping and fighting, can we invite God to show us that God's love is taking root and flourishing?

We can rest assured that when it comes to God there is enough and more, more than enough. Amen.