15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Fr. Simham)
BAD ECONOMIC OR INDISCRIMINATE LOVE
When I first read the parable of the lost sheep I thought God is a bad mathematician. He does not know basic mathematics. Now when I read this parable of the sower I think HE is a bad farmer or bad businessman. Any good business man thinks first whether where he is investing is profitable or not. He will go to a firm which gives him more interest or profit. He will invest his money there. In the same way a sensible farmer will sow in a field where he thinks he will get some harvest. Is it not?
But look at the farmer in Parable of the Sower. One of the wonderful stories told by Jesus. This is one parable where Jesus himself gives interpretation. So I cannot add anything to it. God is the sower. Seed is the word of God. And four types of lands are the four types of people who hear the word. What surprises me in the parable is how the sower throws caution to the winds, scatters the seed wildly and without any thought, all over the place, even in the most uncompromising and unreceptive spots. It falls on exposed soil – and therefore is vulnerable to birds waiting, on shallow and rocky soil, on thorn-choked soil and, almost by accident, on rich soil. And even here the yield – thirty, sixty, a hundred-fold – is uneven to say the least. Three fourth of the land is unsuitalbe for cultivation. Yet he sows. Any manager of any modern business, steeped in frugal, thrifty, cheeseparing ways, would be shaking his head, not only at the sheer inefficiency and sloppiness of the sower’s efforts, but at the whole issue of extravagance and waste underlying the parable. Why is he behaving like that? What is he teaching us? Friends, there are three things we can learn from here.
It tells us something about God and his nature. God is not a businessman but a loving father. God is indiscriminate in his generosity, goodness and mercy. He, indiscriminately lavishing his love without reserve on one and all, be it a rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, be it a saint or a rogue, Christian or non-Christian, believer or non-believer. The parable tells us that God in whom we believe is not fazed by apparent success or failure. Our God is one who does not know when to stop giving. A God who is outrageously generous and recklessly extravagant. A God who is not stingy with the seed but flings it out everywhere, on good soil and bad, wasting it with holy abandon. A God who seems willing to keep reaching into his seed-bag for all eternity, covering the whole of creation with the fertile seed of his truth and love and mercy.
Secondly it teaches us about Jesus himself. A great multitude came to him and he began to teach them. And he knew that in that great multitude only a handful of them will follow him and obey him. Yet, he sows the word to all. He preaches to them all.
Thirdly it is a parable which so true to life. So much energy spent with so little return. What I mean is that often human life can be a tale of countless things wasted, people wasted, lives wasted, good deeds wasted, and honourable intentions wasted. Is it not true? That is why I say the parable and the experience of the sower reflects our day today experience.
We sow what seems to be a perfect marriage and sprout divorce instead. As students you may sow lot of time and energy into your studies but you may not get what you wanted. We sow the seed of honesty and hard-work into our work but we get no reward or appreciation. We freely toss out the seeds of good teaching and instruction as teachers and they seem to fall on shallow ground. We breed a faith that seems to have deep roots and firm foundations, and we wind up with non-practising children, and so on. Like the sower in Jesus’ parable, we may have liberally and extravagantly sown the seeds of faith, hope and love, justice, mercy and peace. So often though, we find that the weeds of cynicism, prejudice, hatred and hard-boiled secularism which are trends of this time throttling the life out of our tender shoots.
How then, do we handle this mystery of disappointment, setback, waste and loss that seems to be such an integral part of our lives?
This, I believe, is what the parable is teaching us. As God’s sowers (not only priests and religious but every Christian) we are compelled to be unrelenting in our efforts to scatter seeds of faith, hope and love, justice, mercy and peace wherever we live and move and have our being. For, without us there would be less of God’s splendour in the world. God has commissioned us to throw caution to the winds, to wildly and extravagantly sow his truth and mercy, justice and peace, even if much of our sowing winds up on exposed, rocky or prickly soil.
As Christians we continue to live in irrepressible hope, continuing to sow generously, thereby keeping God, the rumour of God, the things of God, the values of God, alive in the world. We continue to live in irrepressible hope because we believe we are somehow contributing to a harvest of unimaginable fruitfulness. We believe that one day there will be a harvest because of the seeds we and countless others have sown.
Amen.
Fr. Showreelu Simham