Seeds on good soil...
As Deacon Karen pointed out last week in her homily, the Lord uses images familiar to those who live in rural settings in many of His teachings, today included: the sowing of seeds that fall on rock, amid thorns, and on good soil.
To appreciate the parable, we have to remember that the sowing of seeds in that time was by one person throwing seeds from a container onto the ground, much like we might do with grass seed in a thin area of lawn. Don't miss the point: a disciple sows good seeds (Jesus' teachings) individually on the "ground" i.e in the environment in which he or she lives.
While that has implications for our individual discipleship (what seeds are we sowing day by day), it also has implications for us as a Church and as a nation. I am becoming increasingly bothered by the news and the language of "war" we hear daily. Are we becoming a "terrorist" nation in relationship to other peoples of the world? We are a country born out of revolution. By what right do we have to tell other peoples who should lead them and in what direction? And what do we do about such matters? Trivia or window-dressing, such as prayer in the public school, the Ten Commandments on court house walls, or keeping "under God" in the pledge and on our money — these will not prepare the hearts of people to receive the seeds of love and bear good fruit.
We as a people (USA culture) have become inoculated against the Gospel because we are so infected with materialism and power. I have been reading again essays by Thomas Merton, "The Nonviolent Alternative,"
and find that things written in the 1950's about the nuclear armaments and the Cold War still apply to us today in the alleged "war on terrorism." "Christ our Lord did not come to bring peace to the world as a kind of spiritual tranquilizer," Merton writes. "He brought to His disciples a vocation and a task, to struggle in the world of violence to establish His peace not only in their own hearts but in society itself." He says: "The Christian is one whose life has sprung from a particular spiritual seed: the blood of the martyrs who, without offering forcible resistance, laid down their lives rather than submit to the unjust laws that demanded an official religious cult of the Emperor as God. That is to say, that the Christian is bound, like the martyrs, to obey God rather than the state whenever the state tries to usurp powers that do not and cannot belong to it...."
"Let anyone with ears, Listen!" we hear in the Gospel this weekend. Do we hear or read the news and compare what we hear with the teachings of Jesus? Are parents more concerned about the moral teaching given to their children than the athletic? Can employers make an honest profit without cheating on the workers and stockholders? Are athletes much more "valuable" than teachers?
Our cultural values have so shaped our hearing that the Gospel teachings of Jesus sound like pious or idyllic or poetic sayings, but certainly not as the basic values for living. "The tragedy of our times is then not so much the malice of the wicked as the helpless futility even of the best intentions of "the good."
We have war-makers, war criminals, (terrorists), indeed. But we ourselves, in our very best efforts for peace, find ourselves maneuvered unconsciously into positions where we too can act as criminals." Serious food for thought. Does our "war on terrorists" make us terrorists as well?
Joseph+
