May 20, 2001

“Needing and Being Needed”

Matthew 13:1-9

To plant a field by scattering the seed is almost a lost art, except in parts of Third World countries where farming is still done by hand with primitive equipment. I can still remember, though, my grandmother’s brother walking through a field he had carefully tilled, and sowing with graceful movement of arm and wrist, much like a ballet dancer’s fluid motion. The thrown seed from his hand became a golden spray that evenly covered the black soil. Nowadays farmers use sophisticated equipment to plant seed, but I bet their machines do not spread it any more evenly than my great uncle did by hand, and certainly they do it with less reverence than I saw as he walked back and forth, sowing in hope of harvest.

Jesus preserved all of this in his matchless parable of the sower. One scholar guesses that the parable was prompted one day when Jesus was teaching his followers by the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus looked up to see a farmer nearby sowing in the field. So, Jesus called his followers’ attention to the man at work, and then used him and what he was doing as an illustration of the Kingdom. “Listen!” he said. “A sower went out to sow …” His listeners would have understood the familiar image and the application that Jesus made:

And as he sowed, some seed 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. But 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!

Countless preachers have taken this parable and developed all kinds of interesting interpretations from it. Some have focused on the figure of the Sower and others on the meaning of the seed. Some have emphasized the various types of soils and yet others have discussed the meaning of the harvest. The parables of Jesus are so rich with meaning that we never exhaust them.

This (afternoon) morning, I want to let the parable reveal another truth for us; namely, how we need God and how God needs us, for this is clearly revealed in what Jesus is saying. Not only here in this parable, but throughout his teachings Jesus underscored this interchangeable truth. We need God who is the Ground of our being, who is Creator of this universe, who is the Savior and Lord in Jesus Christ and loves us into fullness of being, who is the Spirit of power, gifting us and enabling us to realize our true human stature and grandeur.

But Jesus made it equally clear that God needs us. Seed, no matter how it’s sown, will not germinate and produce unless it falls on fertile soil, unless it’s well received. God’s Word needs our hearing of it and our response to it. God needs us. So Jesus declared, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide … Go, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons … Greater works than I do will you do … Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” Yes, God needs us as channels of his purpose and as agents of his Kingdom. We need God and God needs us. Let’s further consider this truth.

First, we need God! We’re created incomplete and our wholeness as human beings comes when we listen and respond to God’s Word, when we receive and live from God’s love, when we order our lives by God’s moral expectations. St. Augustine, who had learned it through an anguished personal struggle, left no doubt when he prayed, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in Thee.” We need God.

Not everyone believes this, of course, and our world’s full of people who tell themselves they need nothing or no one—not even God. We live in an age that seeks personal fulfillment, inner strength, happiness and love in a thousand contradictions, none phonier than the mock heroics of self-sufficiency and independence, where persons will not admit their need, but who end up dependent on drugs or alcohol, pleasure and empty pride. Someone once asked the great Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, “Why are people neurotic? Why do they commit such compulsive and irrational acts? What’re they looking for?” Jung replied with one word, “God!” The poet said it in these lines:

Where the sun shines in the street,

There are very many feet

Seeking God, all unawares

That their hastening is a prayer.

Perhaps these feet would deem it odd,

Who think they are on business bent,

If someone sent and told them,

“You are seeking God.”

We need God, just as we need each other. God created us for sharing life with others, and in that sharing finding life’s deepest meaning. God also created us for sharing a relationship and a purpose with him. Life and love need give and take. Thomas Merton, the writer who became a Trappist monk, said he found that the contradictions in his life were themselves signs of his need of God, signs of God’s mercy, if only because someone as complicated as he couldn’t have survived without special mercy and divine help. And, the apostle Paul declared, “We are debtors … we’ve received the Spirit who bears witness with our spirit that we belong to God.” When someone tells me that they will pray or have been praying for me, I reply, “Please keep on praying for me—I need all the help God will give.” I need God not only to survive, but also to thrive. I need God in order to pick up the pieces and begin again. I need God, who forgives my shortcomings and restores my relationship with him. I need God to laugh and sing when it hurts too much to do anything else. I need God to love, to care how others feel and to feel how others care. Without God, I cannot.

Then too, God needs us! Without us, God will not. That’s our other word this (afternoon) morning. God needs us to share in creative deeds with him, to carry out his purpose on earth, to be agents of divine possibilities in the midst of human despair. God needs our minds, our imaginations, our talents and gifts, and our moral courage and will power. God needs our eyes, our hands, our lips, our feet, our hearts and our common sense. God needs us to work with him and for him, in answering the prayers we make. God needs us to help him in making miracles happen (in hospital operating rooms, in classrooms, and in the aftermath of tragedies). God needs us to bring healing, to spread light, to defend justice, to feed the hungry, to build homes for low-income families, to reconcile the alienated, to lift the fallen, to redeem the lonely with love and laughter, and to triumph over tragedy and evil.

God needs good drivers to answer prayers for safe trips. God needs skilled surgeons, doctors, nurses and others in the medical professions to answer prayers for healing. God needs creative thinkers who will discover the deeper secrets of the universe and use the resources of this earth wisely. God needs people who will take the courage of love and create marriages where people are fulfilled and grow on together. God needs people who are willing to risk changes so that God can answer their prayers for help. God needs people who are willing to give themselves away, so that he can answer the pleas of those who need help.

