2 Corinthians 11.31 – 12.9

Luke 8.5 – 15

Let us note that the Sower sows His seed on the earth indiscriminately; His seed covers the whole earth. If the earth is the soul, then His seed falls on every soul. We find the same image in the Psalmist who likens the LORD to the Sun rising from the east as a bridegroom coming forth from His bridal chamber, and no one, it says, is hidden from His warmth (Ps 18/19.5-6). The Sower’s seed, then, is like the rays of the sun falling on the whole earth without distinction.

The Sower went out to sow, it says; and the Sower is the WORD of God, it says, and the WORD of God was incarnate. The Sower is therefore the Sun of Righteousness who ‘placed the Tabernacle of His Body in the sun’ (Ps 18/19.5). Drawing from another Psalm, the Sower is the God who bowed the heavens and came down and made darkness His secret place, and wrapped His Tabernacle, His Body that He received from His Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary Theotokos, around Him to become flesh. And when He ascended the Cross, the fountains of the waters appeared, the foundations of the world were laid bare (Ps 17/18.9-15), for He is the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13.8). The Sower went out to sow. The Sower emptied Himself and became man of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. He sowed His own Body in the midst of the earth (Ps 74.12); that is, He sowed Himself in the midst of our body and soul. He is the Resurrection and the Life, and He sowed Himself in the death of our ‘heart-hell’ (St Macarius the Egyptian). This is how the Sower’s Seed was sown indiscriminately over the whole earth; this is how it shone like rays of the sun on every kind of ground. And this is why, when He rose from the dead in the East and came forth from His Tomb as a Bridegroom in procession, no one was hidden from His warmth. For His warmth is His Resurrection that has destroyed by His death the death that had held every man captive.

This means that the power of God that is proclaimed in the Gospel of Christ’s Holy Church (Rom 1.16-17) is outside none of us. The power of the Gospel is the mystery of His Body risen from the dead, destroying death by His death. The power of the Gospel is outside none of us because it is the power of Jesus Christ risen from the dead sown as a seed in the earth of our body. The power of the Gospel is the mystery of Christ in you (Col 1.27); it is the power of Christ, the Resurrection and the Life (Jn 11.25) in you by virtue of His Incarnation of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and by virtue of His becoming absolutely one with us in His death on the Cross.

In Holy Baptism, Christ our God stripped you of the death and corruption that clothed you, and He clothed you in the glorious Robe of His own incorruptible Light and Life. You now live in Christ; Christ lives in you. You now live in hope. Hope now lives in you. Christ lives in your heart where you are deep, beyond all things. He lives as the ‘ontological’ fact of your being, beyond all your thoughts and ideas, beyond all your feelings and emotions and moods, beyond all your bodily conditions. His living in you, that is, is not subject to what you are thinking or feeling. It is a fact, the only ‘new’ fact that has ever been, for it is now the new ground of your being.

With this, we uncover the ‘good earth’ that is in each and every one of us; it is the good earth of our heart, our spirit, our true self that lies deep, beyond any weeds or rocks that cover our soul. This good earth is the ‘new man’ of Christ risen from the dead that has been sown in the body of our ‘old man’ enslaved to death and corruption. This good earth lies very deep, beyond all the hurts and failures, all the disappointments, the betrayals, the abuses, the injustices, in short, all the evils that trample us underfoot and make us hard, indifferent, cynical, bitter and angry by the wayside.

In uncovering this good earth in us, our parable this morning is calling us to faith. Faith, says St Paul, is the substance of what’s hoped for; it is the proof, the ‘certain knowledge’ of ‘really real realities’ [pragmata] that are unseen (Heb 11.1). The unseen reality that is hoped for is the Heavenly City, whose builder and maker is God (Heb 11.10). It is the Kingdom of Heaven that is within you (Lk 17.21), whose pillar and foundation is the Church (I Tim 3.15) that is the Body of Christ (Eph 1.23) crucified and risen from the dead. And the Temple of that City, which is the Body of Christ, is built from the Cornerstone which is Christ buried in the ground and risen from the dead. The Cornerstone, which is Christ is in you, He is in ‘buried’ in your human nature. He is the Light of Divine Wisdom that shines in our heart (2 Cor 4.6), He is the Radiance of the Father’s Brilliance (Wisd 7.24) that cannot be extinguished (Jn 1.4).

From the vision of this biblical hope, we see faith as the gathering together of all our faculties, all our energies, our skills, our talents, our understanding, our desires and orienting our whole being, both our outer man and our inner man, toward the Sun rising in the East above the Heavenly City, the Jerusalem on high, the ‘Mother of us all’ (Gal 4.26). A man is made righteous, he is made alive in God, says St James by works and not by faith alone (Jm 2.24). And the work of faith by which we are made alive in God is repentance, the work of pulling out the weeds and removing the rocks from our soul to uncover the good earth that is deep within us. It is the same work described by St Paul as putting to death all that is earthly in us, all the idols of the passions that are killing us and choking us off from God. It is the work of digging beneath the surface to find the goodness that is innate to all of us, the godlikeness that is the very structure of our being, for we were created in the image of God, who is Christ. We were created in righteousness, in holiness. We were created for immortality (Wisd 2.23), not for death (Wisd 1.15); we were created in the image of Resurrection and life to be the image of God’s own eternity (Wisd 2.23).

The Seed of the Sower, the LORD explains to His disciples, is the WORD of God. And this WORD of God, says the God-seer Moses, ‘is not far off at all, nor is it too mysterious. It is near you, in your heart, so that you can do it’ (Dt 30.10-14). For the WORD of God is not far off because it is the Kingdom of God that is within you (Lk 17.21). And we can do it through faith; for faith is that innate capacity of our soul for the good. Faith is living for the Heavenly City that is within us, and not for the lusts of this world that is passing away. Faith is loving the God who first loved us. Faith is denying ourselves that we may follow this Christ God who emptied Himself in order to come down to us and to raise us from our graves and lead us up to the Heavenly City (Eze 37.12-14). Faith is pulling the weeds out of the earth of our soul, removing the rocks, and digging down beneath the ground of our soul that has been made hard from being trampled underfoot by all the afflictions of this life that is passing away, to find the ‘good earth’ that we all are beneath the weeds, the rocks, the hardened ground.

And as Moses says, this good earth that receives the seed of the WORD of God is near you, it is in your heart, and you can do it if you want to. It is not far off from you. It is not some esoteric, mysterious thing because you all know the good intuitively. We need but learn to listen to the Good who has become one with us in the deep of our heart, and who has revealed Himself to us visibly, audibly, tangibly in the beauty of His Church and in the beauty of His saints who are beacons of divine light shining on the world so that all can see what it looks like to be truly human.

How would it change our life, how would it change our inner state if we were to make this faith the driving force of our life? If we were to make the Heavenly City what we are living for? We would be affixing our life to a hope that does not disappoint; we would be living for the Promise that delivers everything it promises – eternal life in the joy and peace, the warmth and compassion of the Sower who has come forth from the Tomb as a Bridegroom from His Bridal Chamber not for grand theater but because He longs to be longed for, He thirsts to be thirsted for, He loves to be loved, and He is seeking with the intense passion of a Loving Bridegroom His Bride, every human soul who is looking for Him as for her beloved Bridegroom. Amen!