Homily for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity (15th Week of the Year)

From Isaiah:

 [My word] shall not return to me empty,but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,    and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

This is a great set of readings for those who like growing things. Even the most successful human gardener has issues from time to time — seeds that don’t sprout like they should, unpredictable weather, pests. Having moved all over the country, I’ve often had to forget a lot of what I’ve learned when I come to a new place.

Scripture loves agricultural metaphors. This shouldn’t surprise us. After all, when God creates man and woman in Genesis, he puts them in a Garden. In the Old Testament, it is always cities — with their kings, and their armies, and their merchant economies — that get people into the most trouble. One of the most compelling visions of heaven, from the book of Ezekiel, shows water flowing from the temple and turning the desert into a garden.

Our inability to perfectly control plant growth, our difficulty in working the ground, is described in Genesis 3 as a result of the Fall. The Bible consistently sees agricultural failure as a sign of human failure in general — the fact that, through us, the world itself fails to do what it was created to do. We see this again in Romans 8, our second reading, where creation is “groaning” in expectation for the redemption of humanity.

It makes sense, then, that even the perfect Sower, the Son of God himself, encounters some problems in today’s parable. The problem isn’t the power of the seed, or the technique of the sower; the problem is the soil. Jesus himself explains this quite directly: not everyone is equally prepared to hear the gospel. For some, it never enters at all and has no chance to grow. For some, it roots only at a surface level and quickly gets taken over by the distractions of the world. For others, where the soil is ready, the gospel can root and grow, bearing fruit.

There’s much to consider here. We can look at this from a personal angle — have we prepared our hearts to hear the word of God? Are we open to spiritual growth or have we filled our life with weeds? We can also think about it from a view to evangelism. Are there rocks, weeds, and other obstacles that we can clear to help those around us better hear and see the word of God? Good questions for all of us.

But there’s another way of applying this parable. Again I’m struck by the insistence in the prophet Isaiah:

[My word] shall not return to me empty,but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,    and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

One of the hardest parts about gardening is waiting. Waiting for seeds to sprout. Waiting for bulbs to wake up. Waiting for trees to grow. Waiting for fruit to ripen. Waiting for your cats to do their job keep the vermin away.

Let’s be honest: you’re here at mass. You are not the rocky soil. You’re not perfect, but you’re here. You are listening, you are receiving the sacraments. You are tending what needs to be tended – and if not, you probably know what needs to be done, whether that’s remembering your prayers, making a good confession, or giving up a bad habit.

Though we are riding the wave of the semiquincentennial, this remains a very anxious moment for many of us: economic uncertainty, threats of endless war, confusion about what AI can or should do, and an enduring climate of distrust. What more can we be doing? How can we fix … whatever is happening. Are we reading the right sources? Are we talking to the right people? Though in many ways our parish is an oasis from these larger problems, we still have our own worries: How can we fix this thing before the next one breaks? How can we stop spending more money than we take in? How can we pursue our mission without exhausting our members? 

Last Sunday’s collect was very striking in its coincidence with Independence Day. In it, we prayed for God’s peaceable governance the world so that the Church can joyfully serve him “in all godly quietness.” All godly quietness! What a strange phrase! Is this really a time to be quiet?

But think of the seed, and what it takes for the seed to grow.

Caryll Houselander, that wonderful if underappreciated English Catholic, puts it like this — and I have to apologize if you’ve heard me quote this before, because it is probably one of my all time favorite bits of prose:

The law of growth is rest. We must be content in winter to wait patiently through the long bleak season, in which we experience nothing whatever of the sweetness of realization of the Divine Presence, believing the truth, that these seasons which seem to be the most empty are the most pregnant with life. It is in them that the Christ-life is growing in us, laying hold of our soil with strong roots that thrust deeper and deeper, drawing down the blessed rain of mercy and the sun of Eternal Love, through our darkness and heaviness and hardness, to irrigate and warm those roots.

The soil must not be disturbed. Above all we must not disturb it ourselves by our own egoism. We must not turn it over and dig it up by anxieties and scruples, we must not shift it by fretting for a sense of personal perfection; to feel sinless that we may feel free from the pain of guilt and anxiety; to feel pure for the sake of vanity…

It is so tempting to confront the challenges of this life, whether it’s our parish, our families, the whole Church, the nation or the world, with ever more busy activity. But the Christ-life is in us, working in us, setting roots in us. Be patient. Let it grow. Keep close to the sacraments. We do not yet know what manner fruit the Lord may be growing in us, but we know that he has not sown his word in vain.