Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and St Mary’s, Potterne
Romans 8.1–11; Matthew 13.1–9, 18–23
“Listen! A sower went out to sow…”
I thought I’d start today with a bit of science. Why does a mouse have dozens of babies, and an elephant just one? Some species, whether animals or plants, have a low number of offspring and put a lot of effort into raising them – we are one of these, so are elephants and gorillas, big animals like us, but so are parrots. Some species have lots of offspring, so cannot, of course, put the same amount of effort into raising any single one of them – rats famously breed like… well, rabbits.
Van Gogh, The Sower (1888). Hangs in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.
A similar spectrum is seen in the world of plants – blow on a dandelion clock and many dozens of seeds will float on the breeze; oaks are very different, sometimes waiting for years to produce acorns, with each acorn loaded with enough reserves to survive decades of burial, drought, and being nibbled by squirrels – after all, the forest floor will still be there in fifty years’ time.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” writes St Paul to the Christians in Rome. There are many implications of the phrase “in Christ Jesus”. But one comes from remembering that Jesus is God, and God is Love – the Bible says so in those same three words. To be in Jesus Christ is to live in love. The Holy Spirit is love too – the love that flows between Father and Son, and a person in its own right, who ripples out from them through the whole universe, a universe whose beauty at every scale shows that it is loved.
We human beings are made in the image and likeness of our creator God; we reflect that image most clearly when we love. We are called both to receive God’s love as seed sown in us, and to sow seeds of that love in others.
God is constantly sowing seeds in our lives out of His love for us, usually without us really noticing. Some fall on the path, in the rocky ground, or amid the thorns. Sometimes our hearts are too hard for the seed to flourish; sometimes we’re too distracted by material things to respond; sometimes to respond to God’s love would mean doing unpopular or costly things, so we back off. We fear the condemnation of those around us, but the only condemnation we should truly fear is that of God, and when we respond to God’s love by sharing that love with others, then we are truly in Christ, and we need not, as St Paul reminds us, fear God’s condemnation. If you fear your harvest is thin, trust that the same God who sows in love also forgives and restores.
For God is exuberantly abundant with His love, and when that divine love bears fruit in us, Christ says we yield a hundredfold. We can dismiss that saying as something with little relevance for us, ordinary people living ordinary lives – how can we produce a rich harvest in the world for God when it taxes our abilities just to get through the working week or to remain independent in our old age? But that is to misunderstand what is important to God. Jesus constantly spoke of the importance of things that are of little account in this world, like seeds. Science paints a similar picture. Go for an evening drive in Wiltshire at the moment and you’ll see the combine harvesters at work in the fields late into the night. No individual seed can be particularly important – even ignoring wild seeds and things like fruit, beans, and coffee, there are about fifty thousand trillion cereal grains harvested by humans every year. But without a huge effort to cultivate and harvest them, the result would be mass starvation.
So we should sow little seeds of love wherever we can, through simple actions in our daily lives – for that is the divine bread without which our souls would starve. We don’t need to worry about saving the world, for Jesus already did that. If you have a chance to change the world for the better in some grand way, then – man alive – take it. But most of us don’t get that chance very often, if at all – share God’s love in the name of Jesus Christ in the ways you can, with the people you encounter, and you will reap a harvest for the Lord.
But that isn’t the whole story. Like the dandelion, the wheat and the barley scatter their seed in cheap abundance; the oak does not. And life would be tedious and unsatisfying if we only ever ate bread; to live life to the full, we also need apples, and coffee, and fragrant bean curries loaded with chillies – and the trees and bushes that bear them take years of patient growth before they yield anything at all.
Just as there are many kinds of seeds, so we need to sow different kinds of love in our lives, some of which are more precious and demanding than others. We can’t invest in everyone we meet the sort of love we give our partners, children, or parents. Yet there are people, causes, and projects that deserve not just little acts of love but are worthy of becoming the defining chapters of our lives. Our families, our careers, the ways in which we serve the Church can be worth enormous investments of our time, our talents, and our love. This is costly and risky, for we can never guarantee another person will respond to our love in like measure; institutions are less responsive still, and employers least of all. But these great sacrifices of love are what produce the exuberant harvests that make life truly worthwhile and meaningful.
In today’s Epistle, St Paul contrasts life in the flesh with life in the Spirit – between living constantly to seek some reward, whether earthly or heavenly, and living in the full awareness that Christ has already done what is necessary to save us. He reminds us that it is God who came down to us in Christ, not we who have to somehow scale the walls of heaven – we need only accept His gift. Therefore our lives should be God-given opportunities to share Christ’s love. This should change our whole approach to life – instead of trying to pass a set of tests to satisfy social expectations or to earn God’s favour, we realise our true meaning is as agents of God’s love in the world that God loves.
Christianity tells a story of humanity as fallen from its true purpose and in need of restoration. We feel this gap in our own lives, which have their fair share of failure, frustration and being on the wrong end of callousness and cruelty. But in Christ and His sacrifice on the Cross, the love we have for God is restored. We are free to respond to God’s love. For it is Christ who comes to us first, Christ who was one with the Father in the beginning and who therefore already knew us in the womb before we were born, who loved us before we even knew who we were.
Loving all the time is draining. There is so much need around us, and our capacity to satisfy it is limited. When you are exhausted from loving in draining, trying ways – as we all are sometimes – then rest on the knowledge that God has already saved the world, and opened the way to eternal life for you.
And it is God who gives the growth, whether in nature, in our spirits, or in the love in our lives. Scatter your seeds with wild generosity, and God will give the harvest, in your day-to-day life, and still more exuberantly in the life to come.
And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and for evermore. Amen.
