15th SUNDAY – A

Theme:  Preaching is a two-way process. 

It implies activity on the part of both the speaker and the listener.  The obligation of the preacher is obvious to all.  Not so carefully understood is that the listener must be working with the preacher, actively seeking a relationship between his own life and what is being said.  Only thus can the Word of God bear fruit through the word of man.

The Spirit of God is working through and in both the preacher and the hearer of the Gospel message.

Introduction:  The pulpit personality, technique, and manners of a preacher, his power, persuasive or otherwise, are not infrequently discussed by the laity: a harmless, often humorous pastime demonstrating (perhaps among other things) the solid interest our people have in good sermons/homilies.  But listeners should not thereby imagine that it is only the preacher who has an active role in the sermon process: they too, have their part to play, and if they do not play it actively and creatively, no homily, even the best, can be effective in the spiritual sense.

Point 1: The preacher has a divine commission to proclaim the Word of God.  It may be thought that, in turning to his own discourse after proclaiming the gospel, the priest or deacon temporarily divests himself of his primary role and assumes the lesser status of a more or less expert commentator.  But this is the opposite of the truth.  It is precisely as ordained minister that he rises to clarify the meaning and extend the implications of the sometimes obscure, difficult, even seemingly contradictory, but ever sacred, passages of the written Word.  One who listens in faith to the Scriptures authentically propounded by a man whose sacred charge is specifically to preach, must eventually, inevitably, penetrate to the heart of, and assimilate the mood and meaning of, the Savior’s teachings.

The preacher must do the best he can within his human limitations.  Yet every ordained preacher, whatever his age, talents, or maturity is divinely called to fulfill to his uttermost ability his always current and valid mandate to proclaim the Good News.

Point 2: The listener has his own spiritual obligation.  He must listen with attention and devotion, realizing that the Holy Spirit is now trying to communicate with him.  Hearing requires only a working ear; listening, an intent, energetic mind, eager to impregnate itself with the word being spoken.  Listeners always hear; the opposite cannot be said.  The audiometer measures hearing; listening is gauged by an informed mind.

The listener should not assume that it is the function of the preacher to entertain him; should not challenge the preacher to interest him, should not sit back, fold his arms, and wait to be aroused.  It is not the preacher’s job to arouse him, but his own God-given obligation to arouse himself.  This listener’s responsibility in this matter must not be unfairly shifted to the preacher.

Perhaps there may be an analogy here between a professor and a student.  If the professor is teaching an essential course, it will not do for the student to blame his failure of the course on the professor’s dullness.  A student’s personal evaluation of the professor is irrelevant to the fact that the student flunked / failed.

Point 3: An effective communication process is a two-way process, the two elements functioning simultaneously.  The preacher, according to one respected authority, must be in pain to bring his idea to birth in the mind of the listener; he must be deeply concerned, even troubled, to express his thought so purely, so vitally, so completely, that it cannot be misconstrued.  The listener, conversely, must himself struggle for the idea, stretching out, as it were, to capture the meaning of the words as they fall from the preacher’s tongue and actively helping to build them for himself into a message of relevance to his own life.  The listener can thus make up for many a preacher’s deficiencies.

Conclusion: The purpose of sermonizing is to evaluate not only the spiritual but also the human quality of life.  And it can, and often does, accomplish this end, but only if the preacher and listener are contributing their proportionate share to the process.

QUESTIONS THAT MIGHT LEAD TO OTHER THOUGHTS

NO DESPAIR – FOR PREACHER / TEACHER

This parable has a double impact.  It was meant to have an impact on those who hear the word.  But it was equally designed to have an impact on those who preach the word.  Not only was it meant to say something to the listening crowds; it was also meant to say something to the inner circle of the disciples.

It is not difficult to see that in the hearts of the disciples there must sometimes have been a certain discouragement.  To them Jesus was everything, the wisest and the most wonderful of all.  But, humanly speaking, he had very little success.  The doors of the synagogue were shutting against him.  The leaders of orthodox religion were his bitterest critics and were obviously out to destroy him.  True, the crowds came to hear him, but there were so few who were really changed, and so many who came to reap the benefit of his healing power, and, who, when they had received it, went away and forgot.  There were so many who came to Jesus only for what they could get.  The disciples were faced with a situation in which Jesus seemed to rouse nothing but hostility in the leaders of the Church, and nothing but a very evanescent response in the crowd.  It is nothing surprising if in the hearts of the disciples there was sometimes deep disappointment.  What then does the parable say to the preacher who is discouraged?

Its lesson is clear - the harvest is sure.  For discouraged preachers of the word the lesson is in the climax of the parable, in the picture of the seed which brought forth abundant fruit.  Some seed may fall by the wayside and be snatched away by the birds; some seed may fall on the shallow ground and never come to maturity; some seed may fall among the thorns and be choked to death; but in spite of all that the harvest does come.  No farmer expects every single seed he sows to germinate and bring forth fruit.  He knows quite well that some will be blown away by the wind, and some will fall in places where it cannot grow; but that does not stop him sowing. Nor does it make him give up hope of the harvest.  The farmer sows in the confidence that, even if some of the seed is wasted, none the less the harvest will certainly come.

So then this is a parable of encouragement to those who sow the seed of the word.

There was no one else and it was a wild, wet day.  The funeral reached the cemetery; and at the gate there was a soldier waiting.  He was an officer, but on his raincoat there were no rank badges.  The soldier came to the graveside for the ceremony; when it was over he stepped forward and before the open grave swept his hand to a salute that might have been given to a king.  H. L. Gee walked away with this soldier, and as they walked, the wind blew the soldier's raincoat open to reveal the shoulder badges of a brigadier.

The brigadier said to Gee: "You will perhaps be wondering what I am doing here.  Years ago Thomas was my Sunday School teacher; I was a wild lad and a sore trial to him.  He never knew what he did for me, but I owe everything I am or will be to old Thomas, and today I had to come to salute him at the end."  Thomas did not know what he was doing.  No preacher or teacher ever does.  It is our task to sow the seed, and to leave the rest to God.

• When a man sows the seed, he must not look for quick results. There is never any haste in nature's growth.  It takes a long, long time before an acorn becomes an oak; and it may take a long, long time before the seed germinates in the heart of a man.  But often a word dropped into a man's heart in his boyhood lies dormant until some day it awakens and saves him from some great temptation or even preserves his soul from death.  We live in an age which looks for quick results, but in the sowing of the seed we must sow in patience and, in hope, and sometimes must leave the harvest to the years.