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The Gospel this Sunday (15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A), the Parable of the Sower, shows the great risk inherent in Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross: Not only did he live and die for us, he did so with no guaranteed result. The results of his sacrifice are entirely in our hands.
“A sower went out to sow,” says the Gospel, and describes what happens to the seed that falls in rocky areas, weedy areas, or in sun-baked areas.
The seed is the word of God, he explains, and how it is received is critical: The distractions of the world crowd it out, the weakness of the flesh can’t hold it or the trickery of the devil steals it away.
But when Jesus talks about the word of God being sown into the ground, it is hard not to think of the Gospel of John.
That Gospel starts by describing Jesus himself as the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was with God … and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”
Later in John, on the eve of the Passion, Jesus, the Word of God, describes how his mission will reach fulfillment: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”
So, the parable of the sower becomes literally true in the Passion: The Word of God is sown; killed and buried only to emerge in the Resurrection and in the people, the Body of Christ.
As a result of that sacrifice, we all have access to his grace — if we embrace it — just as we all have access to the fruits of the earth — if we use them.
Jesus is the word of God sown in the soil. He did his part. He allowed himself to be cast down from heaven to the roadways of the earth. But his sacrifice is subject to our freedom.
It seems almost a waste, the way the sower in the parable throws seed here there and everywhere. And it can seem a waste for the Jesus to die for people who don’t notice him.
But Jesus is not naïve: He knew that many people will not take him up on his offer. Many will let the cares of the world, the superficialities of life or the glamor of evil nullify what he has done. As he says in today’s Gospel, “Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes.”
But for those who respond, he will give abundantly and eternally. “The rain and snow come down and do not return,” says Isaiah, “till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats.”
St. Paul’s letter refers to a similar situation in God’s grace. “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us,” he writes to the Romans. In the spiritual order, our cooperation means that we ourselves become “firstfruits” of the Spirit.
To us, he promises that we can understand with our hearts and be converted and healed. Or not. It is up to us — for now.
Today, our freedom decides if his sacrifice was wasted or not. Later, his justice will decide if our lives were wasted or not.
Image: Sower by Bruegel, Wikimedia.
Tom Hoopes, author of The Rosary of Saint John Paul II and The Fatima Family Handbook, is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Kansas and hosts The Extraordinary Story podcast about the life of Christ. A former reporter in the Washington, D.C., area, he served as press secretary of the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee Chairman and spent 10 years as executive editor of the National Catholic Register newspaper and Faith & Family magazine. His work frequently appears in Catholic publications such as Aleteia.org and the Register. He and his wife, April, have nine children and live in Atchison, Kansas.
