The Parable of the Sower

I’ll let you into a secret – I’m really fond of church buildings, especially when they’re beautiful. There’s just something about them – built for the glory of God and as a foretaste of heaven, and a celebration of human creativity, they can lift the spirit. But at one level we can do without them. It would be sad if these stones which have echoed with the praise of Almighty God for nearly one thousand years were not here, and I’m certainly not advocating that we should simply knock down old buildings, and worship God in a garage or a front room. However a church is not a building, rather it is a gathering of the baptised, it always has been and always will be a group of people, people who are in Christ, whose nature and identity is bound up with and conformed to their Lord and Saviour.

        In this morning’s Gospel Jesus speaks of spreading the Good News of the Kingdom of God. He uses an image to tell His story. Whether we have a garden or farm, if it’s only a window-box, then we will at some point have sowed seeds. There’s something quite miraculous about it. The seed grows; it becomes a plant, which in turn produces seeds, which can grow into plants, and so on. Without this we could not live, we would have no food, the earth would be a desert, our life wouldn’t just be miserable; there wouldn’t be any life at all.

        As the people of God we are both the sower and the seed – it’s up to each and every one of us to deepen our faith and understanding – to get the roots which will nourish us so that we can grow and flourish in our Christian lives, but we also need to scatter seed, to invite other people into the Kingdom. Christians do not appear by magic, rather they have been made through their baptism, through being taught the faith, through coming to know and love Jesus. If we want, as I suspect that we all do, to see the Kingdom advanced, if we want to see the Church grow, then each and every one of us has to tell people about Jesus, in our thoughts, in our words and in our actions, so that people can be invited to share in the joy of the Kingdom.

        One of the saddest parts of the parable has to be the plants which are choked by weeds. I speak as someone who tries to garden – in the beds outside my home I’ve planted various things, lots of roses, which both look and smell lovely, but the soil is so fertile and there’s so much bindweed and chickweed, that if I didn’t weed the soil then, very quickly, the beds would become overgrown – I wouldn’t have lovely plants to look at, or smell, I’d have a patch of weeds. This would be sad, regardless of the cost of the plants, and the effort of nurturing them, I would be deprived of the joy of a garden. The world around us has changed and developed in ways which we scarcely thought imaginable, but the thing which concerns me is that nowadays the cares of the world, the variety of things which one is able to do on a Sunday morning mean that people no longer necessarily gather together week by week, as Christians, as the Church, to be fed with Word and Sacrament, so that their souls can be fed, so that they can be nourished to live the Christian life. ‘Oh we need to go shopping’, ‘Tommy’s got rugby’, ‘Jane wants to ride her pony’ – we can make any excuse we wish, I should know, I have myself. It’s sad to see such potential go to waste, choked by the cares and concerns of the world, where people do not grow and develop as Christians because other things get in the way. When the plants grow as they are supposed to they bear fruit, they bear a wonderful harvest. Can we help to keep the weeds down, so that people can grow and develop into fully-grown mature Christians, nourished and helped to flourish.

        Our faith matters, we need to help people to come to understand that just as a garden needs work and effort for it bear fruit, so likewise Christians are made rather than born: we need to do all that we can to come together day by day and week by week to be nourished by Word and Sacrament so that we can have life in Christ, and life in all its fullness, helped to grow and develop into spiritual maturity, to be given a foretaste of heaven, and to grow more and more into the likeness of Our Lord and Saviour, who gives himself for love of us, to heal and restore us, to take away our sin.

        So let us come to Him, and encourage others so to do, that they may believe and may bear fruit and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to who whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever.