How familiar are you with farming? I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man (though I am one and even have the T-shirt), but it seems that with each new generation we gradually lose the connection between the food on our tables and plants growing and animals living in the fields. Once I took a couple of my friends from abroad for a tour of the Moray countryside. We stopped by the river Livet, close to the famous Glenlivet Distillery. The water had a distinctive brownish colour. I told my friends that was the reason why the Scottish whisky was brown. And they believed me! Just in case… whisky isn’t brown because of the water used to produce it…
Today’s parable told by Jesus can be quite impenetrable to some of us. He uses the image of the most common method of sowing seeds at that time. The sower walks across the field and throws seeds in a broad sweeping movement of his arm to cover a relatively wide area. In modern times I saw this method used to sow grass. Shortly after the grass seeds had been spread and the sower had left, the ‘lawn-in-progress’ became extremely popular with birds. To a certain degree that was my practical illustration of the parable in today’s gospel. This method of sowing seeds is ineffective, costly and quite wasteful. Since those days we have developed new sowing methods, cutting down costs and increasing the yield to a level unimaginable to our ancestors. But obviously, this parable isn’t about agriculture. It’s about spreading the gospel.
In mid-March this year we were forced to close down our churches. We did it to protect our society, particularly those most vulnerable. It was a decision very difficult to make and to bear. Suddenly we had to abandon our usual ways of doing things. Among many, preaching the gospel was a victim. Without a congregation present in the pews there was nobody to preach to from the pulpit. There were only two options available; either to sit dejectedly or to find new ways, new methods of spreading the gospel. Based on the feedback I have received over those weeks and months it seems that we have (rather accidentally) reached people who usually don’t come to church on Sunday or even at all. This pain of being unable to come to church has borne unexpected fruits of people returning to the faith. What has been (and still is) a time of trial for many of us, has become a time of grace for many others.
When we look at this parable a bit closer, we can see that its message is about the reception of the word of God rather than about methods of spreading it. The sower spread the seeds generously (though in purely economic terms we’d say wastefully); the seeds fall beyond what’s deemed fertile grounds. The Church, the community of the faithful, is called to do the same: to spread the Good News out of its comfort zone. What we discern as human wasteland might turn out to be fertile ground. The sower in the parable is generous in more than one way. Think about it; where did he get the seeds from? He might have bought them (so he spent his money), or he might have been given them (so he doesn’t keep them to himself), or he might have grown them (so he shares the fruit of his labour). What do you do with things you buy, or get, or produce? This question applies to material goods as well as spiritual, actually more to the latter. Do you share generously with those who are less fortunate? Do you share your faith with them? It’s not about ill-conceived, fanatical proselytising; it’s about sharing this wonderfully loving, spiritually liberating presence of God in your life. Yes, people can be dismissive, or mocking, or even hostile in their reaction to your testimony. But that’s their human right to decide how to react. Your task is to spread the Good News widely and generously, because as God told us in today’s first reading, ‘the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.’