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| The Sower - Grigory Myasoyedov (1888) |
‘A
sower went out to sow’. In this week's Gospel, Jesus recounts one of the
most famous parables ever told. It is a simple story made homely for
most of us by its familiarity. Yet it has very serious import, a meaning
we can miss altogether because it is so easy, and so tempting, to think
of the sower as scattering seed on virgin land. No doubt this is what
Jesus had in mind, 2000 years ago when the Gospel he preached struck his first hearers as radically new. But in our circumstances the Gospel
is no longer being preached and heard for the first time. It is old news, and the soil, we
might say, has been farmland for so long, that we take both the sowing
and the harvest for granted.
Even
so, the parable still has radical application. It is right to say that week by week in
the course of an ordinary Sunday service, the Gospel goes on being
‘sown’ among regular as well as occasional church goers, and the
different ways in which it can be received – carelessly, half heartedly,
seriously – are not confined to the ever expanding secular world outside the Church,
but are possibilities in the heart of the sanctuary also. Indeed, for the faithful there
is an additional danger; the story’s sheer familiarity easily sustains
an unspoken assumption that the Gospel has already found fertile ground
in their hearts. But has it? We can set ourselves a simple test. On
Monday, without recourse to the weekly bulletin, can you recall the
Bible readings from the day before, and especially the Gospel reading? This simple test is not so easy to pass as one might hope.
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| Descent of the Holy Spirit -- Jean Fouquet (1472) |
In
a wonderful phrase the section of Psalm 119 set for this Sunday, says ‘Your word is a lamp to my feet and a
light to my path’. This beautifully captures one way in which Christian
faith can accompany our journey through life. But it applies only if
casualness, complacency, daily distractions, or worries and anxieties
have not prevented the 'seed' of God’s word from properly taking root in our minds and
souls. The real purpose of regular worship is to stop them doing so and
allow us to hear the Gospel afresh. If only it can be properly rooted
and regularly nourished, we can hope for life of a quite different
order. As Paul says in this week’s reading from Romans “If the Spirit of
him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ
from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his
Spirit that dwells in you.” The task of the Christian is to make worship and liturgy the avenue to be this Spirit's dwelling place.
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Posted by
Gordon Graham
at
12:46 AM
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