NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 15 in Ordinary Time Year A

Hello, my sisters and brothers. In today's Gospel we have yet another jump. Why is this important? If you remember, in chapter 11, leading up to the moment when Jesus talked about his meekness and humility of heart, he was engaged in discussions with people, wondering why they didn't understand him, wondering why they didn't receive the sign that he was in fact bringing in. With John the Baptist, John the Baptist's disciples, with his own disciples, people didn't seem to be getting who was coming into their midst. So he was trying to give some sense of clear interpretation of this incredibly gentle arrival of something with its easy yoke and its light burden. Chapter 12, Jesus finds himself involved in a series of discussions with people who misinterpret his signs. They want to interpret the things that he's doing as having been produced by Beelzebub. This brings up the constant obvious point, which is that a sign is of its nature indecisive. You can interpret a sign one way or another. You can make it point to something that's good for you and bad for other people, or something that's bad for you and good for other people. You can interpret it as divine or satanic. Any of us know this. And yet Jesus is saying, actually no, the signs are not undecidable, and we have to use the real sign, the sign of Jonah, and then perhaps you'll understand. And of course they don't. But then, having explained to them in their midst, and explained to his disciples, in the midst of all these contradictory elements and people not wanting to read the signs aright, he then sits with his disciples on a boat by the shore of the lake and he starts to teach the people in parables. Many parables, it says, so the parable he's given us is just an example, and he uses it as an example of what the parabolic method is about: how do you teach people? Because here's the thing — if signs are capable of being interpreted by anybody taking this way or that, then there's scarce little point imagining that direct communication, my saying something to you, can't be perverted into its exact opposite. It can be interpreted as an order, it can be interpreted as a piece of advice, it can be interpreted as a way of oppressing you by demanding something in return. So Jesus knows that, Jesus knows that we're the sort of people who get riled up easily in any form of communication and will interpret things against our own interests. we get stuck in our binary, rivalistic, opposite ways of understanding. And so he teaches in parables. Why? Because the point of the parable is that it's something thrown forward into the midst of people that they themselves have to work out in the end. In other words, they have to take responsibility for creating the meaning that comes from it. It's no good being a mere reactive side-watcher, someone who just sits on the side and takes pot shots. The only way to work out this element is to allow yourself, as it were, to enter into the making sense of it and see where this goes. And this is vital, because one of the things that Jesus has brought out early on in what he's doing – the bringing of the kingdom – is in fact completely transfiguring all the normal signs. His mother and sisters and brothers come to see him immediately before this Gospel, and he immediately reconfigures the sign of the family, saying, "What is my family?" In other words, every natural institution, every natural sign, is undone from within and shown to point some other way. And he's saying it's only as you get involved on the inside of them that you're going to begin to get a sense of what's going on here. So he comes to the crowd, and he tells them the parable of the sower. He doesn't start saying, "The kingdom of God is like…" – so he's just using this as a parabolic method about people being on the inside if they're to understand anything. "A sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path." Okay. Let's talk for a moment. The people to whom Jesus was talking had much closer life experiences of the agricultural world than most of us do, and much closer experiences of the pre-mechanical agricultural world than all of us have. So here's something which I didn't know, which I discovered while researching this, which is very interesting. Whereas we imagine – or at least I imagine – that if you're going to sow, first of all you plough, you make the furrows, and then you walk along and quite carefully put the seed in the furrow, so it's already half embedded, it's therefore very easy for it to be covered over by soil and start the work of dying and reproducing whatever cereals you're trying to grow – well, not so in ancient Palestine, apparently. Ploughing and sowing in ancient Palestine had the inverse relationship. First of all, a very carefully measured quantity of grain was given to a sower, who would then walk the area that would later be ploughed. And this seed was sown over the to-be-ploughed land. So the great missing voice, if you like, in everything we hear is: what about the ploughing? The sower is going and doing all the sowing But what happens thereafter is going to be the result of the ploughing, you see. According as it's plowed, it will turn out that some of the seeds fell on what's the walking area — the area where either the human being who was doing the plowing, or the cattle that were doing the plowing, were walking themselves. So it wouldn't get very far; it wouldn't get ground in very deep into the earth. Some parts of the field, or the area that was going to be plowed, would have rocks in it, not visible on the surface, but when the plough goes along you bump into