Readings: Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23
The novelist Tom Robbins once noted
that there are two kinds of people:
those who think that there are two kinds of people
and those who know better.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is at a point
where he has been preaching for some time.
Some have listened to him
and others have reacted with hostility;
so we might be tempted to think that
with regard to Jesus and his message
there are two kinds of people:
those who are for him
and those who are against him.
But Jesus knows better,
and in his parable of the sower
he prompts us to think about the different ways
that people might respond to the word of God.
There are some who are like a hard-packed path
in which the scattered seed can find no purchase,
presumably those who do not even give Jesus a hearing
but reject his words out of hand.
Some are like shallow soil,
responding at first with enthusiasm
but lacking the depth
in which the word of God can take root.
Others again are like soil
that is already choked with thorny weeds,
because they are so preoccupied
with the concerns of daily life
that there is no room for the word within them
to flourish and grow and bear fruit.
Finally, there are those who are like good soil,
deep in their commitment
and free from preoccupation with other things,
in whose lives Jesus’ words bear much fruit.
Jesus’s parable, like all his parables,
is intended not so much
as a way of conveying information –
as if it were telling us
that there are four, and only four, types of people –
but rather as a prompt to reflection and action.
It is intended to make me ask myself,
what type of soil am I?
Do I let the Jesus’s word and Spirit
take root in my heart
and, if so, what becomes of that seed?
I suppose if I were to identify myself
with one of the types of soil in the parable,
it would be with the weedy ground
in which the shoots coming from the seed
are choked by the concerns of daily life.
When I look at myself,
I find that I am preoccupied with many things.
It is an interesting word: “preoccupied.”
We tend to use it to mean “distracted”
but it literally means
that our minds are already occupied,
already inhabited, already filled.
Our hearts and minds are already filled
with cares and anxieties
just as the ground in the parable
is already filled with thorny weeds.
Jesus identified what is pre-occupying
the soil of our souls
as “worldly anxiety and the lure of riches.”
But our soul can be preoccupied with many things;
and some of them, in and of themselves,
are worthy of our attention:
My heart is full of my job
and the many things there that need doing;
My heart is full of my children
and how I can support them
as they move into adulthood and independence;
My heart is full of my aging parents
and how they can still count on me,
even though I am far away.
These things pre-occupy my heart
and they are all worthy concerns.
But they can also choke out
the tender shoots of God’s word
before they can bear the fruits of the Spirit:
love, joy, peace,
forbearance, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
The great irony is that
it is precisely these fruits of the Spirit
that I need in order to face my worries
about work, children, parents, or anything else.
Without love, joy, peace and the other fruits of the Spirit,
my justified concerns become the thorns of anxiety
and, as Paul says,
though we have the firstfruits of the Spirit
“we also groan within ourselves”
as we await redemption.
So Jesus’s parable is a call
to reflect on the kind of soil
that his word will find in my heart.
But it is not a call simply to decide
that I am a certain type of soil –
hard-packed or shallow or weedy or good –
and then leave it at that.
The fourth-century theologian John Chrysostom
asked why it was that the sower
was so careless in sowing his seed,
scattering it not only on the good soil
but also on the path, the shallow ground, the weedy plot.
This is hardly good agricultural practice,
since we can predict with some accuracy
what will become of the seed
when it is sown on the path
or on shallow or weedy soil.
But here, Chrysostom says,
we see the difference between soils and souls.
He says when it is a matter of souls,
“There is such a thing as the rock changing,
and becoming rich land;
…the thorns may be destroyed,
and the seed enjoy full security.
For had it been impossible,
this sower would not have sown” (Homily on Matthew 44.5).
When I look within my weed-choked heart
and I see the firstfruits of the Spirit
struggling amidst the thorns,
it all seems impossible and I feel like despairing.
But if I can turn my eyes from myself
and consider who it is that is the sower
who in his wisdom has planted his seed within me
then I pray in hope that the stony path,
the shallow soil,
the weedy plot
can all be transformed by him
to become good soil
bearing abundantly
the fruits of the Spirit.
