The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23
Hearing God
“Let anyone with ears listen!”
Though a cradle Episcopalian and raised as an active member of the Church my whole life, during one point some aspects of church began to deeply trouble me. I could not understand and was completely turned off by the social aspects of church life, the fellowship, and the importance of and participation in Christian community. Though I continued to attend church and be a member on the surface, this frustration eventually led to my rejection of the Christian religion as a whole and to a serious exploration of other world religions for a time. “Some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.” I heard the word of the kingdom but did not understand, and what had been sown in my heart was snatched away.
At another point in my life, a point accentuated by a strong sense of confidence in and excitement about Christianity, a point when I found myself participating in interdenominational bible studies as well as Christian community and fellowship, I also began to live a kind of double life. Unable to resist the temptation of the times, I began to develop habits that were not conducive to my newly found spirituality, and which in fact eventually reversed my spiritual progress. “Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.” I heard the word and received it with joy; having little root though, I did not endure long and fell away in the face of trouble and challenges.
Now, as a husband and a father, trying to do all I can to provide the very best for my family, and yet also as a priest who has intimately experienced and dealt with the grim realities of both material and spiritual poverty, I constantly struggle to follow through with the commands of Christ. I struggle to fully reorient my life around the Truth of God. I struggle to choose God over my loved ones. I struggle to choose God over myself. “Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.” I hear the word, but the distractions of life and material temptations prevent me from changing.
“Let anyone with ears listen!”
As I read and prayed through this morning's Gospel lesson, it struck me just how hard this lesson is to hear; not because it is a particularly difficult message to swallow, not because it is a particularly difficult message to understand, but somehow it just seems difficult for us to hear. You see, at this point in His ministry, Jesus had amassed quite a large following. So much so, that in our Gospel lesson this morning, He is forced to go out and preach from a boat in order to reach the entire crowd on the shore. Jesus is preaching from the boat to the huge crowd of new or potentially new believers, and He proceeds to share with them this Parable of the Sower, and that is where, I believe, our problem lies. That is where our hearing problem lies, and by extension, our figurative spiritual hearing problem begins.
You see, it occurred to me that the reason that this parable may actually be so challenging for us hear is because we actually understand it to only be directed towards new or prospective Christians. It is for the crowds gathered on the shoreline waiting to hear Christ speak, the undecided. Those who have not yet committed. It doesn't really apply to us. Certainly, it isn't intended for those of us sitting in the pews. Or is it?
Today's Gospel lesson is about hearing God and listening to God. It is about us as Christians learning to recognize God all around us, and more importantly our learning how to listen to the God we hear constantly in our midst. Because while the Parable of the Sower is indeed a great image for the various challenges that one receiving the Good News of God in Christ for the first time might encounter, as I tried to illustrate with my own examples this morning, it is also a perfect image for the continual struggles and challenges that we all face as Christians trying to live into relationship with God in our day to day lives. Though the initial seed of the Gospel has already been planted in our hearts, it is important for us to recognize that there are a number of very difficult challenges that we each constantly risk facing as Christians which can and often do have adverse effects on the growth of God's Love and Truth in our lives.
I shared with you before how failing to hear God and to cultivate the relationship that I had with Him lead me to several different negative outcomes at various points throughout my life. However, there have also been times of bearing fruit as well. In my senior year in high school, I graduated a semester early before going off to college. During that time, I worked with a local landscaping company during the day, and participated in school sponsored extracurricular activities in the evenings. This was one of the most spiritually fulfilling times of my life and it is one of the periods in which I felt closer to God than I ever had before (and perhaps closer than I ever have since), not because of the activities in which I was participating, but simply because during those days, I learned how to recognize and to hear God around me, and also how to listen to what God was saying to me.
As a part of my prayer life, I had managed to set apart time in both the morning and evening for prayer and meditation, as well as incorporate several disciplines which helped me to remember and refocus myself on God throughout the day. Working with the earth, I learned to recognize God's presence in the beauty of nature around me, as well as in the people with whom I interacted daily or who crossed my path. I learned to recognize God's presence and accept His guidance in my life, which developed into a genuine desire to do His will. “Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” I heard the word of God and understood it, and indeed I bore fruit in my relationship with Him.
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, this is the message that I want to get across this morning, this is the lesson that I want each of us to take home with us today: Hear God. Listen for God. In other words, let us learn to be on the constant look out for God in our daily lives. Let us reorient ourselves to recognize that God is not confined to dwell within the walls of this amazingly beautiful sanctuary and that we don't have to come here to find God, but rather only to worship and celebrate Him. The truth is, though it might be a little easier said than done, that this is how we create the fertile soil in our souls in which the seed of God's Truth and Love can easily grow; we just start to actually pay attention to God, to seek Him out, to place Him at His rightful place in the very center of our lives. Then, having the ears to hear the God who dwells all around us is easy. Then, having the desire and ability to listen to the God who dwells within our midst comes naturally.
“Let anyone with ears listen!”
Amen.
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