15th Sunday Year A

15th Sunday Ordinary Time – Seeds For Sowing

Today’s gospel is about stories – parables, and about seeds and growth: I love stories and I know next to nothing about gardening! I love stories that make or help explain a point; even or especially stories that are aimed at the young and pitched in a simple way.

Who here has read Alice in Wonderland or any of Aesop’s tales? Who has read The Jungle Book or any of Dickens’ novels? There must be a few of our regular attendees for them. What about Harry Potter or if I really want to stretch my luck, Pip the Pixie? That last one might just be for me!

They are all great stories that are also vehicles of and for very strong messages, challenging what we think about others and ourselves; or good versus evil; or the importance of being true to self and others and lastly the need to understand more about the world in which we live and nature. You really do need to read about Pip the Pixie!

We tell children stories that teach; stories that have meaning beyond just their words so that they will learn the lessons being taught and, because of the nature of the story, not even realise that the teaching is taking place. They enjoy the stories and remember the learning and most importantly, apply it in their own lives.

We don’t hit them with heavy weight messages and learning in the Beavers and Rainbows or our young altar servers: we keep it simple; we nurture it and tailor it so that it can grow with them and within them and help them to get ready to take on the next stage of messages, and so on throughout their lives.

But what if we hadn’t prepared our listeners at all? What if we took some of the Beavers or Rainbows and launched straight into the horrors of Lord Voldermort or the Mad and quite vicious Queen of Hearts or Shere Khan or, well actually there are no real baddies in Pip the Pixie, but you get my drift. What would be the impact on them?

We prepare our own ground, our own readiness to take on a seed of learning to enable us to be fully able to grow it with strong roots and to harvest it in all that we do and say. Our multiplication of harvest is dependent on the time and care we give to the seeds that we receive.

We here are all like youngsters hearing the story of the Gospel as if for the first time: are we ready for it; are we prepared for it and able to receive it fully, completely and carefully? Are we?

If we are people who say that we know the story but don’t seek to understand it, we just hear the words but don’t apply them, then we are like seeds being thrown amongst brambles and weeds on the edge of the path. The seeds are strangled and killed before having the chance to settle and germinate.

If we are people who turn up at church but tune out all that we could hear and all that could feed and sustain us, then we are like seeds falling on thin or poor soil. There may be some rooting and some small slender shoots of growth but at the first challenge, our growth collapses and we perish. We bear no harvest of joy, of grace, of faith or of true love of God.

But if we are people who come together, as we can this weekend, to share our story at whatever opportunity, with each other and with our children; if we are like those young people from our rainbows, Beavers or altar servers – we are the most fertile of ground, full of richness, fully prepared to receive seed and able to nourish it, to strengthen it and to enable it to grow in and through us. We are then able to harvest it not once but many, many times over and to show others what we know and what we have learned through accepting and growing the seed of the Word of God.

As with all of us here this weekend, the ground is prepared. The seed, the Gospel of the Lord, is planted and nurtured with every visit we make to our church or to the scriptures, and with every time that we receive our sacraments, our day’s food for our day’s journey; the Holy Spirit that helps us to fight off every known and unknown bug or blight – like a Super Baby Bio (the only plant-growth-food that I know!)

Jesus offered his audience and his disciples a story, a parable, to show the need for them to do more than just sit and stare. For the seed of the Word of God to grow to its fulness in and with each one of them, they had to be positive and look to take charge and to take specific and definite actions – preparation and nurturing actions. A parable is a story that demands that we do something as a result of what we have heard.

Our uniformed groups and altar servers regularly make and deliver against their promises to check and improve their understanding – to increase and improve their harvest – to get better at what they know and how they put this into practice.

What about the rest of us? Where in the sowers field are we and what are we doing about it?

Bidding Prayers

1.      That we open up our hearts and minds and souls to listen to God’s Word and to take it into our everyday lives to make it a living thing. Lord in your mercy

2.      That we seek opportunities to deliver Christ’s messages of love with everyone that we meet. Lord in your mercy

3.      That we become role-models of life, love and laughter to show we understand God’s Word and want to proclaim it in our lives with our every smile. Lord in your mercy

4.      That the peace of Christ spreads across our troubled world. Lord in your mercy

5.      That every parishioner is enriched in their lives by our loving prayers and actions, especially those in poor health. Lord in your mercy

6.      That those who have died recently may find eternal rest in the Lord. We remember specially John Patrick Carroll whose funeral service is on Thursday 20th July at 1.00pm. Lord in your mercy

7.      We ask Our Lady to intercede for us as we now pray together, Hail Mary…