Pentecost 4, Proper 10 Sermon, July 10, 2011
M ost of us when we hear this Gospel begin to think of the different gradations of soil in a qualified way, in a way that places us in one particular location, while at the same time placing others in a less pleasant location or more pleasant location. We can identify people in our lives who are caught up on the path and do not respond to the Word of God. We can identify people in our lives who fall on the rocky ground and respond to the Word but have no sustainability and fall away fast. We can also identify people in our lives who we think are saintly, phenomenal people who do so much good it is clear to us that they have fallen on fertile soil and are responding in their vocation fully to the Word of God in their midst. It is kind of a natural process, to try to compartmentalize people in certain ways, to look at folks and attempt to determine their worth based on our understandings of the moral implications of the Gospel as told by Jesus, contrasted with their behavior and