Roy's sermon on the parable of the sower, 12th July 2026

July is a month in which three nations important to many of us remember freedom. For Americans, the 4th of July recalls independence and liberty. For the French, Bastille Day recalls revolution and liberté, égalité, fraternité. For the British, the story is less one dramatic revolution than a long and uneven growth of constitutional freedom: Magna Carta, Parliament, the Bill of Rights, and the insistence that power must be accountable and ordered toward the common good.

These are different stories. Each has its own courage, contradictions, and unfinished work. But perhaps they have this much in common: freedom is never simple, never complete, and never self-sustaining. Freedom is not achieved once and then safely possessed forever. It must be received, guarded, lived, and tended. That makes today’s Gospel especially apt, because Jesus gives us a picture not of a monument, declaration, or revolution, but of a sower going out to sow.

“Listen!” Jesus says. “A sower went out to sow.” The seed falls everywhere: on the path, on rocky ground, among thorns, and on good soil. Some is snatched away. Some springs up quickly but has no root. Some is choked. Some bears fruit, thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold. When Jesus explains the parable, he tells us that the seed is the word of the kingdom: the living word of God, God’s truth, mercy, justice, and call, planted in human hearts. The parable does not ask whether the sower is generous. The sower is wonderfully, almost recklessly generous. The seed is scattered everywhere. The question is: what kind of soil does the seed find? That is a question for each of us, and for communities, churches, and nations.

The story of freedom in any nation is mixed. There is courage and failure, promise and contradiction. Seeds planted in one generation may only begin to bear fruit in another. Jesus tells us that not every seed bears fruit in the same way. Some ground is hard, some shallow, some crowded with thorns. The hard path is the heart, or community, that can no longer receive. The rocky ground receives gladly, but without depth. The thorny ground may be the most familiar: anxiety, comfort, resentment, distraction, the desire simply not to be disturbed. And then there is the good soil. But good soil is not perfect soil. Any gardener knows that. Good soil has to be opened, worked, watered, cleared, and tended. Good soil is soil made ready to receive life. That is where Isaiah’s words come to us with such hope. God says that as rain and snow water the earth and make it fruitful, so shall the word that goes out from his mouth be. It shall not return empty.

After these weeks of canicule and the raging wildfires in France, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, we know something about dry ground. We know what it is to see the earth waiting for rain. Isaiah tells us that God’s word is like that rain. It softens, waters, and makes life possible again. Psalm 65 gives us the same image: God visits the earth and waters it, softens the ground, and blesses its increase.This is not a picture of human achievement alone. It is a picture of grace. The seed is God’s. The rain is God’s. The growth is God’s.

Yet we are not passive. Soil can be tended. Thorns can be cleared. Hard ground can be broken open. Roots can go deeper. And I wonder if that may be the word for us today — not only as individuals, but as a worshipping community. For we too are looking at fields. Some are familiar: the people already here, the worship we already share, the friendships already formed, the faith already planted in this place. These fields still need tending. No congregation, however faithful, can assume that growth will simply happen. The soil of our common life must still be watered by prayer, deepened by worship, opened by hospitality, and cleared of whatever thorns might choke the word among us. But there may also be other fields: people not yet gathered, conversations not yet begun, places where the word of the kingdom has not yet been sown by us. There may be those who would welcome worship, prayer, fellowship, or simply the knowledge that the Church has not forgotten them. There may be those who do not yet know that there is a place where they can hear the Scriptures, receive the Sacrament, and be reminded that they are precious and cherished children of God.

The question is not simply, “What do we want to do next?” Nor is it, “How do we preserve everything exactly as it has been?” The deeper question is: where has God already prepared the ground that God is already sowing, and how are we being invited to join in? That kind of discernment requires freedom — not merely the national freedom we all enjoy, but the freedom of the Spirit that continually beckons us forward. St. Paul writes today, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” No condemnation. That matters for a community as much as for an individual. We do not discern God’s future from fear. We do not ask these questions because we are condemned if we get something wrong. We do not look at the fields around us in panic, as if the kingdom depended entirely on our cleverness, our energy, or our control. We look because the Spirit of life has set us free. Free to listen. Free to wonder. Free to try. Free to try again, and again. Free to be patient. Free to let some seeds grow slowly. Free even to discover that some fields are not ours to sow, while others may be closer than we imagined. Christian freedom is not the freedom to do whatever we please. It is the freedom to live by the Spirit. The freedom to become fruitful. The freedom to receive God’s word and let it take root in us, so that through us it may also be sown for others.

And the fruit God seeks is not abstract. It looks like welcome, patience, courage without anxiety, truth spoken in love, and a willingness to make room. It looks like a community asking not only, “What serves our needs?” or “How do we not lose what we have already gained?” but also, “Who might God be calling us to serve?” That is why the Collect for today matters so much. We prayed: “Merciful God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as pass our understanding: pour into our hearts such love toward you.” Pour into our hearts. That is the language of soil and rain. The love of God is poured into us so that something may grow — something more than we could produce by effort alone.

So as we think about freedom this July, and as we think about our life together, let us resist both fear and haste.
The sower is still sowing. God’s word is still going forth. The rain of grace still falls. The Spirit still brings life and peace. And even in ground that has been hard, shallow, or choked with thorns, God can still bring forth fruit.
In a few moments we will come to the altar not because we have already borne all the fruit God desires, but because Christ feeds us, forgives us, and sends us out again. And when we leave this place, the questions will remain: What kind of soil are we becoming? What word of the kingdom is God sowing in us now? What fields may God be placing before us? And what seeds are we being called to sow — faithfully, generously, and without fear?

Freedom is not only something we inherit from the past. It is the seed Christ planted in those before us and now plants in us: freedom to stand firm in grace, to grow deep in faith, and to go forward in the Spirit into ever-widening fields, trusting that God will bring the harvest. So may the word of God take root in us. May the Spirit of life make us fruitful. And may the God of our pilgrimage refresh and sustain us as we go forward on our journey.