On Being Tractors for the Lord

15^th Sunday OT: Isa 55.10-11; Rom 8.18-23; Matthew 13.1-9
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital, Dallas, TX

Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled! Do we hear but do not understand? Do we look but do not see? Have we closed our hearts to God’s Word? Do we refuse to understand? Will we be converted? Will we be healed? Jesus says to his disciples, “But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. Hear then the parable of the sower…Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

Sitting on a boat in the sea, Jesus teaches the crowd standing on the shore with a parable. A sower of seed sows seed. Some of the seed falls on fertile ground and some on rocks and among thorns. Some of the seed takes root in shallow soil. Some in deeper, richer earth. The seeds that fell on deep, rich soil grew to produce fruit thirty, sixty, a hundredfold. The seeds that fell among the rocks and on shallow ground were easily scorched by the sun, or torn up because their roots were weak. Whoever has ears ought to hear: if your heart is deep and rich, the seed of God’s Word will flourish and produce a great harvest; however, if your heart is made of stone or covered with shallow soil, the seed of God’s Word will not take root. Water the seed of God’s Word planted in your heart or the sun will burn it dry. And come harvest time, you will have nothing to give back to the Lord.

The Lord God says to Isaiah, “…my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” And so Jesus says to his disciples, “…blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.” Do we hear but not listen? Do we look but do not see? Have we closed our hearts to God’s Word? No, we have not. We see and listen and our hearts are open to receive he whom the Lord has sent as seed for our harvest. But do we understand? After Jesus finishes his parable, the disciples approach him and ask, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” The disciples must be thinking: why not just say you mean; plainly, clearly say what you mean? Why not do what the farmer on his tractor does—just give them a straightforward, easy to understand description of what happens when the Word falls on fertile hearts, on dead hearts, on tumultuous hearts? Jesus says, “[I speak to them in parables] because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted. To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” Not exactly agricultural science or nature’s art! The disciples are privileged to know something more about the mysteries of how we are rescued from sin and granted eternal life. They are more than by-standers on the shore; they possess more than curious ears hearing a story told from a boat. And so do we; as his disciples right now, so do we.

What do we see? Hear? What do we understand? As disciples of the risen Lord, we can see the evil one coming to steal away the seed of the Word from those who refuse to understand his Word. As disciples of the risen Lord, we hear those who receive the Word with praise and thanksgiving, but who never allow the Word to take root in their stony hearts. As disciples of the risen Lord, we see and hear those with thorny hearts, hearts ruled by anxiety and the lure of riches, we see and hear them receive the Word but then choke the seedlings of the Word with compromise, worldly contentment, and sin. How do we see and hear all of this? How do we understand? Because at one time or another we ourselves, the disciples of the risen Lord, till stony, shallow, sun-scorched hearts, soil deadly to the Word that Lord would sow and nurture if only we were better farmers, better disciples.

The farmer plows and plants year to year. Each year as the earth tilts to spring, the fields are tilled and planted. Each year the harvest grows and produces fruits. Some years are better than others. Some years are flooded or burned. Eaten by insects or frozen solid with ice. But each year the farmer plows and plants; each year the farmer sows what he has and waits on the weather. Are we any different? The cycle of plowing and planting and producing good fruit might seem futile, even cynical given the vagaries of weather and time. But we know as the disciples of the risen Lord is that “…creation awaits with eager expectation…in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains…and we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” Our faith is not a gamble. Our faith is not two dice thrown on the chance that salvation comes with a pair of sixes. We hope! And the chances of circumstance and time cannot diminish the expected fulfillment of the promises of God. Nothing touches our hope. Nothing dries out our faith.

Of course, we fail. Of course, our hearts grow cold. Sometimes we spread the rich soil of our soul too thin and the Word cannot take root. But one year is not like another. Each year is a new year for plowing and planting. Each day is a new year. And today, this year, the Year of St. Paul, is our day, our year to plow deep and plant recklessly, excessively, expansively; to do what Paul did and go out as apostles to world we live in and the world we have never seen to plow and plant and offer to God the harvest of His Word. The Lord says to Isaiah, “Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there until they have watered the earth…so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth…” And so Jesus says, “To anyone who has, more will be given…” As disciples of the risen Lord, we have the most we can have and more will be given. We see what the prophets longed to see. We hear what the righteous longed to hear. If we will understand with our hearts converted, we see and hear even more. But if we do not share, if we do not ourselves plow and plant, what we have will wither and die. The harvest of the Word is not ours to keep, stored up in barns and stocks; but rather, His to freely give and ours to distribute.

Paul walked and sailed the known world to plow men’s hearts and plant the seed of God’s Word. He was questioned, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually crucified. And yet, he says to the Romans, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed to us.” As disciples of the risen Lord, we are baptized with that same spirit of revelation, washed clean in the same waters that freed Paul to be the apostolic farmer of the Word that he was. And so we too wait in hope, listening to the groaning of all creation, waiting on the redemption of all the Lord’s work, plowing and planting every seed of the Word we have received, and rightly expecting a harvest to frighten the world!

Farming is hard work. Long days, summer heat, fickle rain, even more fickle markets. There are no guarantees in farming. The worms and locusts may be thick this year. The weeds high and strong. The tractor may be old and often broken. The prices meager. But when farming is all you have, all you do, everything you are, you farm and you farm with the vigor and determination of a zealot. As disciples of the risen Lord, we have vowed to be zealous farmers, passionate plowers of the human heart, and planters of the Lord’s mercy and love. Nothing touches our hope. Nothing diminishes our faith. Not opposition, not scorn, not persecution or trail. Not even death. So, get on that tractor—endure the heat, ignore the markets, suffer the price, and plow the world! Plant the seed!

The Lord waits on His harvest.