Seeds and Earthlings

JMJ
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The Readings for the 15th Sunday, Tempus per Annum

“My word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.”

Isaiah 55:11

HOW OFTEN ARE WE ASKED in homilies “what kind of dirt are you”? The seed is the word of God and it can fall on differing dirts… We all want to be the right sort of dirt. A good rhetorician can, depending on his tack, make you feel good about your sort of dirt – and not being their sort of dirt; alternatively he can make you feel bad about your dirt and greatly desirous to be like someone else.

The Gospel text can be read to mean that sometimes the Word falls in places where it does nothing. But the passage from Isaiah say that’s not possible at all. The Father’s word, that is Jesus, will not return to the Father void. At all. Is there another way to read this?

In the beginning God makes man from the dust of the earth and gives him the breath of life. The word adam in Genesis, is not a name but a description: it means “earth”. Humanity is made from dirt. We are all dirt. Even in other languages “human” comes from the word “humus” meaning a type of soil or else a really tasty dip made from garbanzo beans. But in this case, soil. We are dirt. In fact, in the Epistle of Barnabas, §6, says: Mankind is earth that suffers: for of the face of the earth was the molding of Adam. The Greek uses the word πάσχοῦσα paschousa for “suffer”. It doesn’t mean “get’s beat up” but rather “undergoes”. The clay could be said to “suffer” at the hands of the potter. We are clay in the hands of God – creatures of earth. To say sons of Adam, is to say “earthlings”. Ben Adam, Son of Adam, in modern Hebrew, just means “person”: son of earth. Dirt.

We are all dirt – earth that is undergoing something in the hands of God.

So what type of dirt are you?

The Gospel gives us four types – the path itself, hard and compacted; rocky, shallow soil; thorny ground; and, finally, good soil. All of them, however, are adam, dirt.

Let me suggest that all of us are all types of soil: we all have rich, fertile loam into which the seeds of the Word fall and grow. But we all also have thorns that distract us from the Word and shallow soil where things grow and die. We also have hard, compacted soil that does nothing. We might visit these soils in our heart with a very good examination of conscience: there are places where we all let the Church’s teaching take root. Each one of us will differ in our gifts here: for one the Church’s social doctrines may call out. For another Laudato Si make speak deeply. One may find oneself feed deeply by the writings of St Thomas or St Theresa. One may take comfort in the sacraments. But those same ones, perhaps, will find that other things in their lives are off-limits: maybe social justice strikes a chord, but the Church’s teachings on human sexuality find no place to take root. Stewardship of the earth and other resources makes perfect sense but a woman has a right to make her own healthcare decisions – even killing her baby. The Sacraments are wonderful, says a third, but the social teachings and implications of the faith have no roots in their lives.

Where are we on the spectrum? Is anyone 100%? Were even the saints? The difference is that when the saints found compacted dirt, they prayed over it, they let God’s rains come upon it, they tilled it with grace, and fertilized it with penitence. They worked with the sower of the seeds until even that patch of earth was ready to be fruitful.

I know the Gospels are each written in a different context, but Matthew’s word for the compacted dirt in the “road” is ὁδός hodos. It’s the same word John uses when Jesus says, “I am the way.” The Holy Spirit, the one author of the Scriptures, but that word in both places. If we let the sower work on that compacted dirt it can become (just like our crosses and even our confessed sins) Jesus himself in our life. Jesus wants all of your life – even the part that isn’t fertile, especially the part that isn’t.

He wants to turn that into your very special way to himself. He wants to turn you, earthling, into a Son of God.

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Huw Raphael

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