Parables about the Word of God

Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Somehow, at this time of year, reflections on rain and seed, growth and yield, tilling and sowing and harvesting, are more than usually appropriate. Many take vacations during this time of the year and travel across the country. As we pass through fields of ripening grain, we come closer to nature, remembering in our bones the rhythm of the world long since lost to most of us.

Today all the readings for this particular Sunday contain some reference to nature and attempts to open our hearts to God’s Word. It is not unusual for the Scriptures to have so many references to the natural world inasmuch as the society in which the Scriptures were born are basically agrarian.

The passage from Isaiah invites us to stop and notice the magic of rain and snow watering and fertilizing fields for blossom and fruit and the grain of daily bread. Isaiah beckons us further, to reflect on the fruitfulness of God’s Word accomplishing its purpose in our lives and in our world. In the dreamy haze of summer’s heat and leisure, there may yet be an important time of growth, moving from the outward world of nature to the inward world of spirit and out again in the redemptive participation in human history.

For this redemption of human history, Paul writes to the Romans and tells them that the whole world groans. The world is so full of possibilities, many of them unrealized. Living on a continent among vast fields of golden grain, enormous fertile plains, orchards and vineyards, as Christians we must ask why from all this wealth the hungry of the world are not fed. The sad truth of the matter is that all of nature is in servitude to human greed and fear and rivalry, waiting to be set free to serve God’s purpose in creation. The patterns of that servitude to greed are complicated. Individuals acting alone cannot reverse them. At the same time, many endeavor to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty.

In the midst of summer vacation and fertile fields, it is not difficult to tune into the farming parables of Jesus and to begin to see something of what he saw, though his land by contrast was rocky and barren and hard to till. One may look at the parable from several quite different perspectives. One may be saddened at all the sowing that yields so little fruit. On the other hand, one may be amazed that in an inhospitable environment, some seed yields so bountifully both in nature and in grace. It is a matter of a certain poverty of spirit in the evangelical sense to be grateful and delighted with any fruitful outcome of one’s own or others’ efforts, knowing that it is always the gift of God that crowns our efforts with success. Knowing this experientially is the joy of the poor.

The Gospel parable that we proclaim today is the longest parable in the Gospels. It is also the easiest to understand because, unlike so many of the parables, Jesus actually explains it to his disciples. The seed is God’s Word. We are the soil. You might ask yourself what kind of soil God’s Word finds in you. The answer to that question is quite simple. We actually exemplify all the different types of soil that the sower encounters. At different times in our life, God’s Word is more effective and better able to bring forth a bountiful harvest. All of us experience times when doubts create a rocky soil in our hearts. All of us are tempted by the allurements of our world that can choke off God’s Word, and, yes, if we are people of prayer and repentance, God’s Word will find that the soil of our hearts is open to the inspiration of Jesus’s words. Let us pray today for the grace to have ears that hear and eyes to see so that we might more readily open our hearts to God’s Word.