Saturday of 24th Week in Course
One of the great frustrations in many lives is the departure of children or grandchildren or siblings from the practice of their faith. You’ve heard the stories even if you haven’t experience that yourself. A son or daughter goes off to college and then comes back at Christmas, refusing to attend worship with their parents. Or a relative comes down with a serious illness and the family demands to know, “this was a good Christian who loved God and her neighbor. Why did God allow this illness? People hear the Gospel and then after a short or long delay, refuse to practice it. What do Jesus and the Church have to say about the problem?
Jesus tells the story today and we can paraphrase it: “The kingdom of God reminds me of an example from farming. The sower gets a bag of seed and then goes out to plant it all. The seed is kind of small so you can’t control exactly where it falls. The seed that falls on the footpath doesn’t get purchase. It never sprouts; birds can come along and eat it before it has a chance. Some fell and sprouted up between little pebbles, but without additional moisture, it dried up and blew away. Some fell among aggressive weedlings, which choked it out before it could really grow. But many of the feeds got into the soil, were surrounded by things like compost and fertilizer–or not–and grew into fruit-bearing plants of various yields.”
Now in case His disciples were dense, and particularly His apostles, Jesus went further in explaining the human meaning of all this farm talk. Every human being has the same goal, the same end, the same purpose–to be happy. In this secular culture, there is no recognition of the highest end–union with Our Lord. So most people grub around seeking lesser goods, sensory pleasure, honor and recognition, or power over others. The most superficial just ignore the seed of God’s Word. They never darken the door of a church, but buy lottery tickets and eat stuff that tastes good but gives no nutrition. Some folks, dissatisfied with mere physical pleasure, may go to a revival, accept Christ because of the great singing and testimony, but aren’t watered with Scripture reading and teaching and sacramental life, and fall away in a few weeks or months. Others begin a relationship with Christ and the Church, but then learn they will have to give up their “guilty pleasures” and allow themselves to get choked spiritually by sex or politics or the pursuit of plaques. Hopefully none of us are in those categories, but allow ourselves to be discipled by Christ in His Church, instructed in His ways. We also bear fruit in our families and neighborhoods and businesses by our right conduct and right worship, so that others are attracted away from the vapid cultural distractions to the servant-life of a follower of Christ.
Then in the end we can look forward after a pretty exhausting life of good works and faith to what Paul and Timothy pursued: union for eternity with “the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.”
