In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Beloved in Christ, today the Church sets before us two parables about sowing, one about sowing seed, and one about sowing generosity. Together, they reveal profound truths about the spiritual life and the economy of God’s kingdom.
In our Gospel, our Lord tells us of the sower casting seed – that mysterious and ancient gesture of the opened hand, scattering life across the earth. Some seed falls on the path, some on rocky ground, some among thorns, and some on good soil. But notice, dear ones, how the sower does not withhold the seed from any type of ground. He sows generously, abundantly, even wastefully by worldly standards.
This brings us to St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” The Apostle speaks here of material generosity, but the principle extends to all dimensions of the spiritual life.
Consider how these readings illuminate each other. The seed in the Gospel is the word of God – divine truth, divine life itself. The soil represents our hearts. But we are not merely passive recipients. We too are called to become sowers – to scatter abroad both material and spiritual goods with the same divine generosity that God shows to us.
Let me tell you about the farmer Dmitri who lived near the great Optina Monastery in Russia. During a time of famine, while other farmers hoarded their grain, Dmitri continued to share with beggars who came to his door. His neighbors warned him: “You’ll have nothing left to plant in spring!” But Dmitri remembered these words of Scripture and kept giving. When spring came, he had just enough seed left for his fields. That year, while many fields produced poorly, Dmitri’s harvest was abundant beyond measure. The elders of Optina would later say that the secret was not just the physical seed he planted, but how he had prepared the soil of his heart through generosity.
St. John Chrysostom tells us: “The earth returns what it receives, but heaven returns more than it receives.” This is the divine mathematics of generosity – we cannot outgive God. Yet how often do we, like the thorny ground, let the “cares and riches and pleasures of life” choke our impulse to give? How often do we calculate and measure our generosity rather than sowing with the abundant trust of the sower in the parable?
Paul assures us that “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.” Notice the word “all” repeated four times! The abundance God promises is not for our own security or pleasure, but that we might become like the sower – scattering the seeds of grace freely, generously, even to seemingly unpromising soil.
For this, beloved, is how God has dealt with us. When we were yet hard-packed soil, rocky ground, thorny earth – God did not withhold the seed of His word, the seed of His very Son. Christ was sown into the earth of our humanity, died and rose again, that we might become good soil bearing fruit a hundredfold.
As we prepare to receive Christ in the Holy Mysteries today, let us ask: What kind of soil will He find in us? And how will we sow the grace we receive? Will we hold back, calculating the risk? Or will we sow bountifully – our resources, our love, our forgiveness, our very lives – trusting in the God who gives seed to the sower and bread for food?
For the one who gives us seed promises also to multiply it, not just for our own sustenance, but that we might become channels of His inexhaustible generosity to a hungry world.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Copyright © 2025 The Rev. Adrian Augustus. The Russian Orthodox Church of the Archangel Michael, Blacktown, NSW
