“THE SAVING SEED”
Saint Luke 8: 4-15
Sexagesima: 16 February Anno Domini 2020
Father Jay Watson SSP
The Word worked. The Word sowed, gathered “much people…together…out of every city.”
The Word continued to work, “He spake a parable.”
A parable is a bunch of words that speak truth. But the parable then, and now, doesn’t save anyone from dying, forever damned to the fires of hell. Truth saves. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” [Jn. 8.32] The truth is not propositional statements that are verifiably accurate. The truth has a face, a voice, and true body and blood. The Truth is Christ. The Truth is The Seed—that which Is, but also that which germinates and brings forth, that which creates. “In the beginning was The Seed, and The Seed was with God, and The Seed was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was Life; and The Life was the Light of men” [Jn. 1. 1-4].
And lest anyone accuse that translation as unfaithful and misleading, Jesus Himself answers: “now the parable is this, The Seed is The Word of God.”
Jesus The Christ is The Word, He is The Seed. He speaks and it is. He sows and there are crops. He plants Himself in death and He sprouts forth in Life.
Truth: The Word is never any different. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The Seed is always The Seed—perfect, pure, effective. The Word works!
But what of the soil…the different types of ground?
All ground is poisoned by sin. Adam’s trespass made all ground, i.e. all people, as dead and radioactive as Fukishima ground zero. Your daily sins keep the ground, keep you, as diseased and dying as if you started every morning with a big glass of freshly squeezed ricin. So, the fruit that “sprang up…an hundredfold,” is not because it is special or better or more prayerful, hard-working, confessional, American, or sorrowful. The Seed which caused the fruit, the crop, the bounty, is what made the ground good. The Seed is Jesus. Jesus The Word is Good. Jesus is righteous.
Every single time you don’t love God perfectly, you soil the ground making it harder than concrete. Every single time you don’t love your neighbor perfectly, you make the soil of your heart hard as diamond and dry as sand. Let us go through each of the Ten Commandments now and show you your inner monster……well, you are here. You have confessed. You know.
So why? Why did The Seed, The Savior, make you the good ground, the fecund, fertile soil? Stop asking such juvenile and self-centered sinful questions. You don’t fixate over not being able to comprehend the nature of The Trinity, creation from nothing (creatio ex nihilo), The Incarnation, and the Sacramental Union; so, stop navel gazing over election. Instead of asking why me and not…[fill in the blank], give thanks for The Lord’s mercy. Instead of being angry at God for what you think is unfair—someone you know, have known, or will know, that has either apostatized, or blasphemed The Holy Ghost all the way to their death—praise The Lord’s love and sustenance. He will save whom He will save.
When you are honest, you can admit that as grateful as you are, by the power of The Holy Spirit, that your trespasses are forgiven, that your debts have been paid, that the indictment against you has been canceled, you would still give anything to see your dead Mother or Father, or child, or sister, or brother, or grandparent, again. You want our family back. You can’t give anything. But The Seed gives everything. The Seed has given you your family—The Communion of Saints, The Holy Christian Church, The Life of the world to come.
The Seed is not the end, the terminus. The Seed is The Alpha but also the Omega [Rev. 1.8]. The Seed is the author but also the finisher of your faith [Heb. 12.2]. The forgiveness of sins is not the end but the beginning. The Light brings Life. That life is eternal. The forgiveness of sins, won by Christ, delivers life and salvation. You look forward not to a piece of paper that says “acquittal” or “paid-in-full,” but rather to the “resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.” You will see your loved ones again. The Seed, The Word, The Christ, makes it so!
The Seed, Himself cultivates the dead soil by His farm-work, His agricultural sweat. He breaks apart the stone table of adamite, granite, ground by keeping the two stone tables. He waters the ground and brings it refreshing re-birth by the rain of righteous blood and the saving showers of sweat and Holy Water from His eyes and His side. He makes you likewise the moist and receptive potting soil by His aims and actions. The Seed is planted in you by the waters + of comfort at The Holy Font and continues to hydrate you in His Holy and Perfect Life given and shed. This all is because The Word of God is The Seed of God. Jesus, Man and God in One Christ, is planted on the Cross, planted in The Tomb, planted in the ground of death.
Jesus, to you: “verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” [Jn. 12.24]. Your Jesus was talking first about His glorification on the Tree of Calvary. Your Jesus is talking about His glorification on the tree of this altar where The Seed, for you, is again planted in you the good ground which He has made good by His Grace giving you receptive faith. Your faith is but the ready and waiting earth—New ADAM—to be Graced again by Jesus The Seed. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept” [1 Cor. 15.20].
The Word works.
He brings forth fruit an hundredfold.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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