How does the Word of God take root in us?
When the prophet Isaiah speaks of the rain and snow that water the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, he is clear that human investment in the process is significant: God then gives seed to the one who sows, regenerative seed that farmers plant to produce an even greater yield. Likewise, God’s word requires human investment: my word shall not return to me void but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it. Humankind must be open to the word, taking it up, culling its seed, processing and replanting it with an eye to making something new. The Lucan refrain to Psalm 65 reminds us that the seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest: God generously prepares the land so that humankind may reap the bounty, even softening the fields, making them receptive to the seed that God will sow. And because God blesses its yield, the payoff is great, an abundant and overflowing harvest that brings great joy.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus uses the parable of the sower to make a similar point. Some seed falls on the path, other seed falls on rocky ground – and the resulting harvest (or lack thereof) depends on the setting. We are all in different places in life, but we have to be in a place where the seed can take root; our life circumstances are not incidental to how we take in God’s Word, and only those who are prepared to explore its meaning can come to know it with any sense of fullness. If we are not, we risk falling into what Paul in his Letter to the Romans, calls futility, the Latin root of which points to a leaky and unreliable vessel, useless or worthless, in other words, incapable of producing fruit. We, however, have the firstfruits of the Spirit as well as the Word of God as a source of redemption, the glory to be revealed for us – so long as we open to and invest in that Word, allowing it to take root in the rich soil of our hearts.
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