Jesus teaches a parable about a sower and seeds; “some seed fell on a path and birds came to eat it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it. But some seed fell on deep soil, and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”
“Some seed fell on a path and birds came to eat it up” – ‘If we raise the minimum wage, unemployment will increase.’ Eating up people’s wages are stingy capitalists making record plunder and paying it to themselves for million dollar lives afforded by telling us money is scarce and lower wages are all they can afford. “Some seed fell on rocky ground where it had little soil to grow and was scorched by the sun for lack of roots” – ‘We have to make tough choices.’ Scorching people’s growth is among the easy choices capitalists make to monopolize the markets they own and to coordinate the price hikes they set that force people to decide if food will be scarce this week or rent money or both. “Some seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it” – ‘If we don’t decrease benefits on entitlement programs like Social Security, they will go bankrupt, and our grandchildren will pay for it.” Choking off the benefits people pay into people’s programs are entitled capitalists who are financial abusers claiming the right to tax people and tax their health to gain plunder from fracking, lithium mining, and autonomous drones. “Some seed fell on deep soil, and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold” – The deep soil of care, of fruitfulness a hundredfold, is family and friends who teach us how to risk love: how to share our wages in communion, how to grow together for our common good, how to breathe free for the healing benefit of all. Love flows from imperfect individuals willing to receive nature’s abundant gifts and share them with generations to come.
“Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and sleep, while it flows through the regions of the dark. It does not hold us, except we keep returning to its rich waters thirsty. We enter… into the commonwealth of its joy.” (Like The Water – Wendell Berry)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, flowing from us is abundant love.
Question: What has me feeling stingy, keeping things, skills, and even love scarce from others?
July 16, 2023 Gospel Matthew 13:1-23 Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time