Imitating to grow

from Helen

Our gospel reading today (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23) had in it the story of the sower and his seed. It is such a well known parable. In the parable we hear of the sower who was not very precise in the way that he sowed the seed. If you think about it, one of the things that we can pick up from the parable is that not everyone is good at sowing seed. On the basis of trying to open a new box of rice krispies without them going everywhere I know that I would have been pretty bad at sowing seed. 

Of course this wasn’t the main point of the parable. The main point was what happened next to the seed. We heard that the seed that fell on the path got eaten up by birds, the seed that fell on rocky soil did not have enough depth to grow, the seed that fell on thorns got choked and then the seed that fell on the good soil grew. 

The parable was explaining how we can grow in our faith, how we can be good disciples. To be a disciple is to follow, to learn from our leader. To keep going and not to be tempted away by other things. 

I was reminiscing the other day, I think relaxing on holiday can do that to me sometimes. Anyway, I was thinking back to when I was 11. I felt very grown up at 11 and even had a celebrity who I wanted to be like. You see at the age of 11 I thought that the person who had everything sorted out in the world was…. Wait for it….. Kylie Minogue. Now this was not just because she could sing well, appear in Neighbours, snuggle up to Jason Donovan, but because she had amazing hair. Her hair curled and not just that it was blonde… if I looked like her then nobody would notice the red hair that at the time I hated. 

The closest I could get was to curl my hair and try to imitate her. The more you try to be like someone the more you become like them. I did not change my accent but I did do a convincing dance to the locomotion which she re-released. My current hair style of curls is not a late imitation of 1989 Kylie but I do have the curls now at least !

It is the same for us as disciples,  the more we know about God, the more we become like Him.

The more like God we become then the more we will help each other and the more we do this, the more we grow as we naturally exuberate something of God and His love to the world around us.

Following God demands a lot of us, for us to stay in good soil requires work but it is work that is all about our relationship with God. If we want to be like someone, if we want to imitate them, then we will want to spend as much time with them as we can.

One of the ways we can do this is by reading our Bibles more. We can find out so much more about God and how we can imitate Him by reading our Bibles. I have got with me today some notes that offer daily reflections on Bible passages that will help us to read our Bible more. If you would like to use them please take one with you. The notes are called, ‘Our Daily Bread’.’ Ian and I have been using them for a number of years and we find them very helpful. It is a way to find out more about God and to reflect on passages from the Bible. 

Another way that we can find out more about God is to talk to one another about God and to pray together. There will be lots of different things happening in the parish and ministry area which will help you. We aren’t disciples alone, we aren’t seed on a path which is left abandoned, we aren’t people who are under attack, we are a group of followers in this place and we are to be here to help one another. 

Being a disciple, being seed that grows means growing more like Jesus. Our Diocese has a vision of gathering, growing and going. We aren’t just people who gather every week, we are people who need to grow more and more into the likeness of the one we follow and then we are to go out and tell people about the good news of Jesus. 

It is not easy to be a disciple, it is a life choice, a choice that offers everything back to God, knowing that through doing this we gain so much more as we gain a life full of the love of God.  The good seed fell on good soil and grew. We as followers of Jesus are good seed, and by being good disciples we can grow too.

St.Ignatius, was a man who lived in the fifteenth century, whose parents wanted him to be a priest, he was actually more interested in women, fighting, and fashionable clothing. (huh-typical man !!)  After an accident he started to dream that Jesus was talking to Him, and he decided that to be a soldier for Christ, a follower, was much more glamorous than his previous wild living, and he decided that whilst it was a harder road to be a disciple it was a road worth travelling. He founded the Jesuit order of monks. As well as this his thoughts on prayer still encourage people today in their prayer life. 

He wrote a prayer about following Jesus and offering our lives to Him. A prayer which reminds us of the life that we need to live in order to be good seed, on good soil, growing in the love of God. I would like to finish with this prayer, so let us pray:-

Lord, teach me to be generous.

Teach me to serve as you deserve;

To give and not to count the cost,

To fight and not to heed the wounds,

To toil and not to seek for rest,

To labour and not to ask for any reward

Save that of knowing that I do your holy will. AMEN