the rock. So it doesn't do much good to the metal of the plough, but it certainly stops the seed getting into the place where it's going to go. And of course there are some places in the field where there are already weeds growing, which means that as you plough, the weeds get enfolded in with the seed — and you remember the tares growing up together. And then of course there are some parts of the field where the plow would go through without any problem, the turning over of the soil would bury the seeds in a suitable way, and you'd start to get your product. So please notice that one of the key things that is being assumed here, silently, is the work of the plowing. The plowing is going to go on. So what is Jesus beginning to talk about here? He's asking people to listen to an image with which they'd be very familiar. It's also an image which, if they have ears to hear, they'll understand perfectly well, is an image that comes from Isaiah — in fact from the passage which is given us in our first reading today. It's not all that often that our Old Testament reading is actually brilliantly chosen to match the New Testament reading, but this is one of the occasions where this is absolutely the right passage: "Thus the Lord said: as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth, make it bring forth and sprout, giving seeds to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth, and shall not return to me empty." So supposing you start listening to this parable — simple description of agricultural reality — you begin to think, "Aha, well actually here there is a promise." This is the promise that God's word will produce fruit. And it will produce fruit absolutely abundantly, because the idea of a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold harvest is astounding. It's vastly more than Monsanto or any modern agricultural system could dream of. So behind this there is the image of someone who is speaking and whose word will produce food, and the question is: how involved in it are you? going to be how are we going to be involved in it? Now, when Jesus has finished giving that, the disciples come up to him and say, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" And he answered, "To you it's been given to know the mystery of the kingdom." I think that the mystery is this: transfiguration from within of all the signs that are natural to us into signs of the incoming king – the new Temple, the crucified Lamb, the Lamb standing as one slain on the throne. He is coming in, and who is in fact going to be the new sign makes everything come alive and widen up. It's a complete transfiguration of all values. So something of that. He's saying, "You're on the inside of that process. That's what I've been preparing you for." "To those – so this mystery has been revealed to you, that's what I've been teaching – it hasn't been revealed to anybody. To those who have, they'll have more, and those who have not, even what they have will be taken away." This is actually an amazing insight into how our desire works, the pattern of desire. Once you start to see this transfiguration of values, you give yourself to it, you allow yourself to be taken on board into it, you see it everywhere, and you start wanting to contribute to it as much as you possibly can. Whereas if you don't get it, if your life is based on holding on to the old value system out of security, fear, need to get ahead, need to win – what St. Thomas – not St. Thomas, St. Augustine called the libido dominandi, the thing that really runs the old Adam according to our most ancient theology – the need to be seen to be an impediment to those who are your enemies. Those who are involved in that, even what they have will be taken from them. They're in a lose-lose situation; they're into futility, vanity, and going after a void. Whereas those who are being taken up into this mystery are being recreated from within as all their forms of belonging are transfigured. And so Jesus then says, "And incidentally, what I'm telling you is what's been known ever since the great Isaiah vision." Because the passage he quotes – "The reason I speak to them in parables is that seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they don't listen, nor do they understand" – he's quoting from what happened immediately after Isaiah had his wonderful Temple vision in Isaiah 6, where he sees the Lord high and lifted up on the throne, and he hears the voice of the Lord, who tells him to go and preach. And he says he is a man of unclean lips, and the Lord sorts that out with some angel – seizes his lips and raises him and sends him out to preach, but warns him that he's sending him out to preach to a people who, seeing, they do not perceive, and hearing, they do not listen, nor do they understand. So that's us. So strangely enough, what is Jesus doing? He's saying: "I am the fulfillment of that promise, and I'm speaking precisely into the midst of these people who are bound down." And the whole question is: to what extent are they – you, me, James Alison – going to allow ourselves to be sucked into the plowing over of the earth, until we find ourselves able to take part in the rediscovering of the signs, the pointing in a completely different direction, things we take for granted as part of our systems of security, undone, and us finding ourselves born into belonging to a completely new way of being together, sharing together, loving together – something we would be able to do? So for me, this is the great challenge: at what depth are we prepared to allow ourselves to be plowed into the earth, so as to become part of the powers of the sign of the kingdom? Remember, the Father does the same.