Of course, God’s efforts to recruit us for God’s purposes of love aren’t always received gladly. According to a reliable source, one of the producers of the movie Jaws (and here I’m going back a few years) threw an inaugural party for everyone who was listed in the credits. The highlight of the evening came when the producer pulled back the cover over his swimming pool, revealing two enormous white sharks. “I’ll give the person who swims the length of this pool either one-fifth of the profits of the movie or $5 million dollars,” he told the awestruck crowd.

No sooner had he spoken those words when there was a great splash in the pool. One man out of the crowd had responded to the producer’s challenge and was going to attempt to swim the length of the pool without being eaten by the sharks. The crowd went crazy, cheering him on and yelling when the sharks got too close. Within moments of the sharks’ snatching a bite out of the man’s legs, he reached the far end of the pool, and someone pulled him out to safety. “I’m completely amazed,” the producer told him. “I didn’t expect anybody to do that. But I’m a man of my word. Do you want one-fifth of the profits from the film or $5 million dollars?”

“Right now, I don’t care so much about the money,” the exhausted man replied, “as I do about the name of the guy who pushed me in!”

Don’t we sometimes feel like we’ve been pushed or prodded by God? Doesn’t God use some rather dramatic means to get our attention? God reveals in Jesus Christ just how much we are needed, and he also reveals the grace that will enable us to respond to God’s call. God needs us, even in our own brokenness and sin. He needs us with our weaknesses, deficiencies, and shadow sides. God needs us to be for others what we’ve not yet become ourselves. God needs us to speak to others his Word that we need to hear ourselves. God wants us to teach lessons of love and life while we’re still learning them ourselves. God calls us in Christ to do what we need and to offer what we’ve not fully received. But miracle of miracles—we make a difference! Despite our inadequacies, God uses us by grace as his agents of truth and reconciliation. He takes our awkward gestures, our meager faith, our strange sense of humor, and our self-centered ways, and through us God reaches and blesses others. In spite of us—and yet because of us and through us—God rescues other persons, changes someone else’s world, offers Kingdom-hope and answers our own yearnings and deepest needs.

Some of you may remember the San Francisco Giants baseball pitcher, Dave Dravecky. He had undergone radical surgery that removed a malignant tumor and half a major muscle in his upper arm—his pitching arm. His doctors predicted that it would end his pitching career. They told him that he would be lucky to play catch with his kids. But Dravecky proved their prognosis wrong. He entered upon a grueling ten-month program of rehabilitation and treatments, and eventually returned to pitch a winning game in Candlestick Park against the Cincinnati Reds. It was a stunning performance, one in which he held the Reds to three runs on four hits in eight innings.

At a post-game press conference Dravecky said, “Before we go any further, I want to say that I give all praise to Jesus Christ. Without him, there is no story.” Five days later he pitched another game in Montreal and won it, but was taken out of the game for a relief pitcher when his arm broke. I can still recall that sickening sight on television news footage. The strain on the bone, without the whole muscle, was too much and the bone snapped. When reporters cornered Dravecky, he once again offered his praise to God. When they asked him about his pitching career, he told them that he had placed his future in God’s hands. A certain Bay Area sports columnist took exception to Dravecky’s faith witness, and said so in his column. “Dave Dravecky is shortchanging himself when he gives God credit for his comeback. God didn’t lift those weights and endure those excruciating exercises. God didn’t overcome the fear that a career might be over. Dravecky did.” Dave Dravecky replied to the columnist, “Of course, God didn’t lift those weights for me, but God gave me the courage and the perspective to deal with adversity—and even with heartbreak.”

Some of you remember Dravecky announcing his retirement from baseball because doctors had discovered another tumor in his arm. In his book, Comeback, Dravecky shares what he went through and what he learned from his experience. He writes, “Perhaps most of all I’ve learned to put my life in God’s hands. The hardest part of these last two years has been the uncertainty. I had to learn to do what was within my grasp, one day at a time, and leave control of the rest trustingly to God. There are no guarantees I will ever get well . . . But Jesus Christ is the ground of my peace. With him, I can face any adversity.”

I have Dravecky’s second book, co-authored by his wife, Jan, entitled When You Can’t Come Back. In painfully honest detail it recounts his wife’s depression and the continuing problems with Dave’s arm, which eventually led to its amputation. I’m giving this copy to our church’s library so that you can read for yourself the encouragement and hope the Draveckys give to those who face tragic circumstances where a comeback is not possible.

Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not. “And a sower went out to sow … some seeds fell on the path … other seeds fell on rocky ground … other seeds fell among thorns … other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” So be it! Let us pray:

Loving and gracious God, who desires that we partner in sharing the good news concerning the new life you offer through faith in Jesus Christ, may we find the courage to release the powers within, to throw off the shackles of timidity, to walk with faith instead of fear. May we dare to become what you created us to be and to strive always for “the more excellent way.” Transform our trembling will into the smiling confidence of those who live not for themselves but for your purposes of love. In the name of Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.