NOTES for Luk 8:1-15
Among the Savior's parables about the Kingdom, the parable of the sower, the parable of the word that God sows in the human heart, occupies a special place. The Kingdom and the word: how are they connected? How is the word entering the human heart connected with the Word? The Word with a capital letter is incarnate in Christ. But what about the word of God with a lowercase letter? How does it enter a person's heart? What is this word like? The word by which God creates the world. The word that the prophets hear. The word that, as the hymn writer says, does not return to God unfulfilled. It turns out to be given to everyone. It is sown like seed in a field, with a generous hand. Only it is far from always received as seed is received by well-prepared soil.
This is understandable: the word is not simply a revelation given once. It is the instrument of God's action, which God uses in order to change a person. To prepare him for the fullness of communion with God. For life in the Kingdom. And a person does not always want this. For all sorts of reasons. Sometimes simply because he has no time. If God's word is not the main thing for a person, if God for him is somewhere beside the road along which the person is walking, the word of God will never become in his heart the instrument of God's action. But even if it does become that, this is still not everything.
After all, spiritual life is not for a day, not for a month, not for a year. It is forever. And if a person has time for "spirituality" today but not tomorrow, then his "spirituality" really does belong in quotation marks. And, of course, there is steadfastness during trials. A person who desires a righteous life, life with God, has always been an enemy of the evil in which the fallen world lies. And a Christian is doubly its enemy: he not only does not accept this evil himself, he also brings into the world the Kingdom that destroys evil without mercy, leaving it no place in creation.
It is not surprising that if this world generally hates the righteous, it hates Christian righteous people twice as much. And yet persecutions themselves are not as frightening as the everyday, organic rejection of spiritual life that marks the fallen world. Persecutions spiritually mobilize; their absence relaxes. And only after overcoming both can one begin a normal spiritual life. With the word in the heart, reflecting that very Word that became incarnate in Christ, and which, if one allows it to change one's heart, will make it capable of containing the life of the Kingdom in all the fullness available to a human being.