You can Serve God. You can’t Serve the Money-God

The Good News for the Day, September 17, 2022
Saturday of the 24th Week of Ordinary Time (448)

The Gospel

Once, a large crowd gathered, with people from one town after another traveling to hear Jesus.

He addressed them. “A sower went out one time to sow his seed.

• As he sowed, some seed fell on a beaten path and got walked on.
  • Birds of the air ate that seed.
• Some seed fell on ground thick with rocks.
  • When that seed came up, it withered for lack of moisture.
• Some seed fell among bramble bushes.
  • When thorns grew—they choked it.
• And some seed fell on good ground.
  • When that seed grew, it produced fruit a hundred times over.”

After saying this, he yelled out, “Anybody with ears to hear needs to hear this.” (Luke 8)

Reflections of the Word of Jesus

The living seed, Jesus explains, is an image, a poem. More specifically, as he will explain in the next verses , this image can be an extended as an allegory. But poetry and particularly the images of Jesus say something to the ready heart and soul. What it says is often beyond words, and that’s why it is poetry.

By readiness I mean a a combination of curiosity, prior knowledge , and an hope it will be inspirational. Once we have that attitude, we can welcome the image. You and I, and then ingest the truth Jesus offers in this “seed.” Like all poetry, this image both hides and reveals. In this case the seed image reveals a connection to our spiritual life – there is something in common. It hides, however, what exactly that is. What that is, is a deeper truth.

Deeper Truth

All poems and images suggest a deeper truth. That often wordless truth waits for listeners’ readiness. That is the point of the very last line. People hear but do not listen. Listening implies that those who hear are taking what he says to heart, hoping it will improve their lives

Sometimes an image does not enter the heart and soul. Modern poems are often impossible to understand. Jesus uses simple images – poems – to convey simple but profound and life-changing meanings

When you read or hear this passage, does it affect you? Does it make you feel any different? Or has it become so familiar that it is just another passage in a book, more words preached from the pulpit?

The Importance Here

I am not here to tell you how it affects you! Explaining poetry destroys it. The fertile ground of your own life – your felt need – some hunger or curiosity in you is waiting, ready for the valuable truth Jesus offers.

Suggestions

Perhaps it can dawn on you that the seed is like a flower bulb you plant in the fall, hoping it will rise in the spring. The seed-bulb is like your hopeful faith. Perhaps, your faith will grow beyond doctrine into action, beyond ideas and into attitude, beyond varied thoughts and into felt commitments. Will a kind of faith-seed raise you out of a winter hiding under ground into a sunshine of blossoming kindness, happiness, and understanding?

Or perhaps you feel, for the first time, faith means something dynamic, felt, exploratory, and personal, not a mere idea. Jesus connects faith with forgiveness and you can come to see the connection once you see faith as attitude, as a felt hope for something.

A seed, finally, you may notice produces food you eat. Seeds eventually give you life by the apple, raspberry, cereal, or popcorn you put in your mouth. Have you thought about “eating” faith – chewing on and digesting – what you believe? Questioning the deeper meaning of familiar words is sowing seeds and waiting for something to,