Efficiency (Seventh Sunday after Pentecost)
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I have always been a big fan of efficiency. I like to make lists, and plan my day, so I can get things done. I like to schedule errands so that I’m not driving around any more than necessary. And I especially like to make sure that my house is as energy efficient as I can make it.
And over the years, I’ve become pretty good at making my home pretty efficient, as shown by the fact that Pepco always tells me in my monthly energy report that I’m doing significantly better than “efficient” homes near me. I credit a lot of that to paying attention to small things, like sealing air leaks, installing LED fixtures and making sure that things that can be turned off are turned off.
But I’ve done a bunch of big things as well. One of those was replacing my HVAC system about 5 years ago. I knew that my system was on its last legs, and at that time Pepco had huge rebate offers to install ultra-efficient systems if you went through their process of having a complete home energy audit done.
So I called up Jim McKenna, a member of our congregation who does home energy audits professionally, and asked him to come out and do the home energy audit. So Jim came out and looked around, and talked to me about what he’d be doing. I pointed out to him that I had already done a lot of the sealing up of air gaps, and replacement of weatherstripping and such that he had told us all about years before when we he was leading a workshop here at church.
And so Jim went about doing the various tests, and this include the “blower door test”, which as many of you may know is where you close up everything in your house except the front door. Then, the door is covered with a tarp and a fan which sucks air out of your house. In this way, you can measure how much air leakage is coming into the house.
Jim got done with this and said, “actually, you’ve done such a good job of sealing stuff up, that you don’t have ENOUGH fresh air getting in.” He explained that for health reasons, you need to have a certain amount of air exchange happening every hour, and I didn’t have enough. So, he then told me what we would do to fix that…
And so we did it. And the air quality really is better. But it meant doing something that didn’t seem “efficient.” And deep down, that still bugged me!
And that’s also what’s always bugged me about today’s parable of the sower. The sower goes out to sow some seed. But he does it in a most inefficient manner. As he sows, most of it gets wasted! Some falls on the path; some gets eaten by birds; and some gets choked out by the weeds and thorns. And while I know some types of seed need to be planted like this, sowing is just not “efficient”, and this particular sower seems to make the problem worse by being careless.
Now, I like to think that I care about efficiency because I’m committed to good environmental stewardship, and because I care about the world around me. But deep down, I know at least part of my “efficiency” hangup is because I was raised on phrases like, “waste not, want not” and “don’t heat the great outdoors!” Long before “green” was in, I was raised to be “efficient” because it was cheaper that way!
And so whether it’s this parable, or installing fans in my house that actually bring in fresh air, I emotionally recoil at inefficiency. And actually, probably many of Jesus’ first hearers did as well. Maybe that’s why they remembered this parable. And perhaps that’s one of the reasons Jesus used an image of a sower.
Indeed, perhaps the sower’s inefficiency is part of the point. As much as I don’t like “inefficiency”, it occurs to me as I read this parable that part of Jesus’ point in using the image of the sower is that:
- Efficiency isn’t always the most important thing – indeed, the sower is way more concerned about planting the seed than if it’s costing him extra money to buy more seed; much like healthy indoor air is actually more important than a heating or cooling bill, the sower realizes that sometimes the point is planting, not thinking about efficiency…
- The sower doesn’t want to miss any potentially good soil, even if he knows that some will fall on the path and among the thorns. I know when I sow grass seed, I sometimes don’t want to sow too close to the edge of the lawn because some seed will hit places that it won’t grow, or I that don’t want it to grow. But that’s my need to be “efficient”, and it’s not always the best plan to make sure the lawn area gets good coverage…
- The end product is worth the cost, even if some of the seed is seemingly wasted. Jesus says that some seed brings forth 30, 60 or even 100 fold. That, too, would have been a ridiculous detail for Jesus first hearers, who knew a good yield would be about 10 fold. Yet, this sower is willing to be “inefficient” in order to make some amazing yields possible…
And so maybe it’s good that the inefficiency of this parable has always bothered me. It probably bothered a lot of people whom Jesus first told it to. And maybe that’s one of the reasons he told it. Jesus perhaps told this parable in this way because there are lot of people like me who get too hung up on efficiency.
And efficiency is indeed important in a lot of ways and in a lot of contexts. But sometimes, it can get in the way, especially when we’re considering how it is we share the “seed” of God’s Word. And I’m pretty sure that Jesus isn’t simply referring to telling people about God, but he’s also talking about sharing the experience of the love, presence and power of God that we’ve received.
Because while God is the ultimate sower of his own Word, we too, are supposed to be people who turn around and share that experience with others in our world. And in those moments, this parable is Jesus’ reminder that often:
- Efficiency isn’t the most important thing – if I only share God in ways that I think are uber-effective, I may get stuck planning how I’m gonna do it, and never actually get around to it…
- Sharing the experience of God in places and among people where I don’t think it will do much good is actually important, because like that sower if I avoid places and people where I don’t think it matters, I may miss the good soil…
- God can do amazing things with what I do, even if I’m certain I, by myself, don’t have the efficiency to bring about 30, 60 or 100 fold increases. In fact, that’s part of what our VBS stories are going to be about – people who acted in small ways that may not have seemed much to them at the time, but whose actions God turned into big things…
In the end, efficiency is a good thing. But it’s not the only thing. And sometimes, it’s not the most important thing.
Jesus uses this image of the sower to remind us that God’s Word, God’s love and God’s power in our lives are often NOT efficient. And that’s because God cares more about us than about efficiency. God cares more about reaching people who need him than holding back because some folks don’t seem to care. And God can do amazing things when his Word does take hold, even if it doesn’t seem possible to us.
And so Jesus calls us to do the same. Jesus calls us to be people who are willing to keep trying to share God’s presence, even if the ways we’re doing it don’t seem that efficient. Jesus calls us to not to give up when so much of our effort seems to fall on the path. And most of all, Jesus calls us to trust that God is able to do amazing things with us and through us, even when we’re not sure where the “good soil” is.
Amen.