Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)

This parable of the sower and the seed is well known to all of us even from an early age. We are very familiar with Jesus’ own explanation of the parable, and are used to examining our lives in terms of the three kinds of soil that Jesus mentions.

First, there was the seed sown on a path – and birds came and ate it.
Are we like the one who hears the Word of God but doesn’t work at understanding it? If so, the Evil One can easily come and steal away what has been sown in our hearts.

Then there is the seed sown on rocky ground – it sprang up, but because it had no roots the sun scorched it. Are we like the one who hears the Word of God, and receives it with joy, but then doesn’t use the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and charity to develop deep roots? If so, when we face tribulations and persecutions our faith can easily be pulled away.

Finally, there is the seed sown among thorns – and the thorns grew up and choked it. Are we like the one who hears the Word of God, but then focuses more attention on worldly concerns including work, money, power, or prestige? If so, the seed of faith in us will not have time to thrive and bear fruit as it should.

These are, obviously, perfectly accurate ways to think about this parable – it is, after all, the interpretation that Jesus Himself gives us. And therefore, the questions we ask ourselves about what kind of soil our lives provide for the seeds of faith are crucially important questions.

However, I don’t believe that these are the only lessons we are meant to take from this great parable. Note that more often than not, this parable is not referred to as the parable of the soil – it is referred to as the parable of the sower and the seed. As much as this story is meant to tell us something about ourselves, like all parables this story is meant all the more to tell us something about God and His grace in the world!

In Jesus’ day, before modern farming techniques, irrigation, and fertilization, seeds would have been a much more precious commodity than they are today. The seeds sown by farmers would have been hand selected from the previous season’s seed – they would have been stored through the winter and been protected from damp, mold, and insects. In the spring, after tilling the soil, the farmer would have waited for the perfect weather conditions and then gone out and carefully sown the precious seeds.

To take seed that had been so painstakingly gleaned, cleaned, and stored, and to sow that seed so recklessly that it falls on the paths, on the rocks, and among thorns would have seemed careless and wasteful at best, and downright insane at worst!

The rural agrarians, even the fishermen and shepherds, who first heard this parable would have been shocked by such a waste of good seed – and they would have been all the more amazed to hear the sower compared with God! Among the Pharisees to whom Jesus preached, God’s grace fell only on those who righteously fulfilled God’s Law. To think that the Word of God could come to those who had no roots, and could so easily be overcome by the Evil One, would have been truly scandalous.

And yet, this is precisely what the parable is telling us! The seeds of God’s grace fall indiscriminately into the lives of all God’s children, and the outcome of that gracious sowing cannot immediately be known. We can’t ever presume to know what good may come from abundant, profligate love.

Even if God has allowed us to provide relatively good soil for the Word of God, and allowed us to bear some measure of fruit for the Kingdom, we mustn’t miss or easily dismiss the seeds of grace that have been sown in places and in people who wouldn’t have made our list.

Yes, in the end, it must be admitted that it’s not surprising that the three-fourths of the seed that lands on the path, on the rocky ground, and among thorns produces no grain. And yet, God works in mysterious ways: we must also recognize how surprising it is that one-fourth of the seed produces such extraordinary results, even to a hundredfold, abundantly making up for the loss!

As much as today’s parable offers us three kinds of soil as images of ways in which followers of Jesus can fail, at the same time, today’s parable also offers us a fabulous image of hope! It gives us the assurance that God is prodigal in the distribution of His grace, and it promises that with some hearing and understanding on our part, God’s grace can produce astonishing results – even despite apparent failure!

It takes a certain kind of seeing, a certain kind of hearing, to be able to recognize all the many places throughout creation, throughout humanity, in which God’s grace has been scattered – and it takes great faith in order to maintain the hope that even suffering and seeming failure can yield life and beauty.

I’m convinced that this is the great gift of truly artistic people. Painters, musicians, poets, mystics all help make the ineffable present in word, sound, color, and form. And this is precisely the kind of faith and sight that the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins possessed as both an artist and as a priest, when reflecting on today’s Gospel he wrote:

Although the letter said
On thistles that men look not grapes to gather,
I read the story rather
How soldiers platting thorns around Christ’s Head
Grapes grew and drops of wine were shed.

Though when the sower sowed,

The wingèd fowls took part, part fell in thorn,

And never turned to corn,

Part found no root upon the flinty road—

Christ at all hazards fruit hath shewed.

From wastes of rock He brings

Food for five thousand: on the thorns He shed

Grains from His drooping Head;

And would not have that legion of winged things

Bear Him to heaven on easeful wings.


You see, in the eyes of the artist, even the thorns that choked the seed are made the crown of thorns and bear the fruit of Christ’s blood; Even the stones on which the seed baked in the sun, provide the loaves for the five thousand; And even birds on the wing help spread the Word as they carry the seed on high. As our Lord says in today’s Gospel, “blessed are such eyes, because they truly see, and such ears because they truly hear.”

Dear friends, may this Eucharist help us to tend the soil of our hearts – to put the Word of God first in our lives, to seek to understand the faith we have been given, and to have discipline and perseverance in our practice of the faith. Then we will indeed see that God has strewn all creation with the seed of His Word; we will trust that He can produce an abundant harvest even from seeming failure; and we too will be able to help make Him present to the many people who long to see what we have been able to see.