Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10A)
July 12, 2026
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Ashfield, MA
Today’s parable of the sower brings me back to a summer morning many years ago. I am standing in the hallway by the front door, trying to get everything organized so that my son will arrive on time for his first day of summer camp. The lunchbox is ready with the foods that this particular seven-year-old is likely to eat, there is a change of clothes in his bag, I have found the bottle of sunscreen, I am about to go look for a towel, and surely Sam's bathing suit is around here somewhere. Just then, Sam gets it into his head that he absolutely must change the shoelaces on his sneakers. The white ones simply won't do anymore: they are too long. What he needs, he tells me, are the brown shoelaces from his hiking shoes: they are just the right length for his sneakers. So here I am, standing with Sam in the hallway, the two of us peering down at one of his hiking shoes as I try to untie the knot and pull out the shoelace so that we can thread it into a sneaker. And suddenly I am overtaken by happiness. I have suddenly discovered that this is the most wonderful moment in the world. Here is this son of mine whom I love so much, all innocence and freckles; here are my hands, involved in a simple and useful task; here is a brand-new morning, full of infinite possibilities.
If someone were to come up to me and ask, “How big is God?” I suppose I could start waving my arms around and make big, sweeping gestures. I could answer, “Oh, God is huge, God fills the heavens and the earth, God is in everything, and everywhere, there is no way our minds can encompass the enormity of God!” And I would be right. But sometimes God is very small. Apparently, scientists have discovered a particle so small that it can pass right through planet Earth without bumping into anything, so small that it can pass right through our bodies without touching any part of us. Sometimes God can be that subtle and small, so small that we miss the presence of the Holy unless we’re paying close attention. As Jesus suggests in the parable of the sower, God can seem as tiny as a seed, as tiny as a moment in a hallway when you look at your son and are suddenly pierced by joy.
The long ago boy with a hiking shoe and a shoelace is now the father of a son.Are you looking for God? Well, says Jesus, don’t search for God only in the high dramas and the big deals. Look for God also in what is small – maybe in the slant of evening light, as the setting sun casts a glow across the field; or in the eyes of a friend, as you pause mid-conversation simply to gaze for a moment at the face of this person you love; or in the last, lingering note of a Bach aria as it trails off into silence. Look for God in that impulse to reach out to someone who is lonely or to give someone a helping hand. Look for God in those moments when an invisible Someone practically tugs at our sleeve, urging, “Wake up now and pay attention! I’m up to something here! Let’s go!” God is in the details, Jesus says to us today – in the small stuff, in the seeds.
What seeds is God sowing in you? What are the stirrings within you that signal the presence of this ridiculously exuberant farmer-God who flings seeds so lavishly through the cosmos, hoping that somewhere they will find an answering heart? Maybe you notice something restless inside you, some kind of insistent energy that is calling you to grow. Maybe you feel something coaxing you to open just a crack and to risk trusting that really and truly, you are loved just as you are. Maybe you feel a tiny invitation to take a chance, take a leap: there is something that needs to be done and you are the very person to do it. Maybe you feel a tug to forgive someone whom you’ve been refusing to let back into your heart, or maybe you feel nudged to speak a truth you’ve never quite had the courage to say out loud. Maybe on some ordinary day you notice a wave of gratitude for the sheer gift of being alive. These are just some of the many seeds that God sows at every moment.
Here’s a true story about a seed. Once there a lawyer who was a good lawyer – actually, a very good lawyer. But he kept feeling a certain restlessness, an uncomfortable sense that his life didn’t quite fit and that he was called to do something different. What began as a slight inner tug slowly began to grow. One morning this lawyer was offered a partnership in a prestigious law-firm in downtown Boston. Considering how to respond, that afternoon he walked all the way home to Cambridge deep in thought – deep, as I imagine it, in prayer – and during that walk he decided: No, he would not be a lawyer any longer. He would leave the law, go to Paris, and begin doing what he had always yearned to do: to write. And that’s what he did.
The man was Archibald MacLeish, an old family friend who became one of the most popular American poets of the late 20th century. I grew up listening to this story, and I have always loved it, because it speaks to me of a person who was entrusted with the seeds of God, though MacLeish himself might not have named it that way. To me, it is a story of someone who listened with care to a deep inner call to follow wherever the Holy One might be leading, however disruptive and unsettling that call might be.
And let’s be honest: if the God who comes among us is often very small, the divine life that grows up within us won’t be a tidy little thing that we can tend quietly in our front garden like a tulip. The seeds of God don’t grow into nice little posies, fit for a bouquet. They are more like the magic beans in “Jack and the Beanstalk” that spring up through the floorboards and begin toppling the house. When we open ourselves to a little rivulet of love, in the end we open ourselves to the whole river. And so, the divine life begins to travel through us, de-centering the ego and de-throning our claim to belong to no one except ourselves. Our whole lives begin to change, and quickly or slowly we become a new person, with new eyes, a new heart, and a new way of living in the world.
One more thing about seeds: it’s not only God who sows seeds. Like God, we, too, sow seeds for the future. A kind word sends out a little more kindness into the world. A harsh word sends out a little more bitterness, a little more fear. What seeds are we sowing? Are we sowing seeds of contempt, selfishness, or anxiety? Are we sowing seeds of respect, kindness, and truthfulness? I wonder how my life would change if I remembered that every moment contains the seeds of the future. Would I speak more kindly and listen with more care? Would I be braver and take greater risks to love fully and freely, without holding back? Would I trust with confidence that every act of love, however small, has an effect and can bear good fruit in ways we can’t possibly predict or imagine?
That’s the promise in today’s Gospel passage. Today Jesus tells us that when we take in the seeds of God and let them take root, our lives will bear fruit. Whether it be a hundredfold, or sixty, or thirty times over, our lives will become a blessing to others, for God has the power to take our small efforts to do good and to multiply them, grace upon grace. Hold on to this promise when your efforts seem futile and everything you’ve tried seems to come to naught. The word that God has sown in us will yet bear fruit, even if we know nothing about it. If we consent, if we say Yes, God will accomplish in us and through us what God has purposed.
But, we might protest, do our actions really make any difference? Will our seeds of an effort have any lasting effect? In this chaotic world of untold violence and fear, of cruelty, poverty, and war, of social and racial injustice and a climate breakdown that seems almost too large to face, do any of our actions and choices make a difference? Today’s Gospel passage tells us: Yes. Trust the seeds of God. Our reckless farmer-God is casting seeds among us every day. Notice them. Give them room to take root and grow. Cast the seeds that God gives you to cast. Let God work freely in your life and don’t worry about the results: God will make use of you, and you will bear fruit.
In a moment we will be invited to stretch out our hands and receive something very small: a consecrated wafer, just a light little thing that is filled with the presence of the crucified and risen Christ. We will take this seed of God into our bodies, where it will find good soil and take root and unite us with God and with each other and with the whole of God’s creation. So, today we say Yes: Yes to the love whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, Yes to the mighty love that brought forth and sustains everything that exists, Yes to the love that is as vulnerable and tenacious as a growing plant, and as gentle as a child’s hand that holds a hiking shoe and a brown shoelace.
