Christian Fertilizer!

Homily for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

For us Christians, for us who try our best every day to follow Christ, I think it is important to remember, in the light of the gospel passage for this Sunday, that we are not the sowers, we are not the ground, rocky, thorny, fertile or otherwise, and we are not even the seed sown. But rather, I would like to suggest, we are the necessary fertilizer. We are that necessary element God has planted in this world to bring about growth and new life no matter where the seed has fallen.

I believe it is a given that God is the Sower and he is a reckless, careless, shockingly generous sower. He doesn’t walk amid well-designed straight furrows in a well-kept field. Rather he zigzags across messy fields cluttered with clotted earth and casts seed hither and yon. Where it falls, it falls. The Seed of the Divine is planted everywhere in this world and in everyone in this world. It isn’t our task to determine where the divine presence resides. Rather it is up to us to cultivate that same shockingly generous disposition toward the world and learn to see the divine seed planted everywhere and in everyone. Then we can go about the work of giving ourselves in such a way so that the seed can take root and grow. We are not the sowers, we are not the ground, we are not the seed rather we are the fertilizer for a world brimming with divine possibility.

This past week we celebrated the Feast of St. Benedict, a saint who is very near and dear to my own heart. And every July 11th I cannot help but to go back to a story, St. Gregory the Great relates, about the life of the Abbot Benedict. It seems one night Benedict was up late, in prayer, standing by his window when in a flash he saw the entire world drawn up before his eyes. He saw all things as one. He saw all things as God sees them. And, St. Gregory tells us, this vision was not the result of the world being made small but it was because Benedict’s heart was made large. Made large enough to contain, even if just for a moment, the entire world.

Now, if you are anything like me, you probably work just a little to hard every day to shrink the world down to some manageable size. We often fear the world, we fear its unpredictability, its violence, its uncertainty, its limitations and so we strive every day to make it small. We spend our lives verifying and categorizing: Who belongs. Who doesn’t. Who is in. Who is out. Who is worthy. Who is not. What is sacred. What is not. And we get it backwards again and again and again. We think our task is to shrink the world down, but it’s not. Our task is to let God enlarge our hearts so we can take in the entirety of the world, so we can see its oneness, and cultivate the presence of the Divine seed lying dormant in every nook and cranny, in every friendly and unfriendly face, in every bruised and battered heart.

That is the task of the Christian Spiritual Life: We don’t shrink the world to fit the smallness of our hearts. Rather we let God expand our hearts to take in the vastness of this world. A world shining with divine possibility.

Perhaps we might allow the greenness of this particular Colorado summer to awaken in us the ability to see the possibility and potential for life in all things and in all people. It is not for us to decide whether the Divine Seed is here or not. Whether it resides in this heart or not. But it is for us to learn how to accept that the Divine Sower has cast seed every which way. Our task is to learn to see it, trust it, and give ourselves in whatever way we can to fertilize it, cultivate it, and bring it to life.

We Christians, we are not the sowers. We are not the ground no matter how fertile, rocky, or thorny, we are not even the seed. We are the fertilizer. We are that necessary element God has planted in this world and entrusts to bring his radically scattered seeds to life.

Let us pray in our Eucharist today that we might stop shrinking the world to match the smallness of our hearts but rather let God expand our hearts to match the vastness of this world and the divine potential longing to be unleashed in every place and in every heart.