Soon May it Come

Piers Linley O.P.

10 July 2005
Fifteenth Sunday of the Year (A)

fr Piers Linley imagines how the preaching of Christ might look to a Galilean farmer.

I live here in Galilee -- in an insignificant little village called Nazareth. We are all peasants here. It's very difficult to scratch a living around here -- our land isn't of the best. That was taken over years ago by the local bigwig in Sepphoris, the neighbouring town. I'm one of the lucky ones - I've got my ancestral plot still.

I sow my seed and then afterwards plough it all in. My land is on the hillside -- not good soil. By no means all the seed germinates. It's a lottery. How big will my crop be? Fourfold perhaps? Sixfold would be real bumper harvest. But that is what I need this year; anything else will be a disaster.

Last year - a very bad drought - so a very poor crop. I put seedcorn aside for this year as usual. But we were forced to eat some of it to avoid starvation. Taxes are just as high as ever -- Herod's extortionists and the Temple take more than half of what I grow. So when I came to sow this year --nowhere near enough seedcorn for me to scatter.

So what I do this year? No choice. I had to go to town -- see the local bigwig -- borrow seed from him -- BUT at a price -- steep price -- and I had to mortgage my field to him as security. And he is a man who gets a bumper crop from his more fertile land -- he enlarges his barns and stockpile it to pressurise us.

So I need a bumper harvest or the mortgage will be foreclosed -- I'll lose my land. As a tenant I would never get out of debt. This happened to my neighbour -- he lost his land three years ago -- he struggled on as a tenant -- the drought last year pushed him so far into debt that the landlord mercilessly sold him and his family into slavery. This sort of thing happens all the time! So a bumper crop is my only hope.

I usually sing a psalm while I'm sowing: a prayer for a bumper harvest .

They go out, they go out, full of tears, carrying seed for the sowing:

They come back, they come back, full of song, carrying their sheaves.

It sticks in my throat this year.

There is a man going the rounds -- he is a local -- I know him well. Jesus -- a good name that -- it means "God saves" -- his dad was Joseph and he used to be a carpenter and a jobbing builder. Jesus got a reputation around the villages for healing people -- he casts out demons as well -- speaks beautifully and eloquently and uses stories which are hard to understand. He knows from the inside what a struggle we his fellow peasants have.

He has gone off round the villages visiting their Sabbath assemblies. We have our doubts about Jesus -- he has got above himself -- he's only a village workman after all. When he was here last we didn't receive him very graciously and he didn't heal any of us. A visitor from the next village told me he'd heard Jesus talking the other day -- telling a story about sowing -- a story about someone rather like me.

BUT as Jesus tells the story when God delivers us from our bondage into the kingdom of heaven -- that's what Jesus calls it -- I'm not sure what he means -- the yield will be fantastic -- not just a bumper crop -- but thirtyfold, sixtyfold, even a hundredfold.

Now that -- it wouldn't just get me out of my immediate debt -- that kind of yield would set me up securely. If what Jesus prophesies comes true -- we peasants wouldn't be trapped in this cycle of debt and dispossession -- we would have justice -- the kingdom of heaven Jesus calls it -- soon may it come and long may it reign -- perhaps this Jesus does bring it -- I hope so. We think his disciples are a trifle mad. But perhaps they are the wise ones!

fr. Piers Linley is Parish Priest of the Parish of the Annunciation, Woodchester.

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© Text 2005 Piers Linley O.P.
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