God calls persons of faith to be both sowers and seed. We “broadcast” the ways of God through our words and our deeds, scattering the good seed on the ground. Psalm 126 portrays the hopeful act of sowing:
Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.
On the way to the cross, Jesus taught that those who would follow him must also be sown with him. “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but it if dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:24). Things have to die in order for new life to come about—it is a paradox, yet the deepest truth about how things work in this finite creation. The death of Christ would bring about a community that could be sown with him in faithful self-giving.
There is no greater joy than fulfilling our calling in sharing and living the Gospel. We are both sowers and seed, and we never go out to sow unaccompanied, for God’s Spirit goes ahead of us, making the ground fertile that the seed might flourish. Further, we do not die to self without sharing our lives with all those for whom Christ himself was sown. As the old hymn of Basil Manly urges:
Morning and evening sow the seed; God’s grace the effort shall succeed,
Seedtimes of tears have oft been found with sheaves of joy and plenty crowned. Amen.
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