Posted on by atfurse

Trinity 7

‘He who has ears, let him hear’

‘Yr hwn sydd ganddo glustiau, gwrandawed’ (Mt 13:43)

WHEN we walk, cycle, or drive around the countryside, from time to time our eyes are met by fields of vivid yellow flowers. Rapeseed [Brassica napus] is grown for its oil and is a member of a family of plants that includes both cabbage and mustard. The wild mustard envisaged in today’s Gospel is a plant that can grow from a tiny seed, just one mm in diameter, into a plant nine feet high. Most of us think about mustard solely as something to accompany our Sunday lunch. However, Our Lord uses it as an image to describe the Kingdom, for its vigorous growth, and as a place of shade, safety and security.

Following on from last week’s parable of the Sower, Jesus continues to teach people using stories filled with agricultural imagery. Today the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a field containing both wheat and weeds. 

Our Lord then uses another parable to describe the Kingdom:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Mt 13:31-32)

A mustard seed may be small, but it can grow into a large plant, in only a year. The parable is about something small becoming something large: a story of the growth of the Church. Indeed, what started two thousand years ago as a handful of people, has grown into the world’s largest religion, counting billions of people among its members. Likewise, the parable of the leaven is about how bread dough increases in size and volume when yeast is added to it. These are encouraging and positive images.

The parable of the wheat and the weeds is more complex. The weeds of the parable are what is known as darnel or cockle. They are hard to distinguish from wheat, but are potentially poisonous if eaten, and can even cause death. They were a serious problem. In fact to plant darnel in a wheat-field was a serious crime under Roman law.

Rather than getting rid of the weeds and damaging the crop, both are left until the harvest. It is very tempting to want God to act immediately, especially when we want God to act. Thankfully God’s plan is more long-term. Which means that we often need to wait. As we all know, waiting isn’t much fun. The world around us tells that we can have anything we want, when we want it. Thankfully, our experiences over the last few years have shown us that this is not always the case, and that is a good thing. As the old maxim states, ‘Patience is a virtue’. In the parable we see that God is patient and compassionate. God loves us, and His ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts like ours. Rather than trying to make God be more like us, we have to try to be more like God. To be loving and patient. As humans we will make mistakes, which call us to seek forgiveness and reconciliation, so that we can continue to grow in holiness. This takes time. There isn’t a magic wand which can be waved to make instant holy Christians. By God’s grace it is the work of a lifetime. I know that I’m not there yet. I am still very much a work in progress. And that is ok. The message of the parable is that God is patient, and that we need to be patient as well. This is difficult, but our experience has taught us that patience is a good thing. As people of faith, we will need to continue to be patient, with each other, and also with ourselves, as we try to live our lives in a way that makes the kingdom a reality here and now.

Each one of us helps to make God’s kingdom a reality by proclaiming that Jesus comes to save humanity from Sin, Death, and Hell. He does this first by telling the Good News of the Kingdom, and secondly by dying for us on the Cross. There He bore the burden of our sins, and overcame the power of death and Hell, before rising again to New Life. The Church preaches Christ Crucified, and offers salvation in and through Christ alone. Sins can be forgiven, and the new life of the Kingdom is offered to all people.

Let us pause for a moment to consider an important aspect of this parable’s message. In the Gospel, the time for the separation of wheat and weeds is not yet. There is still time: time for repentance. There is still time to turn away from Sin. There is still time to turn to Christ. The proclamation of the Kingdom is one which calls people to repent, and to believe. We are called to have a change of heart, and to turn away from the ways of the world, from the ways of selfishness, which alienate us from God and from each other. This is not an event, but rather a process, a continual turning towards Christ, and reliance upon His love and mercy. It involves turning to Him in prayer, being nourished and transformed by our reading of the Bible, and being transformed through the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.

The Good News is that all of us have time to make sure that we are wheat and not weeds. Ours is a generous and a loving God, who longs to see His people reconciled, healed, and redeemed. The fact that the wheat and the weeds are allowed to grow together until the harvest collected is done for the sake of the wheat, lest it be pulled up by accident. Ours, then, is a patient God, who provides us with the multiple opportunities for repentance; time to turn our lives around and follow Him. The Church, just like the world, is made up of people who are imperfect. We are all on various stages of a journey, and we are given all the chances possible to rely on God’s transforming grace in our lives.

Today’s parables provide a hopeful message, a message of healing and reconciliation. God does not simply give up on us, but rather does all He can to make sure that we grow to be wheat and not weeds. It is the wonder of the Cross, that God sends His Son out of love for humanity, love of you and me, to suffer and die for us; to show us the depth of His love. Jesus rises from the tomb to show us that death is not the end, to give us hope. This is the best news that there is. And we are told about it now, so that we can act on it. We can share this message so that others can hear, and repent, and believe, and live out new lives in Christ.

