The Fifteenth Sunday of the Year, A – July 10, 2005

 

            I have always wondered at the courage of farmers.  They do their labor of creation in spite of the fact that there are so many things that could go wrong:  drought, floods, weeds, pestilence or a bad market.  Yet, how glad we all are that they take the risk – our food is the fruit of their “gamble.”  And how we rejoice with the young couple when the news arrives that they are going to have a child, that they in their generosity, in their co-creativity with God Himself, have defied the culture of death in their life of love together.  The seed of life is planted in the womb, a new, immeasurably precious, human life is the fruit of their courage.  After all, there are so many things that could go wrong, I suppose; so many variables.

            Not so with the seed, the word, that is spoken from God as described in today’s first reading and by our Lord in today’s Gospel.  Here the seed is the word of God, seen as life giving, -- and here there is only one variable that we must concern ourselves with – not the danger of drought or disease, not the potential of any disaster that could occur around us.  No, one thing only is conditional upon the right planting of this seed of life and the germination of it, its growth and flourishing, its ultimate fruit; and that one thing, that one variable, that one “risk” is the soil of the human heart.  What kind of soil does God find in each human heart to which He would speak His life giving word?

            Notice the inadequate soils described in today’s Gospel:  the heart that does not take the time to seek to truly understand and appropriate God’s message; the heart that only shallowly responds, emotionally rejoicing in the message but not really committing itself to it; the heart that is the field of so many other concerns, worldly concerns Jesus calls them, that the message is drowned out and choked off. 

            All of these tragic, so very tragic, cases -- tragic because they lose life itself -- can be explained by the soil of the heart, the condition of the human heart that cannot, or will not, recognize and respond to the message that has come to it from no less source than the Creator Himself and that is the very thing that every single human heart that has ever been or ever will be really longs for -- life, the eternal, unending, divine life that God would speak into our souls.  “Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth....”

            Life.  Life spoken forth from the mouth of God and planted, like a seed, in the willing human heart.  “Life?” you may well ask me, “life, unending life, when we all have suffered great losses in our time upon this earth, the seeming endless round of birth, age, decay and death; we see it around us; and, more importantly, we go through it.”  Yes, we do.  In fact, I know of a young man, who stood beside the grave of his father, and wept, not tears of sorrow but of anger that life should come to this, that the few years of happiness should be so quickly over with and end there in a cold graveyard.  Ah, the futility of it all.  For this glorious thing we call our world, the creation, nature itself, cannot give us what it often so beautifully signals to us -- life.  For it too, the created realm, as all things natural, must fade away and die.  “Creation,” St. Paul wrote in today’s second reading, “creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

            “The glorious freedom of the children of God.”  These are the ones whose heart has received the word, the seed of life, the message of hope, from the eternal and ever blessed Creator of all things.  And the fruit of that word, that seed, planted in the heart, growing and flourishing in the human soul -- the fruit of that is life, a life that breaks the bonds of the futility of nature, breaks the bonds of death.  

            Because this life is spoken forth from God Himself.   This Word, hinted at all through human history in the myths of the ancients, in the searchings of the wise and good philosophers, more clearly in the prophets of Israel, finally this Word was spoken forth into our world, even as the echo of the Virgin Mary’s “yes” announced His coming.  The Word, St. John tells us, took on flesh and dwelt among us.  The Word in whom and through whom and for whom all things are and came into existence, Jesus Christ, that is God’s ultimate, final and life-giving Word to us.  And we can imagine, as Christ’s own words urge us to do (for did He not say, that unless a seed, a grain of wheat, falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself, but if it dies it will bring forth much fruit) -- we can imagine, then, that He, Christ, came among us like a seed planted into our dying world; and He took all the dying and futility upon, into Himself; it was buried with Him; and He rose again from the dead having vanquished the powers of death and darkness.  That is the word spoken to us.  It is Christ, the Lord of the universe, and all that He accomplished for us.  This seed, this word, this message -- glimpsed by some in ancient times only from afar, longed for in every age, something even angels yearn to look into -- this is nothing other than the Gospel itself, the Good News.  And when it -- or rather He -- finds residence in a willing human heart, the human soul, He takes that person down into the death of the Cross and raises them up again to everlasting life, something so wonderfully pictured and accomplished in baptism. 

            Or portrayed and made present in the Holy Eucharist.  See Him, then, your Lord, crucified for you and risen again, so that you, that I, might not live futilely on this earth, but might taste of that life-giving word that explains our lives to us and prepares us for an eternity with Him -- see Him, I urge you, as He is held up before you at this holy altar, under the signs of bread and wine.  For God has spoken life to us; here He speaks again.  His word to us is Christ.  May hearts be such as to receive Him.