Jesus, the New David, is the Sower of His Life In Our Tree of Life, Our Heart

In tomorrow’s first reading at Mass, David seeks to fulfill the prophecy from Deuteronomy 12:8-14 by building a temple for God’s house. God is very pleased with David’s actions and replies through the prophet Nathan saying: “I will give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord also reveals to you that he will establish a house for you” (2 Samuel 7: 11). Establishing rest from one’s enemies was a prerequisite for establishing Jerusalem as the sole place of Israelite worship; God will complete that task of providing rest round about Jerusalem. David wanted to build God a house, so God is going to make David a house, which is a kingly dynasty. God ends saying, “Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever” (2 Samuel 7:16).

Because of David’s goodness and his trust in God, God is establishing David’s kingship forever. God does this by entering into a covenant with David as the responsorial psalm says in this Mass: “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: I will make your dynasty stand forever and establish your throne through all ages” (Psalm 89:3-4). Covenants cannot be broken, so God is absolutely required to make good on His covenantal promise: David’s dynasty must endure forever. God did make good on it by sending His own Son, Jesus, who will reign forever in heaven as the King of David.

We get a hint of how God will fulfill this oath through His own Son when he says: “He shall cry to me, ‘You are my father, my God, the Rock that brings me victory!’ I myself make him firstborn, Most High over the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:26-27). Jesus is the one God sends to fulfill His covenant with David; Jesus calls His Father, “Father,” of course. Jesus is called the firstborn, but of course He was begotten not made; Jesus was born as a man through Mary, but as God He was not born. Yet, He is still called the firstborn.

Jesus is a new David, and as David established peace around about Jerusalem by defeating all his enemies, so Jesus establishes peace round about each one of us by conquering all our sins. As the temple was the center of Jerusalem and what made Jerusalem holy, so our hearts are our center and the place where Jesus dwells. Jesus gives us a new heart that loves, trusts and obeys Him and is able to be set free from the slavery of sin. Jesus gives us a heart that seeks to please Him, a heart of flesh that has God’s laws written upon it, a tree of life that keeps us alive in relationship to Him.

This ties into the gospel reading for today’s Mass; it is the parable of the sower who went out to sow his seed. Jesus is the sower who seeks to plant His seed which is His Word in good soil so that His seed bears much fruit. Jesus still sows His seed everywhere, but many of those places do not well receive His seed. There is the path, the rocky ground, and the ground covered with thorns; the path is hard, trampled ground where nothing has a chance to grow; the rocky ground are those who initially rejoice in the God’s word but only receive it shallowly, having no roots, the plant soon dies; the thorn-covered ground are those who receive God’s word, but the thorns of “worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things intrude and choke the word, and it bears no fruit” (Mark 4:19).

“But those sown on rich soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:20). Jesus seeks our hearts; He seeks to be loved by you and me; Jesus wants to give us a new heart that is the rich soil that will receive His seed fully and provide a good environment for growth. He seeks to give us abundant life through the good reception of His grace. He desires our heart; He desires our heart to desire what He desires; He wants to be of one mind and heart with us. The heart is our tree of life; when we eat of the tree of life, when we love, trust and obey God in all things, we are fully and truly alive in relation to God. Our relationship daily deepens, and it can be said more correctly as each day passes that we are another Christ. The good fruit we bear is Christ; He is the vine and we the branches, so we bear the fruit of that divine vine. Christ was a self-sacrificing lover, so becoming another Christ means that we are transformed into a self-sacrificing lover like Him. We eat the tree of life so that we may be empowered to lay down our life and be crucified to our death on a tree. Jesus did not suffer and die so that we don’t have to; on the contrary, Jesus sacrificed Himself so that we have the power to sacrifice ourselves.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
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