So, my brothers and sisters, let us be the wheat that enables those around us to know and love our Lord. When the harvest comes let us be counted among those who give praise to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Duw Dad, Duw y Mab, a Duw yr Ysbryd Glân. To whom be ascribed all glory, dominion, and power, now and forever. Amen.

Posted on by atfurse

Trinity 6: The Sower

‘He who has ears, let him hear’

‘Yr hwn sydd ganddo glustiau, gwrandawed’ (Mt 13:9)

ONE of the notable features of our county are the spectacular Tractor runs which regularly showcase farming machinery old and new. Tractors have revolutionised agriculture over the last hundred years. But there are people around who can still remember fields being ploughed by horses, and seed being scattered by hand rather than from a seed drill. So, until fairly recently, nothing much had changed since the time that Jesus taught people the Parable of the Sower.

Our Lord uses images and stories which his audience would easily understand, as they were recognisable from their daily life. A large crowd had gathered to hear Him teach, so Jesus goes out in a boat onto the Sea of Galilee so that the people can hear him easily. His teaching is straightforward:

“A sower went out to sow. As he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds ate them. Others fell on rocky ground, and immediately they sprang up, but when the sun rose they were scorched and withered away. Others fell among thorns, which choked them. Others fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.” (Mt 13:3-9 paraphrased)

Christ’s imagery is instantly recognisable to anyone with experience of gardening. Birds peck at seeds, and there is a constant struggle with weeds. Likewise, if your soil is poor or thin, then plants cannot develop the roots to find water, and can easily be scorched by the sun. The point is not that the sower wastes seeds, but that when the seed falls into fertile soil then it produces a wonderful and huge harvest. 

Jesus’ disciples seem to not understand what is going on, and a conversation ensues:

Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” (Mt 13: 10-11)

Our Lord’s reply seems strange, because the meaning of the parable seems quite straightforward and easy to comprehend. Clearly something else is going on here. Jesus goes on to explain what He means:

Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “‘You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’ (Mt 13:14-15)

The prophecy of Isaiah which Our Lord fulfils tells the story of salvation history. It relates how Israel turns away from God, and does not see or hear what God is doing. Now He is calling them back to His loving embrace. Whereas with Jesus, the people have an opportunity to both repent and be healed. This is the core of the message of both John the Baptist and Our Lord. It looks forward to Christ’s Passion and Death which is the great act of healing, freeing us from our sins and reconciling us with God and each other. Thus, the disciples are unable to fully understand what Jesus means, until after His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. Then, in the light of these events, Our Lord’s words make sense, they can be understood. Christ’s self-sacrifice is an act of love and healing, poured out on the world, central to the proclamation of the Kingdom, as envisaged by the Parable of the Sower.

Jesus then interprets the parable for his disciples. The seed is the word of the Kingdom, and the soil is our heart. The weeds, however, are the cares of the world. The parable represents the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, by Jesus, and His disciples, and applies to us today as much as it did to its first hearers in Galilee nearly two thousand years ago. Being a Christian is not easy. Life gets in the way. We become distracted by things, or the soil of our hearts is not deep enough for the Word to grow in. We need to both hear the Word and also understand the Word. Then it can bear fruit in our lives. When we understand the message of repentance and healing which Christ’s Death and Resurrection offer to us; when we accept them, then it bears fruit in our lives. We can hope and trust along with the apostle Paul that,

‘the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’ (Rom 8:21)

Jesus offers us glorious freedom. We can have a truly loving community in and through Christ, who has taken our sins upon Himself, and reconciled us to God and each other. This allows us to live in an entirely different way to the ways of the world. And in the growth of the Church we can see the New Life and miraculous harvest which God offers. Ours is an extravagant God, a generous God, a God who deeply loves us.

Many people of our time are reluctant or scared to accept God’s love. They have become inherently suspicious of the idea of a free gift. The only way that they can be encouraged to accept it is by seeing, in the lives of people around them, examples of how the free love of God affects our lives. We need to live out our faith and reflect God’s love in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds.

So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, let us be the good seed that enables others to know and love our Lord. Let us grow and bear the fruit of faith, so that we can give thanks and praise to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Duw Dad, Duw y Mab, a Duw yr Ysbryd Glân. To whom be ascribed all, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever. Amen.

Medieval stained glass depicting the first scene of the Parable of the Sower, in which seeds scattered on stony ground are eaten by birds (Mt 13:3-5; Mk 4:3-5). Right panel in the fifth register of the Second Typological Window (n. XV, 19) in the north choir aisle, dated to about 1180. This was originally part of the Sixth Typological Window, which centered on the theme of seeds and the bread of the Eucharist.