(My homily for today; I did a version of it at 11:00 mass.  The readings are Isaiah 55:10-11, Ps. 65, Romans 8:18-23 and Matthew  13-1-23.)

So here’s Jesus, sitting in a boat, in a fishing village in Galilee, talking to people whose lives probably revolve around fishing, and he talks to them about … farming.  This passage in Matthew that we’ve been going through for several weeks is full of agriculture metaphors: last Sunday, the yoke; this Sunday, the sower.  Next week we will hear about separating the wheat from the weeds at the harvest.

 
We don’t know anything about Jesus having a farm life; tradition tells us he lived in a village, Nazareth, working in a carpenter shop.  But maybe there he helped to make farm tools: shovel handles, plows, yokes.  Maybe he and Joseph had customers who worked the land and came into the village to sell their crops and buy their tools.  He could have learned something about the work they did and the challenges they faced, how they got good at it and learned to get even better.  I had some farmboy friends could taste soil and tell you what nutrients it needed; some only had to smell it and they could tell you what would grow in it.

We all know that soil needs nutrients, needs work and needs rain.  So which kind of soil are we?  What will grow in us, and what do we need?  Jesus explains at the end of this parable that it’s all about which kind of landing ground we are for the Word of God.  After we hear his explanation at the end, we all come away thinking, “I’m that rich soil; I hear and understand; the Word has a home in me.”  But, really.  Are we?

They act out this parable in Godspell, the stage play based on the gospel of Matthew: Jesus asks the cast members if they understand what the seed is, and one answers, “A baby!” and that’s not the right answer:  The seed is the word of God.  My favorite part of the scene is how the cast acts out the seed in the thorns, becoming growing flowers and choking weeds, and the thorns of anxiety and money issues choke the budding plant.  Think of the thorns growing alongside us and waiting to get choke-hold on us:  Worries.  Money problems.  Money itself?  Things we can’t control, but we let them obsess and distract us.
Having any other kind of agenda, other cares which distract us, can prevent the Word from taking root in our hearts and growing up strong enough to rise above the strangling weeds.  A couple of weeks ago, Jesus in the gospel said we have to put following  him above everything, even family.  That’s a challenge to us, because everybody who here has some material comfort, and who has some anxiety?  Choking thorns, those are.

 
We don’t want to think we’re vulnerable to those thorns; we want to think we’re the rich soil.  But sometimes, we’re actually on the path.  It’s a spiritual complacency; we delude ourselves, thinking, everything is fine, I’m on the path, on the good, righteous path.  Until this morning!  Not any more!  You know how a path appears: people travel over it, over and over, pressing it firm.  The path becomes hardened ground where nothing gets through.  On that kind of path is not where we need to be.
Is the path we’re on beaten down by repetition and routine?  The same-old same-old. Not looking forward to anything new – that hardens our hearts and makes it hard for the good news to get inside and flourish there.  How about Boredom?  When nothing new seems to be happening; each day is like the last one.  You can call it Ennui, if you’re sophisticated, or Acedia, if you’re spiritually insightful.  But even in a lifeless routine, if it feels like being on the right path, we won’t want to break out of it.

To get off the path and into the good soil we have to forget ourselves and become who we really are, beloved children of God.  Utterly surrendered, utterly trusting.   Not all of us want that.  It’s not easy to try to give up control.  That’s why we have to keep coming back.  Keep coming back to the mass, to the sacraments, to each other.

But it’s not just about religious practices, checking off the boxes; it’s a committed life.  Without the trust, without the self-surrender to Christ, our practices and rituals aren’t going to get us very far.  Jesus says the “rich soil” is the one who hears the word and understands it.

When you hear, you’re receptive.  Receptive ground yields good fruit.  The ground is receptive if it is tilled and nourished:  Good soil needs nutrients, needs work and needs rain.

What can make us into the rich soil?  What prepares and nourishes the landing ground in us and makes it a fertile place for the seed to fall and to flourish?  I think these are some of the nutrients:

● Study and discipleship: reading, listening, seeking greater understanding.  Drinking in the wisdom of people who have insights greater than our own.  Paying attention to the word of God and taking notice of how it’s at work in our lives.

● Sacraments.  Especially frequent Eucharist and frequent Reconciliation.  Grace strengthens and sustains us and prepares us for life and its challenges.

● Being in relationship with the believing community: We all gotta be part of something bigger than ourselves; otherwise, how are we ever going to get over ourselves?

The baptism of these children at mass today initiates them into relationship with this community, into a committed life.  Right relationships nourish us, soften us.  They give us practice in hearing and understanding. Are we going to learn to see other people for what they are in relation to God, instead of for what they can do for me?

Besides nutrients, soil needs work; it needs the spades, the hoes and the plows that make it ready for the seed. Those tools include:

● Daily prayer: Anybody can reel off an “Our Father” in 15 seconds first thing in the morning, and we all should, but don’t quit there.  Spend 10, 15 20 minutes in a sincere conversation with God.  Do it several times a day.

● Service.  Service to others may be the best way of turning over the soil and making it ready for God’s love to bloom in it.  A bunch of our teens are just getting back from Oil City, PA, from a week of work in service to others who needed them.  Listen to them about what happened to them on this trip.  Not just what they did with the hammers and paint brushes, but what was going on inside them.

There are other tools.  Our faith life has to be a combination of action and contemplation, each feeding and strengthening the other.  This is starting to sound like one of my RCIA sessions with the converts: Talk about receptive soil!  (Speaking of which, if you’re here with a Catholic family, maybe even your own spouse, but you grew up in another faith tradition, or you weren’t baptized or weren’t confirmed, and you feel want to be part of what’s going on here, that’s a good thing. See me after mass; we want to have you.  I’m looking at some RCIA alumni; I’m really glad we have you!)  Speaking of initiation, we’re bringing two children into this community through baptism this morning, and we want them and their families to feel especially welcomed.
One last thought: The water of baptism reminds us that there also has to be rain.  You don’t have to be a farmer to know the soil needs rain, besides the nutrients and the plow.  Remember the first reading.  Isaiah uses the image of rainwater coming down, watering the earth, flowing down streams into the sea, and evaporating back up to the sky to be rain again somewhere.  Like Jesus portrays God generously scattering the good seed all over the place, Isaiah sees how the love of God rains down on everything, on everyone, and it doesn’t come back until it has done its job, to soften and refresh all that it touches, to help us all become better versions of our true selves.