The Parable of the Sower

Berks County farm fields yielding a hundred-fold.

July 16^th   Fifteenth Sunday   Parable of the Sower  MT 13: 1-9

"A sower went out to sow the seed
 and birds came and ate some seed 
 the sun rose scorched other seed
 the thorns grew up and choked more seed
But some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. 

Despite some of the unpredictable weather of the past spring, the corn and soybean crops are doing well out in Wernersville where I live and in other western parts of Berks County with its careful soil management.   The sixty thousand farms in Pennsylvania generate over $7 billion a year in annual sales.   So different from the basic subsistence farming in the time of Jesus! 

The one thing that the farmer cannot control is the weather.  Poor weather will stunt the crops and affect the yield.  Should Jesus want to tell the parable today, he would talk not about soil but about the weather......especially about the weather in Africa where drought abetted by conflicts has raised the specter of hunger and starvation for millions all across central Africa from parts of Nigeria to east and south  into Mozambique.

Still it is difficult for us who are not farmers and get our daily rations at the supermarket to have the same sense of concern that a farmer might have looking over his crops in fields that have been for him a source of great care and worry.   We city and suburban slickers must find that experience elsewhere.   In my own case I recall various experiences with nature.... 

These two fortunately in a favorable climate:  I reach back to my own childhood amazement at some of the simple things of nature; the blue eggs in a nest that I saw in the midst of some tree branches and the first fish one summer morning that I caught on my own.   It was a simple sunfish younger and more innocent than I at age nine.  (Photo provides an example!)  My family was visiting my aunt at a small cottage with a dock on Trout Lake in the nearby Poconos.    I carried the small fish right into the kitchen and insisted that I should eat it.    Perhaps I thought the fish ought to have the dignity of giving its life for some purpose.   My mother humored me, helped me dress the little creature, got out some butter and a frying pan and I had an early lunch.   I grew up in a land of plenty.

Please God, continue to help us provide for one another.    Rain down, rain down.....