Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 397

Jesus spoke to them at length in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up....

Today's parable, told in all three synoptic gospels, may be a weary observation, a deep theological truth, or a reassuring promise of fulfillment. 

Broadcasting seed on prepared soil is not hopelessly inefficient; it's still done where airplanes scatter seed, fertilizer, and pesticides over rice paddies. But ancient farmers could not imagine machinery which carefully places each kernel, nut, pip, and stone at its precise depth in soil which is neither too dry nor too moist. They did not foresee satellite technology which tells the farmer which square yard of land is more fertile than another. They just threw it about and hoped for the best. 

Which wasn't very good by our standards but, God willing, sometimes produced an astonishing harvest of a hundred fold. Like devout farmers of today, they prayed for good weather and a generous market; and that they would be spared of pestilence, disease, and invading armies. We would not be here today if it didn't usually work out that way. 

And they knew that much of the seed would fail. If they scattered the seed haphazardly on foot-trodden, rocky, dry, or shallow soil, it was certain to fail.  

Jewish historians remembered innumerable invasions and the dispersal of Jews from India to Spain. They knew that the seed of Abraham had been spread throughout the world but few returned to Jerusalem to honor the God of Abraham. Many had been called; the chosen were few. It was an ancient, familiar pattern. Such are the ways of God. 

As Jesus prepared his disciples to announce the Good News to all the nations, he knew the Word of God would often fall upon deaf ears. It would not penetrate hard hearts, nor survive amid distracting weeds. I think of the time I visited a patient in the hospital who was watching news on the two hospital televisions, his laptop computer, and his cell phone -- simultaneously. He could not be parted from these distractions by doctors, nurses, therapist, dietitians, or chaplains. Not even pain could penetrate his anxious worry about developments in faraway capitals of the world. "I'll come back another time, when you're ready to see me." I said. 

When Constantine decreed that the Roman Empire, henceforth and forever, should be Christian, some ecclesiastics thought their work was finished. Everyone will be baptized; everyone will be confirmed and receive the Eucharist; everyone will hear and receive the Word of God.

It never happened, of course; and, almost immediately, the Spirit began to drive individuals into the wilderness to live as hermits, nuns, and monks. And when the monasteries became storage sheds of spiritual dead wood, mendicant orders flooded the world with wandering preachers. Some of them were useless beggars in religious habits. And so forth, and so on. Even now we see ambitious new religious communities springing up. Some will prosper, most will fail. 

The Word of God endures; the Spirit never gives up; Emmanuel remains. We'll never enjoy success. God doesn't know the meaning of the word. 

As he prepared for his agony in the Garden, a trial with false accusations and lying testimony, torture, and death on a cross, Jesus regretted nothing. Abandoned by his disciples, he faced certain doom with nothing to show for all his work. He believed God is faithful. His mother Mary, standing by the cross, could no more imagine his resurrection than she could imagine continental drift or space travel, but she believed God is faithful. As Jesus said, 

...it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.”