Video can be seen at this link. *Video and Audio are important for this particular sermon*
Thank you, Cate, for literally illustrating our Gospel passage this morning, that was wonderful. You have made what was always a memorable parable, even more so. The parable of the sower is one of Jesus’ most famous, perhaps because it is one where we are given the answers to what exactly he is talking about, which is not often the case. The “seed” is the good news Jesus came proclaiming. The “ground” is those who hear it. We should be good soil and hear and understand that word so that our lives may bear good fruit.
There you have it. End of sermon, I guess. Except this parable leaves me with a lingering question. If the good news of the gospel is the seed, and we are the ground, can we change what kind of ground we are? If we are rocky soil can we become good soil? And if so, how?
To hear audio of this sermon click here. And remember you can sign up for The Chapel of the Cross sermon podcast and get all our Sunday sermons sent right to you by clicking here.
Wilfred Owen was born in England in 1893. At the age of 22, like many of his peers, he enlisted in World War I. He served until November 4th, 1918 when he was killed in action, exactly one week, almost to the hour, before the armistice. The reason we know his name, and the reason he is not just another forgotten young soldier like many who died in the Great War, is because of his poetry. Owen is regarded as the greatest poet of the First World War. Much of his work is a searing indictment of the glorification of battle and military heroism; an expose of the horrors of the trenches and the senselessness of mass death. You may be familiar with some of his more famous poems like, Dulce et decorum est (It is sweet and fitting), Anthem for a Doomed Youth, or Futility. You may not know, that Owen also wrote a poem entitled, The Parable of the Old Men and the Young, in which he retells the story of the binding of Isaac as seen through the lens of World War I.
The story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis Chapter 22, which we just heard this morning, is a tense narrative, remarkable for how much drama is packed into its relatively few words. But its content is deeply, deeply disturbing. To have this father with his hand raised ready to slaughter his innocent child just turns your stomach. It’s even more offensive in the original Hebrew. The knife he has is more like a cleaver. The “binding” more like a trussing. This is a butchering, plain and simple. A butchering of an innocent child recast as some example of supreme faith to which we all must aspire. It’s only redeeming quality—if you can even call it that—is that Abraham doesn’t ultimately go through with it. However, in Owen’s retelling of the event, in a gut punch of a final couplet, he removes even that one redemptive component. Listen:
