15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A July 12, 2020
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Video of 8am Mass: https://youtu.be/Mql4NaKBDL4
What a waste! All that seed wasted on the path, the rocky ground, and the thorns. It’s the sower’s fault, isn’t it, for throwing all that seed there in the first place? But Jesus blames the ground… like it had a choice in whether or not it was walked on, rocky, or full of thorns. I mean, when the plants in my garden don’t grow well, is it the dirt’s fault? Or mine for careless gardening?
You’d be right to blame me if I were talking about a normal garden. But that’s why this is a parable rather than a lesson on horticulture; it isn’t mean to be a simple comparison. Rather, it’s an invitation a deeper perspective. Jesus uses a story, but includes a twist, and unexpected element, something that doesn’t line up. He even says as much when the apostles ask him about this strange story.
Jesus quotes a passage of Isaiah that speaks of hearing but not understanding and of looking but not seeing. The word choice is important here. Compare it to Jesus’ teaching that tells us “whoever seeks shall find” and to the Father’s voice from heaven that tells us “this is my beloved Son, listen to him.” These are words of effort, of investment. It’s one thing to look around but another to seek. It’s one thing to hear, but quite another to listen.
The coming of God’s kingdom, our salvation, is not a passive thing and it is not an obvious thing. It requires not only the effort to seek and listen, but the willingness to wrestle with mysteries, to get past the mental laziness and assumptions that you already understand what you’ve seen and heard about the kingdom. Jesus uses these parables, these weird stories to confuse people on purpose because only the people who are willing to respond to that confusion with effort, with seeking and listening and wrestling… these are the people who will have the required openness and drive to actually enter God’s kingdom. As he puts it in another teaching “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.”
If you don’t recognize that this is Jesus’ motivation, you’d be tempted to interpret this as Jesus being exclusive and arbitrary. He tells them, “knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.” Reading this should make you a little uncomfortable. There is a mystery at work.
What Jesus is emphasizing here is that grace comes first. Without God’s initiative, without his gift of grace, it really is impossible to understand the kingdom and to find salvation. When Jesus speaks about knowledge of the mysteries being granted, he is talking about the gift of grace. Still, when Jesus says understanding has not been granted to some, does this mean that God does not offer his grace to them at all?
No. Just look back at the wasteful sower. He scatters the words of God everywhere he goes. This is evidence of the universality of God’s offer of salvation. It is a gift and a grace, but it also requires grace to be able to accept this gift – conversion and faith are gifts that enable us to accept the gift of salvation and sanctification. But this grace requires cooperation – it is an offer. And this is the reason Jesus blames the ground. If the ground is responsible for how it receives the word of God, it means that ground – our souls – also has the ability to change its response.
The path is people who do not understand, people mired in mental laziness or simple prejudice who do not try to understand. The rocky ground is people who are shallow and unwilling to suffer for the Gospel. The thorny ground is people too attached to worldly things. But a mentally lazy person can learn to think and seek, a shallow person can learn to endure suffering, a person attached to the world can detach themselves from it. The very act of Jesus sowing the seed may not cause an immediate conversion, but it can begin a process of leading the soil – us – to change itself to be more receptive later.
And this is why the sower is, in fact, not “wasting” the seed that he sows so randomly. Because, as the psalm tells us the sower has also “prepared the land: drenching its furrows, breaking up its clods, Softening it with showers.” This points us to the mystery of grace throughout the whole process: the offer of salvation, the grace to accept that offer, and even the grace to change to the point of wanting to and being able to accept this offer to enter the Kingdom of God.
And this reality is ongoing, not a single decision. Note carefully that, even with the grace given to the Apostles, they misunderstand Jesus all the time. Even with lifelong experience in the Catholic Church, you and I misunderstand Jesus all the time. Fight the temptation to think you’ve got it figured out. Fight it to the death.
Evaluate the hardened paths in your soul – mental laziness and prejudice. Don’t assume you fully understand the Word of God and the teaching of the Church. This includes your understanding of other people and their ideas. How often do you evaluate a person’s loyalties – liberal, conservative, independent – and then automatically dismiss or accept what they say? Because they wear a mask or because they don’t? If we’re lazy in how we think about other people, we are also lazy in how we think about God; Love of God and love of neighbor are related, and both require continual conversion and re-evaluation.
Consider the shallow and rocky parts of your soul, the people and places where you hide your faith for fear of persecution. This includes the ways you refuse to fast and sacrifice as the Church asks. And this is connected to the third example of thorns. What are you attached to? Food, drink, games, pleasure? What do you obsess over? Appearance, efficiency, popularity, control? It is through penance, self-denial, and some hard self-evaluation that we recognize these thorns and pull them out, preparing the soil for good seed. Conversion is hard, which is why the people in Isaiah’s prophecy try not to see, hear, and be converted. But for those who, who are willing to change from bad ground to fertile soil, they will bear abundant fruit. They will even become like the sower himself, scattering the grace of God with reckless abandon.