Parents, Teacher, Priests, Evangelizers: We Sow, but God Grants the Growth (15.A)

The delightful Danish comedian and musician Victor Borge decided to buy a chicken farm.

“But you don’t know anything about breeding chickens,” a friend argued.

“No,” Borge replied in his usual deadpan way. “But the chickens do.”

I’m not funny like Victor Borge, but I’m with him when it comes to any kind of farming or gardening. In fact, someone once accused me of having a black thumb.

So, whenever Jesus starts talking about vines or plants or ploughing, I can get a little lost. But today’s parable is simple and straightforward; even someone with a black thumb can understand what’s happening.

The seeds fail to produce for three reasons: they get gobbled up by birds, they’re planted in thin soil, or they’re choked by weeds.

Or, rooted in good soil, they produce an abundant crop. 

That’s what’s happening with the seeds. But what’s really happening? What’s the point of the parable?

Jesus usually allows his stories to speak for themselves. With the parable of the sower and the seed, however, he spells out the meaning. Today we had the choice of a longer and a shorter Gospel. I chose the shorter, because I didn’t want my homily to compete with the that one Jesus gives in the longer text!

Actually, my big reason was that sometimes we tune out words that are too familiar. So instead of reading the longer Gospel, I thought I would read you a passage from a New Testament paraphrase called The Message.

Here’s how it presents the thought of Jesus:

“When anyone hears news of the kingdom and doesn’t take it in, it just remains on the surface, and so the Evil One comes along and plucks it right out of that person’s heart. This is the seed the farmer scatters on the road.

“The seed cast in the gravel—this is the person who hears and instantly responds with enthusiasm. But there is no soil of character, and so when the emotions wear off and some difficulty arrives, there is nothing to show for it.

“The seed cast in the weeds is the person who hears the [good news of the kingdom], but weeds of worry and illusions about getting more and wanting everything under the sun strangle what was heard, and nothing comes of it.

“The seed cast on good earth is the person who hears and takes in the Good News, and then produces a harvest beyond his wildest dreams.”

A bit easier to figure out what the parable means, don’t you think?

But there’s still more to this story. Notice, for one thing, that there’s no criticism of the sower. Jesus doesn’t point out that he or she should be more careful, less wasteful with the seeds.

If you’re spreading handfuls of seed from a sack you’re carrying, you don’t have a whole lot of control where it lands. It’s not really the sower’s fault if some spills on the path and some lands where there’s more gravel than earth.

We naturally take this parable as a warning to ourselves, not to let the seed of faith be snatched away from us or choked by our worries and ambition. Fair enough.

But I’ve never forgotten a homily that pointed out how the parable is also a consolation to those who sow the Gospel with disappointing results. At the top of that list, of course, are parents.

I wouldn’t know how to research the subject, but I am pretty sure there’s never been a time in history when so many children of faithful and devout Catholics have stopped going to Church.

Yes, it’s hard when you invite someone to Alpha and they quit coming after four weeks, but it’s a whole lot harder when you’ve shared your faith with a child for eighteen years and he or she rejects it outright.

Today's first reading, Psalm and Gospel all remind us of the same thing: our job is to sow, not to make the seed sprout. St. Paul explains this very simply to the Corinthians “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

So discouraged faith study leaders, parish priests, teachers and parents all need to remember who’s in charge.  Pope Paul said, “The Holy Spirit is the principal agent of evangelization: … it is He who … causes the word of salvation to be accepted and understood.”

That doesn’t get us off the hook when it comes to preaching and teaching and reaching people effectively. But if we have done our best and taken our mission seriously, the rest is up to God.

 

We don’t give up inviting friends to Alpha or Discovery because our first efforts weren’t fruitful. And we don’t give up witnessing to adult children because they’re not coming to church.

The important thing is to keep on sowing. Like Victor Borge with his chickens, we don’t know what makes the seeds sprout. But God does.