Becoming the Good Soil

Sermon for Sexagesima (February 7), 2010

One of the great benefits of the Pre-Lenten Season, which we are in right now, is that it gives us a bit of time to think about what we’re going to do in terms of our spiritual exercise during Lent. During Lent, the Church tells us to practice more spiritual discipline than we commonly do during the rest of the year.

I think most of us know about “giving up something for Lent.” But we also need to take on something during Lent. Now, most of us are very busy, and the last thing we need is to add yet more activity to our already overburdened schedule. But what I’m talking about is not so much yet another activity as it is a rest from activity. It is setting aside some of our normal routine so that we can rest and engage in spiritual reading, meditation, and contemplation on the things of God: the life of Christ and the mysteries of our holy Christian faith. It is about fasting from some of the routine activities and pleasures of this life so that we can devote more time, energy, and focus to feasting on the truly delicious things of God.

“Man shall not live by bread alone,” Jesus told the devil in the wilderness, “but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” One of the greatest temptations mankind faces is the temptation to live “by bread alone.” It is, in other words, to try and live without God. You may think this temptation and the resulting sin are mostly confined to atheists, agnostics, and non-Christians. But actually Christians and even good Anglicans fall into the sin of trying to live by bread alone. We do this when we fail to make time for meditation and contemplation of the truths of our holy faith.

“It is not the bee’s touching on the flowers that gathers the honey, but her abiding for a time upon them, and drawing out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on Divine truth, that will prove the choicest, strongest Christian.” So wrote Joseph Hall, the Bishop of Norwich in England during the mid-17th century. We need to learn how to meditate on Divine truth, to think deeply and prayerfully on God and the savings truths of our most holy faith.

In our Gospel reading for today, we heard Jesus’ parable of the Sower and the seed. The seed, which Jesus said is the word of God, was scattered in four different kinds of soils. But only one of those soils actually sustained the budding plant to the point that it yielded fruit. The seed in the other three soils failed.

This parable teaches us that there are two parts to the Gospel. The first part is the proclamation or broadcasting of that good news. The second part is what people do, how they respond, to that message. For some, the Gospel never has a chance; it is rejected immediately. For others, the word takes root, but there’s nothing sustaining it once it starts to grow, and so it withers and dies. For a third group, the Gospel takes root and even grows, but it gets crowded out by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and so it never comes to maturity. Only the fourth group—the good soil—actually takes in the seed, nurtures it, and enables the seed to bear fruit.

Naturally, we want to be the good soil that enables the word of God which has been implanted in us through baptism to bear forth fruit. As Jesus pointed out in the parable of the fig tree, plants that don’t bear fruit—like salt that has lost its savor—are worthless and deserve to be cut down.

So let’s resolve to use the coming Lenten season as a time to cultivate and nourish our souls through spiritual disciplines—prayer, meditation, and contemplation of the rich mercies of God and of our salvation through the blood of Jesus shed on the cross at Calvary. In this way, we can help prepare our hearts to be the good soil that brings forth fruit a hundredfold.