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.
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.