Yielding a gazillion-fold

In life, progress rarely happens in a straight, uninterrupted line.  Even when things seem to be going our way, we often make two steps forward only to find ourselves retracing one step back.  And when things aren’t going so well, we may even find ourselves making one step up only to fall two steps down.  On my really bad days, I am like the White Rabbit in Wonderland – the hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

Today’s readings offer us hope that such is not to be our ultimate fate.  Isaiah states that as certainly as the rains water the earth, God’s word will prevail. (Is 55:10-11)  Paul insists, that despite our creaturely limitations, despite the sufferings which we endure, salvation and glory beyond our wildest imaginings is the ultimate fate of the children of God. (Rom 8:18-23)  And Jesus takes our normal experience and turns it on its ear. (Mt 13:1-9)

For Jesus, even three steps back does not matter.  When we take one step forward living in the fertile ground of God’s word, of God’s way, that one step is worth thirty, sixty, or even one hundred steps.  To put this in the perspective of Jesus’ listeners, they would have known that typically, the yield for the well-planted seed would have been seven or eight times, perhaps ten times at the outside.  Jesus is promising a yield that is beyond imagination.  If Jesus related this story to us today, he might claim that the fertile ground yielded a gazillion-fold.

So where do we find this fertile ground, this agent of the gazillion-fold yield.  For Isaiah, it is in God’s word, in Paul, it is the revelation of God.  There are saying the same thing.  The fertile ground is Jesus, the Word of God, the perfect revelations of God.  When we walk with Jesus, our lives bear abundant fruit.

Yet, our culture insists that God or Jesus is not the answer.  I find myself depending on my own hard work, my financial success, scientific advances, and self-righteousness to build security, happiness, and the good life.

On the hard-packed path where I often find myself, I think that I can protect what I own by shutting myself off from those who I see as taking from me.  I pass laws and build walls to keep these people from coming into my life, from invading my space.  Yet in jealously protecting what I consider mine, my heart becomes as hard as the path I walk.  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.

Among the thorns, I believe that in my anger, as righteous as I feel it to be, I can strike out at others in revenge for what they have done to me or mine.  Yet my vengeance becomes another’s motivation to strike me even harder.  As I sow the wind, I reap the whirlwind.  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

In rocky soil, I buy into the theory that creating bigger and better weapons will keep others from using weapons against us.  I think that we can make weapons “smart” enough that only those who we intend to kill are killed.  Yet wars persist; innocent people die.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

This is the futility of our creatureliness; this is the hard-packed, rocky and thorny soil that yields nothing but more agony and pain.  There is another way and we do not have to look far back in history to see those who have shown us that way, whose lives have been lived not on the fast lane but in the fertile land.

Dorothy Day worked for most of her adult life in destitution, struggling to live a life of non-violence, love, and trust in the God who gives life.  As a result, many thousands are fed each day and many thousands find the only warm bed they know in the houses of hospitality which Dorothy Day founded or inspired.

Dr. Martin Luther King looked the evil of racism in the face and offered peaceful resistance, a vision of brotherhood, and his very life.  As a result, millions of minds have been changed, a nation was moved.

Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela fought apartheid not with terrorism but with God’s word, and today apartheid in South Africa is but a bad memory; today South Africa is a nation struggling to uncover the brutal truth of its past, to reconcile those who were once enemies.

Pope St. John Paul II, by letting God’s love and mercy show through him, helped to gain freedom for many, many millions who had lived under the oppression of Soviet rule.

Each one of us has the same power that enabled Dorothy Day, Dr. King, Bishop Tutu, Mr. Mandela and Pope St. John Paul to accomplish great things.  God will work through each one of us, but only if we allow Him to do so.  Trust in God, live in the fertile soil of Jesus, his Word, and we, too, shall yield thirty-fold, sixty-fold, one hundred-fold…perhaps even a gazillion-fold.