When People See What Christians Are Like
Tokichi Ishii, a Japanese convict, in his autobiography, tells of how two missionaries gave him a New Testament while he was in prison. He said they would come by and talk about the words of Christ, but that he didn’t really give any thought to it. He didn’t read the New Testament for a long time but eventually started reading it out of curiosity. Reading the Passion narrative, he came across those words of Jesus from the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”, and he was transformed. He wrote the following: “At these words, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’ I stopped: I was stabbed to the heart, as if pierced by a five-inch nail. What did the verse reveal to me? Shall I call it the love of the heart of Christ? Shall I call it His compassion? I do not know what to call it. I only know that with an unspeakably grateful heart, I believed. Through this simple sentence, I was led into the whole of Christianity.”
Some have never responded to the Gospel at all. Some have responded but didn't persevere. And some of us — maybe most of us, here, now — are responding, to varying degrees. Perhaps, if we are frank and honest, we might admit that we are a bit of a mixture of all these kinds of responses, perhaps at the same time, and over the course of our lives.
The seed wasn’t violently uprooted
One of the great mysteries of pastoral work and evangelization is what works, what catches, how some people respond to the Gospel and others don’t. Some people persevere in the practice of faith and some people fall away. This is not just a private mystery. Over the past twenty-five years, something like forty million Americans have stopped attending church altogether. That’s the largest religious shift in that country’s history - and it is a pattern echoed across much of the Western world, our own country included. What's striking is that most didn’t leave over some crisis of belief or a dramatic rejection of the Gospel. They point to moving house, the inconvenience of attendance, a marriage, a divorce, a change in family life. The seed wasn’t violently uprooted; it was quietly crowded out. That is exactly the mystery the parable of the Sower describes.
So, why is it that we are here for Mass? What brings us here? We might also reasonably ask how this sowing of the seed of the Word takes place in our context today, and what is the best way to share the message of the Gospel.
When people see what Christians are like
I read a story about a young African woman called Maria who went to the United States from Angola. She was always full of joy. One day she went to a meeting on evangelization in her church where they were talking about using pamphlets, missions, campaigns, and all the rest. At one point, someone turned to Maria and said, “What do they do in your church in Angola, Maria?” After a moment’s thought, Maria said, “In my church we don’t give pamphlets to people or have missions. We just send one or two Christian families to live in a village. And when people see what Christians are like, then they want to be Christians themselves.” Maria’s answer is itself a clue to today's Gospel: soil is not prepared by better methods of sowing, but by a life visibly changed by the Gospel — and that same hunger, stirred by witness, is what drew the crowds to the shore where Jesus sat that day.
The hunger of the crowds
The opening lines of today’s Gospel passage tell us that as Jesus sat beside the sea, great crowds gathered about him. In fact, the crowds were so big that Jesus got into a boat and taught from the boat. The hunger of the crowds for the teaching of Jesus is a spiritual hunger that all of us have for God. This desire for God is universal. Often it goes unrecognised. And so many of us — maybe for much of our life — try to satisfy it with just about anything except the one thing that will.
The first reading from the prophet Isaiah, which describes the life-giving word of God, and the parable of the Sower in the Gospel, challenge us today to consider our response to the Word of God. The prophet Isaiah announces that the word of God shall not return to him empty; rather, it will accomplish what God intends. God speaks his Word into our lives. This Word challenges us, comforts us, and moves us. The question is how we receive this word of God. Are we open to it? Do we allow it to penetrate our lives, and do we respond to it?
The seed that falls on rich soil
In the Gospel Jesus speaks of those who in seeing do not see, in hearing do not hear or understand. He says people’s hearts have grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes are closed. What was true for the people of Jesus’s time can be said to be true for us and others, at times in our lives. Jesus wants us to see, hear and understand, so that, as he says in today’s Gospel, we will turn to him for healing.
The parable of the Sower is regarded as one of the greatest of Jesus’s parables because of its imaginative content and teaching. This image of a sower walking along scattering seed from a sling bag would have been so familiar to the people of his time. And Jesus likens the reception of the word of God in people’s lives to the quality of soil that the seed falls into. When we hear the word of God without understanding it cannot take root in our hearts. We cannot appreciate its meaning and the hope it gives. This is what it means to receive the seed on the edge of the path. The seed that fell on stony ground represents those who receive the faith with joy but fall away when trials come. Perhaps we are like those who receive the seed among thorns; that is, we allow our faith to be choked because, rather than following through, we are too concerned about the things of this world. But the seed that falls on rich soil, Jesus says, yields a hundredfold, sixty, or thirty — a harvest far beyond what a farmer of his time could ordinarily expect from good ground. The point is not modest improvement but extravagant abundance. This is what the word of God does when it is truly received: not a slight return on our effort, but a harvest out of all proportion to the sowing.
Can we be the good soil; can we hear the word and understand it, and bear fruit? Jesus concluded the parable: ‘Listen, anyone who has ears!’ In other words, those who truly seek God, those who want to understand, will hear God speaking to them through the parable. It is possible that the word of God will go unheeded by people who are negligent, or who do not nurture the seed of faith that is given to them by God. So, what kind of soil are we? What standard do we live by? Who has the ultimate call on our lives?
This Word is a message of God's passionate love for us. In Jesus Christ, reconciliation with God is possible, and we can receive eternal life. Our happiness and fulfilment lie in a loving, personal relationship with God. And we are called to live in love of God and others. The seed of the Sower is God’s Word sent into our lives, proclaimed in our hearing. What is the quality of our response to the Word of God? What kind of harvest is the Word of God yielding in our lives? Hearing this famous parable again today, we are called to really listen, to receive the message of Christ, and to respond with our lives. Can we open ourselves to experiencing the Word of God as Tokichi Ishii did? Perhaps those of us who are trying to respond to the Gospel need to heed Maria, the Angolan woman, and realise that the harvest we produce will involve sowing this seed for others.
