Prison Lectionary

By Matthew B. Harper

Mark 4:20 – And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold

Viktor Frankel wrote, after spending time in the Nazi concentration camps: “Everything can be taken from you but your attitude. You always have the power to make the decision how to act.”

In today’s parable Christ divides the followers into four different types. Notable among those are those who wouldn’t hear. We know from Psalm 40:7 that it is the Lord who opens our ears. And still more there are those whom God opens their ears to receive the word, but they allow Satan and the ‘cares of the world’ to lure them away from the word. From Christ himself we learn that if we are to bear fruit for God then we must receive the word, we must study and pray so that we might become ‘rooted’ in the word, and we must not allow ourselves to be drawn away from the word by the cares of the world. Only then: receptive, rooted, and devoted, can be bear fruit for the Lord. For we remember the opening of the Gospel of John, “the word” is the Logos, who became incarnate as Jesus the Christ.

We have the power, no matter our circumstances, to decide how to act. In the face of hurt, fear, anger, and resentment we have the choice to act with godly grace, and to sew the word and the work of out Lord. Will we act today for the Lord, and against him?

“We sinners do beseech thee to hear us, O Lord God; and that it may please thee to rule and govern they holy Church Universal in the right way, We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.” BCP 150