The same remark, word for word, carries one person and bounces off the other. Why that is, a prophet and a sower negotiate this Sunday.
This Sunday's readings begin with the weather. In the prophet Isaiah, rain and snow come down from the sky and do not return there without watering the earth. The watered earth sends up shoots, gives seed and bread. And so, says the prophet, it is with the word: It does not return empty; it accomplishes what it was sent to do. An image of perfect confidence. The effect dwells in the word itself, as watering dwells in the rain.
Four texts are heard this Sunday in every Catholic congregation, the same ones everywhere; this is the first. Nobody picked it for this week; the lectionary fixed it decades in advance, the same for all. It does not ask what ground it will fall on. The entries in this series each stand on their own, but they know one another. We read the texts as an old testimony to how people have negotiated their life together, and we listen for what comes across.
The psalm (Psalm 65) stays with the weather and gives thanks: The land is watered, the valleys stand full of grain. Here speak those with whom it arrived. Then the Gospel (Matthew 13) tells of the sower. A sower sows, generously, without selection. Some falls on the path, and the birds eat it. Some on rocky ground; it springs up quickly and withers, having no root. Some among the thorns, which choke it. Only the fourth part falls on good soil and bears fruit, a hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold. Three times it is lost; once it bears beyond all measure. A moment ago Isaiah promised that the word does not return empty. The sower has counted.
One could smooth the contradiction over. One can also let it work. If Isaiah and the sower are both to be right, the effect does not lie in the word, or there would not be three lost grounds. Nor does it lie in the soil alone, for without seed the best land bears nothing. It lies in the meeting.
Everyone knows this from close up. The same remark, word for word, said to two people: "I can see what you have built here." It carries one of them through the next month; off the other it bounces as off rock. It was not the sentence, and it was not the goodwill of either. It was what the sentence fell on. A week ago it said here that encouragement binds only when it is accepted. Taking it up is something the invited must do themselves. The sower speaks of what lies before that: of the ground that makes taking up possible in the first place. Reaching out is one's own act; whether one can reach out depends on a ground one did not make alone. This week names the condition of the last.
The long version of the Gospel contains sentences that do not fit. The disciples ask why he speaks in parables, and the answer divides: To you it is given to understand the mysteries; to them it is not. To anyone who has, more will be given, and he will have in abundance; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away. That sounds as if good ground were a possession: some have it, some do not, and the gap grows. (Whoever hears the short version on Sunday gets only the parable; these sentences are left out.) Yet four verses on, the answer quotes the prophet Isaiah once more: The heart of this people has grown hard. Grown means: there was a time before, and something made it hard. And the same sentence goes on: With their ears they hardly hear, and their eyes they have shut. The shutting is their own doing. How much of this is suffered and how much done, the parable does not decide.
I am staying with the ground. What ground needs in order to bear, the parable does not say; it says only that nothing works without it, and that nobody made their ground alone: paths are trodden, and some walk them themselves; thorns grow over, and some let them stand; fields are tended or given up. If a heart can grow hard, it was softer before. The gap, though, does not wait. More than that, this Sunday does not say.