FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME A

[cappie]

In this parable and its explanation, Jesus not only addresses his first disciples but, as with all scripture, he’s addressing us too.

There is a tendency  to take Jesus’ parable of the sower and make it into a morality story about how good our soil is, when it’s meant to be a revelation of how “bad” a sower God is - willing to “waste” seed even on “bad” soil….because you never know what might grow. Today Jesus has an invitation for us to be sowers not just soil.

For the early Church, for those in whom the word of the kingdom initially took root and brought healing, peace, and joy, there was still a conundrum:  why doesn’t everyone who hears the word believe? Why is what is so plain to us so imperceptible to others? Why, when we can say, “Jesus is Lord,” even at the risk of our lives, don’t others get it? What’s wrong here?

We may wonder some of the same things. Faith in Jesus is important to us. We go to church. Why isn’t everyone? Is the seed not what we thought it was? Are we wasting our time? Is there something else we should let take root in our hearts? Keeping soil good for planting can be challenging work sometimes, and we want to know, is it worth it? Did the sower get it wrong?

To the first disciples, to the early Church, to us, Jesus says, there is nothing wrong with the seed. The sower is dependable. But here’s what happens when the seed falls on different kinds of ground. Trust the sower. Trust the seed.

Take a clue from the sower. The sower’s approach to sowing is carefree, to say the least. The sower flings seed as he goes, with seeming disregard for where the seed will end up. Shouldn’t the precious seed be saved for careful deposit in some meticulously prepared narrow furrow where it has a better chance of germination and survival? Not with this sower. To this sower, it’s as if the seed is so precious, he can’t hold on to it—it has to be shared. To hold onto the seed would be to squander it. This sower covers a lot of ground, not sticking to one pathway or field or territory. The point, for this sower, is to sow. So, he does.

The sower is often taken to be God or Jesus, and that’s a good analogy. God in Jesus flung the seed of the word of the kingdom wherever he went, and it found good soil in some places where others thought nothing good or holy could grow. God in Jesus never said a word about some people deserving to hear good news and others not, although he did suggest once that a fig tree that sounds a lot like a group of people might benefit from a heaping application of compost (Luke 13:6-9). Jesus sowed the word of the kingdom, wherever he went. He was even buried like a seed in the soil, and from that sowing, God brought forth an unimaginable harvest.

But in the explanation of the parable, Jesus doesn’t say, “I am the sower.”  He just says that the sower sows the word, wherever the sower is, wherever the sower goes, and sometimes the word gets snatched away by the devil, and sometimes people fall away because the following is costly and risky, and sometimes the cares of the world choke the word, and sometimes, sometimes, the word bears a ridiculously abundant harvest.

What if Jesus is saying to us today, “Sow!”  Don’t worry about whether you think the soil you’re walking over is good or bad, receptive or not. Don’t be saving up seed for the places you think will be the most fertile. This seed is so precious, it has to be shared, and there’s plenty more seed where that came from. Not every bit of fruitful sowing is going to happen in the tidy rows of our pews, although by God’s grace it can happen even there.

There is so much seed to be sown. Fling it. Toss it. Share it. 

 

[BarbTherese]