28 Jul Sermon for the 6th Sunday after Trinity, Year A

The Community here at Mucknell is, as with any group, made up of diverse individuals with varying opinions on just about everything! As such, sermons posted on our website represent the ideas of the preachers who wrote and delivered them, not necessarily those of the entire Community.

Sunday 12th July, 2026

Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119: 105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 

Our Western world’s way of thinking has been influenced hugely by the scientific view.  Here, we stand back and ask questions of the world around us, trying (as far as we can) to be neutral observers.  “I wonder why so-and-so happens?” (Classically apples falling out of trees.)  We formulate a theory: “Maybe something pushes apples down, or maybe something pulls apples down, or maybe there is something inherent in apples – the pips maybe – that makes them attractive to soil.”  Then we ask questions of the world in the light of that theory to see if our ideas pan out.  If so, then – we conclude – the world conforms to our theory.

This kind of thinking tends to narrow what it is possible, and acceptable, to believe.  We are left with those things that can be proven by rational thought and experimentation…And we seem to have lost, at least to some extent, the ability to see the meaning of things.  Even asking if there is meaning, can sound ludicrous.  Quoting a Danish philosopher and anthropologist Justi Andreassen I was reading the other day:

“Modernity has not only made certain doctrines difficult to defend. It has made certain sights difficult to see.” 

He was talking about how our ancestors used to see and understand the world:

 “Faith was not a theory to be imposed on a neutral world.” 

“…belief followed perception. Not the other way around.” 

He is suggesting that there is more to sitting under an apple tree than (just) Newton’s theory of gravity alone.

We are in danger of losing this important way to see.  We might need to reclaim that ability to see meaning in things.  It could be vital, in our technological and artificial world, to our ability to be fully human, as God created us to be.  The Church and church people have a vital role holding on to meaning.

When we read today’s Gospel, we know that Jesus’ story is not about sowing and growing.  We know it is about us, before ever Jesus ever gives the explanation.  The seed sown is all the same seed wherever it lands.  All people all have the ability to respond to God’s life within them,

to respond to God’s creation around them, and to God’s Spirit as that Spirit touches them (in words, actions, nature, thought, art, conversation, shared joys and tragedies).  If all someone sees is the ordinary, the surface, a good story or theory, the words – or The Word – will not take root in their life.  Like a hard-trodden path.  If all someone sees is the easy bits, the instant rush of enthusiasm, then difficulties and hardships will knock them off course. Like rocky ground with limited depth of soil (no roots of perseverance as our reading at Office of Readings this morning put it).  If all someone sees is personal gain, “What I can get out of it…” then the lure of wealth, and fame, and feeling good by easier means will take priority.  Like choking thorns and weeds.

If, however, we can see more than the superficial, more than the offer of sins forgiven, beyond personal benefits, to a gift that, because it cost everything, is worth giving everything for, then we have a way to live by – a way of joy, peace light hope.  All of us have the potential for this growth and life, for this deeper and more penetrating way of seeing that changes everything.  If we are not looking for God, we may not see God.

Take 2 examples of ordinary(ish!) human beings: Jacob and Esau.  Jacob – a crafty, cheating, conniving little sneak; self-promoting, and driven solely by ambition.  But a quiet thinker also.  Esau – fickle, easily swayed, shortsighted, quick to anger; driven by bodily needs – with a liking for lentils!  But a highly skilled expert in his field as a hunter.  They did not look like very promising material, but both had the potential to see, and to be, different.

We don’t get to hear much of Esau in the Bible.  But Jacob, fleeing from Esau’s wrath when he cheats him of his birthright, learns a lot in his life.  The cheat gets cheated and out-manoeuvred by his father-in-law. More than once.  He has lots of time for quiet, disciplined reflection and much thinking.  Out of the initial situation of fury and flight, through prayer and wrestling with God, Jacob comes to reconciliation with his brother and each goes their separate way in peace to found dynasties.  From the most unpromising start, the brothers have time to think, and to learn to see things differently. Then there comes potential and new life.  Jacob (and probably Esau too, given they way he embraces Jacob) learned to do what Justi Andresen says, “Inhabit the world with disciplined attention”.  That is what he was discovering as he wrestles with God at Jabbock.  It is the same world it was before and that everyone else lives in, but we can come to a way of seeing that has the potential do more.

St Paul says something similar in the letter to the Romans.  We all have potential to respond to the Spirit.  Many of us get stuck at the point of keep in the rules.  The Law of the ancient Israelites was not itself bad.  It was just that it was very hard to keep it all the time.  Human beings need rules, but they need more than rules to enable them to keep the rules.  They need to see differently.  St Paul says:

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  

The superficial – the ordinary, the good times, the wealth and fame – these are not necessarily exactly bad, but they are merely ends in themselves.  Look further and see more, urges Paul – 

let the Spirit, let the awareness of God’s being around, take the driving seat and you will see and act differently. Your options will seem either more (to the point of infinite), or perhaps the opposite – limited by inner conviction to the point of self-giving.  You will want to behave in new ways.

Like the former poacher in Uganda, who initially tried to reform by growing coffee.  When he couldn’t make a profit, he didn’t give up.  He banded together with other reformed poachers and persuaded aid agencies and the government to help them market their coffee better, and to set up more projects to persuade poachers to farm, or keep bees, or work on water and sanitation projects, 

rather than poach native wildlife.  He saw the world differently. Looked deeper.

Like the daughter of an immigrant Italian family in Melbourne Australia, who established pop-up cookery classes run by and for refugees and asylum seekers.  She saw that food is vital to meeting and sharing in any culture and that integration into a new culture could be smoothed by shared meals, sharing skills and training, and meeting others over cooking and consuming meals.  The project trains refuges and asylum seekers to hold pop-up cookery classes in homes, work places, community centres, for which they sell tickets to fund their training.  Local people buying the tickets get to meet refugees, learn about their culture and share a delicious meal.

These are projects far away, born of someone seeing a need, seeing possibility and responding.  Seeing further.  But I am also talking about one’s heart being touched, about attitudes and inner convictions, driving philosophies and dispositions – the things of the Spirit that enable us to live out the good things we want to do, directing the inner choices in life.

Like the young woman who might have chosen to stay at home when her friend was in crisis, and, quite legitimately, take care of her young family.  That would be the letter of the law and would be considered good and right and proper.  But she chose instead to spend some several weeks moving in to help her friend as his partner died of cancer.  She said (seeing beyond the superficial, the ordinary), “I want my children to grow up knowing that this is what friendship is and does.”  She didn’t abandon her children.  They had care.  She wanted more for them than just good care.  She could see that her own actions of caring for a real someone (reaching beyond the immediate nuclear family) was a way to show them this.  She didn’t explain it or tell them about it.  She showed them by doing it.  An ordinary Mum doing an extraordinary thing, because she saw more deeply.

In each story, the people went beyond the superficial, beyond the good they had found for themselves, to a kind of lived joy.

So what is God guiding us to see this week?  When God’s seeds land in our soil, cross our paths,

hit our stones, and nestle into our weeds this week, what will we do with them?  Let them be, which isn’t necessarily all bad?  Or help them grow and bring new life, which is risky, and unusual, and challenges and changes the world around us?

Will we see only falling apples, or a growing tree, and expanse of sky, sunlit energy, life?  And then say to someone else, “Look!  See!”

Sr. Alison

Sower went out to sow, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://act.library.vanderbilt.edu/artworks/55021 [retrieved July 28, 2026]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feargal/5765705109/.