Vicar Karla Leitzman
Several years ago when I was working as a fundraiser at Gustavus, I found myself in a little bit of a pickle that will probably feel familiar to anyone who has done major gift work in a nonprofit setting. My job was to meet with donors and alumni to listen to their stories and experiences and then invite support to the College. It’s essentially the same thing that I do now for Global Refuge. Listen, discern, invite support. There was a donor couple I was working with at Gustavus where I felt like I just couldn’t figure out how to direct their philanthropy. They were both alums as were all three of their children. They and the kids were all involved in lots of activities on campus and the areas that this couple wanted to support were extensive. Everything from music ensembles they themselves played in, to the teams all their children played on, to the library, to scholarship support, to the general fund which touches every area of the campus every single day. As we met and talked they shared that when they got a request in the mail or in their email inbox to solicit support for something on campus, they just made a gift. Pretty much any request that was sent to them yielded a donation. Essentially, they were dream donors. So, my job was to help them think comprehensively about their giving, and how to make a plan for their generosity for the next five years because making a plan for prolonged support helps both the organization and the donors.
Over the course of two years, I sent them about $300,000 worth of proposals, hoping that something, anything would stick. I sent $50,000 proposals for 5 years, dividing up that support across several areas of campus. I sent proposals that would support all of the areas they cared about plus including some “open” support for when they received those requests in the mail or email. I tried so many things and they accepted none of them. My boss told me to let those proposals marinate but that I needed to move on to other donors and prospective donors. I doubted anything I sewed would ever come to fruition.
On New Year’s Eve, at about 3pm, I was out for my annual walk in the woods at the regional park by my house. I like taking a long, quiet walk to reflect on the past year and the new one about to begin. My phone started ringing and I looked down and it was this donor couple. I answered and they said, “we’re going to do what you sent.” I said that’s so wonderful, which proposal did you want to go with?” After a long pause on the other end, they said, “well all of them.” I clarified, “you are accepting all of the proposals I sent you?” They did. So, I rushed back home out of the woods to pull up my work computer to help them make the first pledge payments so it would count for that year’s taxes. My colleague in Advancement Services even had to manually turn off the security alerts that flags any gift over $10,000 as fraud because they wanted to start making $25,000 pledge payments that night.
I felt like I was throwing cooked spaghetti at the wall having no idea what was going to stick, no idea if any seeds I was throwing in the dirt were going to grow. I figured nothing would come of what I sent out, but I did what I could control. So I share this story today because it is an example of the ways that, in settings where it is easy to identify all of the places where things are so out of our control, especially in this chaotic world we navigate individually and in community, it can be hard to focus on the certainties and the things that are not variable. Blessedly, God’s love and grace which Jesus describes in today’s gospel reading, are certainties and are not variable.
Today’s parable is yet another beautiful example of Jesus meeting his audience where they are, of relating to them and seeing them for exactly who they are. Undoubtedly, there would have been farmers in this crowd who would have known what it was like to plant seeds and wait to see what the yield would look like. They couldn’t control which seeds would take root and which wouldn’t, what the weather did or how the soil would be unable to support crops. They couldn’t control how much the Romans would increase taxes that year, what percentage of the crops would be taken to feed Roman soldiers. What they could control was utilizing what they knew. We see so many places where adversity mounts against the good we try to do, the seeds of goodness we work so hard to plant. But amidst all that adversity, God’s love will always break through. Threats to the flourishing of the Gospel will always be present and will always be many. We cannot fully eliminate all of those threats because a lot of them are frankly out of our control. People we love will doubt the presence and very existence of God as they navigate hurtful and painful circumstances and tragedies. We very well may experience a tragedy ourselves and wonder where in the world God could possibly be. But we can enable ourselves to share God’s love through ourselves and walk with them as they navigate that pain. We can work to remember to look for God’s love personified in those around us.
I have talked before about how we receive a different image of Jesus in each of the gospels. In Matthew, we see Jesus as the teacher, the one who guides his friends and followers to learn for themselves. Jesus uses parables like today’s story to break down really complicated ideas and make them more accessible, to meet them where they are and make his teachings of love and care easier to grasp and understand. Because making real God’s kingdom here on Earth does not simply come with just hearing or listening, it comes from hearing, understanding, and then enacting. It is one thing to hear about God’s love, grace, and justice that is so desperately needed in this hurting world, it is another thing to act it out, to make it real to our neighbors.
The creating of God’s kingdom is dependent upon Jesus’ followers, hearing, understanding and sharing that love which defies all understanding. It depends on his listeners understanding that the love and promises he brings from God are so incredibly counter cultural to the world around them and the same is still true today. Even though Jesus might not explicitly say it in today’s gospel reading, he knows that there will soon come a time when he will not be with his disciples physically anymore and the work of creating God’s kingdom on Earth will be left to them, so it is vital that they cultivate the right conditions for the good seed to take root in their hearts so they can then share it. The same is true for us. We know that we must cultivate the right conditions for the seed of God’s goodness and love to take root in us so that we can then share it widely and expansively. May we not only ask God to make us good soil, but may we also ask God to work through us and to work together to communally cultivate that vital fertile soil.