Undying Commitment: A 14-day Study in StewardshipSample

The Fruitful Steward

Fruitfulness is a vital facet of Christian stewardship. The parable of the sower is about fruitfulness, but traditional interpretations have been more about working than about fruit. Author Robert Farrar Capon makes this point with a close study of the parable in The Parables of the Kingdom.

The Sower is God the Father, not Jesus. What Jesus turns out to be - since he is the Word [see Jn 1:1-18] - is the seed sown. But note what that in turn means. It means that one the plain terms of the parable, Jesus has already, and literally, been sown everywhere in the world - and quite without a single bit of earthly cooperation of even consent.

Capon explains that the way the Word (Jesus) works is with catholicity - the seed is scattered throughout all times and throughout the world; the kingdom of the Word is at work 'everywhere, always, and for all.' It also works with mystery - like seed that disappears into the earth, there is an element of hiddenness of the Word, which [Martin] Luther said can neither be known nor felt, but only believed, trusted. It works with actuality - that the seed's life is contained within it (it was a common idea at that time that the seeds grew without help). 'The seed, and therefore the Word, is fully in action! Everything necessary for its perfect work is in the works from the start.' Finally, the Word works in the midst of hostility; just as seed eaten by birds still gets spread around, the Word's work, despite whatever efforts have been made by Satan or the world to stop him, has been done. Capon continues:

True enough, and fittingly enough, the most obvious point in the whole parable is that the fullest enjoyment of the fruitfulness of the Word is available only to those who interfere with it least! Those on the good ground, he says, are those who simply hear the Word, accept it, and bear fruit; some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundredfold. It's not that they do anything you see; rather, it's that they don't do things that get in the Word's way.

The receptiveness with which we accept the Word, the extent to which we remain in the vine (see Jn 15:1-17), the extent to which we allow the Holy Spirit to produce fruit in us (see Gal 5:22-23) - these are our responsibility. Capon says that

The biggest difference made by responses to the Word is the difference they make to us, for us, and in us. They decide not whether the Word will achieve his purposes but whether we will enjoy his achievement - or find ourselves in opposition to it! For a plant, the failure to bear fruit is not a punishment visited on it by the seed, but an unhappy declination on the plant's part from what the seed had in mind for it. It is a missing of its own fullness, its own maturity - even, in some deep sense of its own life.

As you read through today's passage, try to reflect upon the ways you are bearing fruit.