I find it meaningful to rename some of Jesus’ parables from the perspective of the giver rather than the recipient. It helps me to focus on the grace in each parable rather than works. Thus a parable is not so much about a “Prodigal Son” as about God as a “Yearning Father.” Another is not so much the “Lost Sheep” as the “Passionate Shepherd.” And not the “Lost Coin” but God as the “Searching Widow.” Even the “Good Samaritan,” already named after the giver of grace, gains added poignancy as “The Rejected Foreigner Who Cares.”

So let us consider today’s parable as that of the “The Extravagant Sower.” The issue involved erupted for me with the new translation of the Catholic Sacramentary. At the key point in the Eucharist, the new translation reads, “This is the chalice of my blood, which will be poured out for you and for many.” I yearned for the former words—that Christ’s sacrificial act was “for all.” In one sense, both translations are right, but which is primal—the offer or the reception, the God who says “yes” or those of us who insist on saying “no”?

Thus the focus of today’s parable could be on those who are good soil, but it is far more powerful to focus on God as so hopefully in love with all of us that God extravagantly throws seed everywhere—behind the nightclub dumpsters, in the smelly landfills, on the plastic-strewn seashores—wherever there might be someone passing by. Our hope is in such a God who refuses to be limited to sowing where the investment possibilities are most promising.