Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
“Becoming Good Soil”
Gospel text: Matthew 13:1-23
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In all the Gospels, the Parable of the Sower is the first parable of Christ. It is also, according to the Lord himself, the key to all the other parables.
As he asks his disciples, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?” (Mark 4:13)
This is the one. If we understand what Jesus is saying here, the other mysteries of the Kingdom will open up for us. If we don’t understand it, they will remain opaque.
The parable concerns a sower (that is, a farmer), indiscriminately casting seed on the ground. He throws seed on the path, on shallow soil, among the thorns, and on good soil.
If taken literally, he does not seem like a very smart farmer…
- We are familiar with this parable, but of course the disciples are hearing it for the first time
- They don’t get it
- So they ask Jesus for an explanation, which he gives them privately:
The Sower is the Son of Man, Christ.
The Seed is the Word of God.
The Soil is different kinds of hearts, which receive the Word or not, for different reasons.
The Soil: The Heart (cf. Matthew 13:19a)
According to Scripture and teaching of the Fathers, the heart is the innermost self, the center of our being, where we will and love and know most deeply
Four kinds of soil: four kinds of hearts
First: The seed on the path
The Word never took root. They never understood or they never wanted to understand
Usually, persons who belong to this category are inattentive, scattered.
God is casting the Word onto the soil of their heart, but distractions and idle thoughts are snatching the seed away.
This is especially a problem for modern man. There are so many impressions that can be made on the mind. Countless distractions and entertainments— there’s the Internet, our iPhones, a constant news cycle. Many birds to snatch away the seed that is cast on our hearts.
If we are scattered, if we’re always going to the next thing, then we cannot be still and open to receiving the Word that God deigns to sow in us.
Second: The seed on the rocky ground
These receive the Word with gladness but the soil of their heart is not deep— they’ll accept the Good News of the Gospel and being a disciple of Jesus, as long as it’s not too hard. But when it gets too difficult, too challenging, they fall away.
They like the idea of being a Christian, they can accept it intellectually, but they have no root. The Gospel hasn’t gone from their mind to their heart, from the surface to the depths. And so when things get challenging, they fall away.
Third: The seed among the thorns
These have received the word and it has begun to take root and grow. The problem in this case is not that the soil is too shallow but that something else is growing alongside the plant— the thorns.
Worldly cares, anxieties, unsanctified ambitions, the desire for wealth and other worldly comforts
These thorns choke out the Word and prevent it from being fruitful
Finally: The seed sown on the good soil
This is soil that receives the seed, the soil is deep, the seed is allowed to take root, and nothing else grows up alongside it to choke it.
These are those who hear the Gospel, understand it, and respond to it in repentance and faith. They allow the Gospel and the demands of discipleship to take root in them. They nourish the life of God in them with prayer and rightly ordered Christian living. They don’t allow the things of this world to choke out the saving knowledge that has been planted in them.
And for these reasons their lives are fruitful to God and the world— they patiently bear fruit, thirty- or sixty- or a hundredfold. This is what we want to be.
Notice: In all four cases, the seed is the same. The soil is what makes the difference in whether the plant grows.
Now, this parable could become for us a source of anxiety. There are four kinds of soil, and three of them are bad, and only one is good. So it’s very important for us to know: How do we become the good soil?
The Good News, beloved, is that through Holy Baptism, through hearing the Word of God and through reading it in Scripture, through receiving the Body and Blood of Our Lord in Holy Communion, the good seed has been sown in your heart.
The question is, will you water it? Will you tend and preserve it, so that it grows?
And this is not a mystery as to how to do this, how to nourish the Word sown in our hearts.
There are spiritual practices, disciplines, that help us to tend the seed that has been planted in our hearts:
- Repentance
- Faith
- Prayer
- Fasting
- Thanksgiving
- Acts of mercy
- Service to others
When we do these things, we nourish what has been sown in us.
And so each of us must look at our lives to see what threatens to turn us from good soil into bad soil.
Perhaps you need to be more on guard against distractions.
Or maybe you need to clear away some worldly cares and anxieties that are threatening to choke out God’s life in you.
Maybe you haven’t watered the seed in a long time and need to make the effort to be more regular in prayer and other spiritual disciplines.
With God’s grace, each of us can become and remain good soil.
And this is not a question of just trying really hard, in our own power = God is with us, God helps us with His grace.
And ultimately it shouldn’t be too torturous, because the Word of God is natural to us. It is not alien or foreign to us. Sin is what’s unnatural, sin is alien to who we truly are.
The divine life of God is the most natural possession of the human soul. So the seed is not foreign to the soil. It is what the soil was made for.
And when the seed is truly sown in the good soil, the plant grows up, gradually, mysteriously— as the Lord says in another parable, “day and night, it springs and grows up, he knows not how” (Mark 4:27).
The Gospel will take root in your heart, and when you water it and tend it, it will bear fruit in ways that may even surprise you. You will change, from the inside out, and become a more loving, gentle, generous person— that is, more like Christ. More like God made you to be.
Things that would have sent you off the rails or stolen your peace won’t anymore. Where you used to be stingy, you’ll be giving. You’ll be more attentive to God and more attentive to others. The seed will grow into a beautiful plant. And the birds of the air will find shade under its branches. Glory to God. Amen.
Dogmatic Joy 