Profligate

Midweek Evensong

Second Week after Epiphany

Reading: Mark 4:1-20

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I used to read the Parable of the Sower as a cautionary tale; as though most people in the  world were bad soil, very few of us are good; thus we must strive to avoid the pitfalls about which Christ warns us. Many are called but few are chosen, right? I’m not saying that it was taught to me in this way, but that’s how I’d always heard it.

A sower goes out to sow, scattering seed abroad. Some is eaten up by birds, some scorched on rocky ground, some choked off by thorns and weeds. Yet some seed falls on fertile soil, good soil, and there springs up a harvest yielding thirty- and sixty- and a hundred-fold.

Jesus goes on to say, according to Mark’s Gospel, that the birds represent Satan, snatching the Word from us; the rocky soil, those who first hear the Word with enthusiasm, yet fall away at the first sign of trouble; and the thorns are the cares of this world. But those who hear God’s Word and accept it are the good soil. In them the Word takes root, bears fruit, and yields a harvest abundant.

So, you know, avoid the devil, persevere through trials, and do not be consumed by worldly care. Seems straightforward, right? And yet—and yet! This is a hermeneutic of judgment, of works-righteousness, of fear. We are afraid that we won’t be good soil, and so be cast from the Kingdom. We have to earn our place in the harvest, don’t we? And I fail to see how that is Good News.

The key to interpreting this parable, methinks—one which seems obvious in hindsight yet which we so often overlook—is the rocky soil. Seed that falls on rocky soil initially sprouts up with enthusiasm, but when the sun beats down it has no depth, no place to plunge its roots. And so it is burned away, yes? These, again, represent people initially committed to God’s Word who then flee upon persecution. They say, “I go, sir!” yet they do not.

Today, incidentally, the Church commemorates the Confession of St Peter, kicking off a week of prayer for Christian unity. Peter, of course, is the Prince of the Apostles, the first among equals, for whom this very congregation has been named. He’s also a bit of a screw-up, which is kind of why we love him. He’s very human. He reacts to the ministry of Jesus Christ much in the same way that I imagine we would react were we in his shoes.

If you’ll permit me to mix metaphors, Peter leaps before he looks, only to bite off more than he can chew. Peter is the one who bravely attempts to walk on water with Jesus Christ—and fails catastrophically when his courage gives out. Peter is the one who draws the sword in the garden, yet who denies Jesus, with oaths and imprecations, no less than three times on that same night before His death.

Peter flees with the rest of the Apostles. He hides in fear in the Upper Room. He fails to believe in the Resurrection when the women so clearly witness to the Risen Lord. Peter, in short, betrays Jesus in much the same way as Judas. In fact, their betrayals run parallel through the Passion narratives. The only difference is that Judas saw no way in which he could be forgiven, while Peter stuck around long enough to see the dawn of that first Easter Morn.

And of course, his name wasn’t Peter, was it? Not originally. His name was Simon bar Jonah, son of Jonah, brother to Andrew. It was Jesus who called him Peter, who renamed him as such: “I tell you that you are the rock,” Jesus said, “and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” Now, “Rock,” in Jesus’ native Aramaic tongue, is “Cephas,” or in Latin, “Petrus,” Peter.

And yeah, there’s all kinds of imagery Christ calls upon here, especially a prophecy of Daniel, about a rock from heaven collapsing a great empire and handing it over to the saints. Peter is the Rock who will bring the Church to Rome. But just a couple chapters earlier, Jesus had told them this Parable of the Sower, about people who are like rocky soil, who spring up enthusiastically but fall away when things get rough, when things get rocky. And that’s exactly what Peter does.

You understand—the Prince of the Apostles was not good soil. Not initially, at any rate. We are all of us, at any given time, choked by worldly cares, or victimized by evil, or we just plain run out of juice. Our courage fails. We fall away. But that’s never the end of the story. Because, while we may fail, Christ never does.

A Sower goes out to sow. He flings His seed about, profligately, superabundantly, more than enough for all. And often it seems to have failed: snatched away, scorched off, strangled by the world. Yet the harvest comes regardless. Somewhere the seed takes root, bears fruit, more than enough for all. In spite of the fact that we are all of us often bad soil, the Word still works. The will of God is done.

That’s what the parable’s about. It isn’t judgment and fear and scarcity. It isn’t “Shape up, sail straight, or I’ll spank you.” No! It’s a story of trust, of the overflowing grace of God, the generosity of God, that the harvest will come, the harvest always comes, if not through us, yet still for us. All it takes is a spark to light the blaze. All it takes is a seed for life to grow.

And that seed is Christ: the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, the grain of wheat which must die in order to become what it was always meant to be. Trust in the Lord. Trust in the Christ. He succeeds where we have failed. He stands forth where we have fled. And He will bear the fruit that we have not produced. Grace is not earned; grace is given. And you are loved without condition.

This is the Word of the Lord. And the Word will never fail.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.