In the Gospel for the coming Sunday, Matthew Jesus is teaching from a boat to a very large crowd. He is preaching about the Word of God. He goes on to explain it n a parable. Initially the parable looks quite straight forward. The Seed will grow and bear fruit where the soil is thick and rich.
Jesus does not leave it there. He takes it up a notch and that when I start to feel uncomfortable. I begin to identify with the incredulous crowds. He makes it very clear that many do not see with the eyes of faith, or hear with a listening ear or understand with a open heart.
It’s then that I look within: Is the word of God bearing fruit in my own life? More often than not my seeing, hearing and understanding is personal, privately reassuring and comfortably interesting.
Jesus concludes the lesson: But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
That’s the challenge. Is the Word of God living in my life? Is it evident in how I listen and what I see and how deeply I understand the hearts of those I live with? As a wise woman once suggested to me, the Word of God is less a message and more an event.
Virginia Ryan