One of the best and most appealing aspects of our Lord's parables is their simplicity. They are simple, straightforward, and to the point. Because of their simplicity, no vast learning is required to learn from them. They were meant for simple people ... like us.

The parable in this morning's Gospel, the Parable of the Sower, is one of the very few that our Lord was required, requested possibly, to explain.

OK then, I guess for us to wonder if we understand it. Parables are usually so obvious that we know immediately what meant, and how it applies to our roles and relationships - the ways we relate to each other, to ourselves and to our God. This one is maybe different.

We see ourselves in it, of course, as we always do, and we see those things that are so descriptive, so characteristic, of our lives, that we squirm.

But I bet we overdo it, this squirming. I worry that we may bring a unusual modesty to this parable, judging ourselves, accusing ourselves with a rigor that is out-of-line and unnecessary. I bet there are few of us, if any, who are willing to claim, willing to believe, that we are actually bringing forth a hundred-fold in our lives. Most of us would not claim, or even quietly assume, that such a description genuinely fits us.

Good thing too, because it probably doesn't. Not really. More probably, we've already chosen sides, picked the uncomfortable description we think fits us best - a soul of stony soil or a life with thick weeds all around.

We have either judged ourselves as too timid, too prone to discouragement, not up to the long haul and the hard times and the fierce testing of faith, or else we have reluctantly admitted to being crowded about with all those thorns of cares and concerns and worries and misgivings that turn us aside from the single - minded pursuit of being fully faithful to the Gospel and to the power and will of God.

And those two different ways are both real risks for any serious Christian. We should be wary about what we have to offer in our lives to the glory of God and the welfare of his people and his Church.

Self-examination is in order - but self-condemnation is going too far. And how we love to go too far. Yes, we might very well be bringing stony soil to church, if any of the Gospel blooms in us on any given morning, it may not last for long. Might not even last through the mean thought or comment at coffee.

And thorns come in an amazing array, a huge variety of guises. We might naively assume that we are not well-to-do enough to risk being overwhelmed by the "cares and riches of the world." Well, we might be immune to the risk of the riches of the world, but we are still set in the midst of very many cares, some commendable, some reprehensible, but all of them cares, with all the risk of choking out the simple Gospel and any child-like faith in us. And we sure can get enthusiastic about so many things, other things, incompatible things, competing things which can all be the thorns and weeds and briars that choke out a simple faith. Religion itself, and our own particular practice of it, can bring its own thorns, a choking weeds.

The parable wisely, though subtly, reminds us that the growth of grace in our lives, like the seed that a sower sows, depends not always just on us personally, who we are and how we behave, but also very much on our circumstances, where we are. We may be the stony soil, or living the weed-choked life, but we may also, despite our own best efforts and intent, just find ourselves in stony soil, or among weeds -- not necessarily of our own making. It can be circumstantial as well as intentional, it can be the fault of a situation as well as some fault in ourselves. Not only who we are, but where we are affects the success of our growth in grace and glory. We may, despite intention and attempt, simply find ourselves wandering in stony wastes, caught in a situation of many briars, a thorny thicket, not of our own choosing, and not really characteristic of us, but a situation or a circumstance that is so deeply affecting our lives that we have little chance to bring forth a high-yield response to that seed sown in our hearts and lives.

Life is distracting, and it is often less than satisfying, stony soil may preclude perpetual abundance for us, and all of the concerns and diversions that often rightly claim our attention and time and affection provide a dark underbrush that may well distract us from simple purity and an uncomplicated response to the straightforward progress of a "Gospel Life". But all of this only limits the yield, it doesn't preclude it - only our own self-indulgent, self-destructive, "harvest-ruining" ways can do that, only closing our hearts to love and grace, and opening our lives to luxurious distraction, or giving our hope and confidence over to diffident and apathetic "stony soil" can do that.

And sometimes, and very really and genuinely so, we may feel and be the victims of these two opposite conditions - stony soil and lush weeds. We may, in fact, and in reality, be appreciated and thanked, supported and nurtured, and yet we feel nothing - only a thin stony soil all around us, a feeling of drifting, of uselessness, as though our own individual lives are making no real difference, bringing less satisfaction to others than we want, less satisfaction to ourselves than we need.

On the other hand, we just as easily and unexpectedly we find ourselves so deeply enmeshed, pulled this way and that, over-committed, over-extended, not knowing how to get out of it without appearing to turn our backs on those who need us, or disappointing those who count on us, and then we begin to choke, are being choked, and we can not get free, so entangled are we in others' lives, inappropriately so, that we cannot keep going. We should beware all of this, and we probably ought not to berate ourselves, to condemn ourselves too quickly with admitting stony soil souls, or weed-choked lives, for each and both of those things and those feelings might well, in themselves, hinder the growth of grace and the love of Christ in our lives.

But, you know, despite all of that, we may be the deep soil sort after all. Yes, of course, some rocky ground, some thin soil indeed, but fertile enough for some lower-yield results, even with the thorns, and weeds, and thin soil inhibiting restricting, limiting the full yield in all its potential. Still it need not, and probably does not, cancel our yield or make it impossible, or unworthwhile.

Deep rich soil, seed sown on good, fertile, receptive ground, does not produce uniform results, but rather a variety of results, and the Gospel parable takes due note of that: there are varying results, all good, all different: low yield, medium yield, high yield. Most of us will not be canonized, or win the Nobel Peace in recognition of the abundant overflowing "hundred-fold produce" of our Christian lives.

The parable reminds of us of the more modest yields good soil can produce. Maybe we are not, and will never be, the hundred-folders, but the Sower always knew that, knew that some deeply responsive lives would yield thirty-fold, or sixty, or something in between, or more or less, but all of it good and decent, and worthwhile, though not in the league of the blue-ribbon grand champion yields of grace which come forth from some, very few, lives, a Mother Teresa or a St. Francis.

We might demur, perhaps appropriately from claiming that we produce a hundred-fold. But the Gospel, in its consistent unself - conscious and unmatched love, reminds us that the smaller producers still show that they are good and fertile fields for the love and grace of God, even if the yields are less spectacular. Smaller harvests, but precious to those around us, indicating that we are neither stony soil nor a weed-choked ruin, but rather responding as best we can, and in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, to the Word of God, to the Love of God, that has been planted in our hearts.

In the weeks and months ahead, I will be asking, and hoping, and believing, that we will all produce, in this parish and for the sake and soul and life of this parish, good yields, increased yields, abundant yields. And some will produce more and some less, some of us have thirty fold to offer some sixty, and I suppose some a hundred! But we all are called to respond to the seed sown in us, and to bring forth. We can do, we need to do it, and I have no doubt, no doubt, or misgiving, or wry at all, that we will do it. But from the outset, let us remember and treasure that yields all differ, all are precious and all are a delight to our Lord. I suspect that that the stony soil types and the weed-choked wanderers were all scared off long ago, so it seems that the good soil and the various and varying yielders are still here and always will be, through thick or thin, through stony or lush. The Sower, I assure you, takes due note.