PROPER 10, YEAR A

July 12, 2020

St. Andrew’s-by-the-Sea, Little Compton, RI

Genesis 25:19-34

Psalm 119:105-112

Romans 8:1-11

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

In the past year or so, I’ve discovered that a good starting point for reflections on the readings appointed for any given Sunday is the Collect of the Day, which in Morning Prayer comes right after the Lord’s Prayer and the Suffrages—two pages on from where we are now.

So, let’s look at today’s Collect. “O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you …” That opening phrase describes all of us gathered virtually in this Zoom videoconference, and all Christians throughout the world, worshiping on the Lord’s Day. It immediately reminds us of who we are and what we’re about: God’s people, calling upon him, and asking him to receive our prayers.

The Collect continues: “Grant that we may know and understand what things we ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them …” Wow. Those words suggest what we need to be asking of God this time in our history—as individuals, as communities, as a nation, as a world—knowledge, understanding, grace, and power.

So, right off the bat, the Collect of the Day offers us substantial material for reflection and prayer. In the days of the coming week, we might periodically return to this question: In what areas of our lives do we need knowledge and understanding of what we ought to do, and grace and power to do it?

The opening verse of today’s Psalm, suggests a good place to begin seeking the answer to this question: “Your word is a lantern to my feet, and a light upon my path”—a wonderful image of God’s Word illuminating the right way before us even in the darkest night. So, we can look at today’s readings with this question in mind.

The story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis highlights the consequences of failing to do the things we ought to do. The point not to miss is that neither Jacob nor Esau are particularly admirable characters. Jacob extorts from Esau his inheritance in return for some bread and lentil stew. And Esau is foolish enough to agree to the deal. The failure on Esau’s part is a lapse in knowledge and understanding: going against his true interests, he yields his birthright in return for the momentary relief of his hunger. But the failure on Jacob’s part is a moral lapse: even though he knows and understands that what he’s doing is wrong, he does it anyway.

The challenges facing us in our country and the world today afford multiple instances of our need for knowledge and understanding of what we ought to do, and for the grace and power to do it. With respect to race relations, I believe that we’re entering a period of national conversation in which all voices must be heard and listened to, precisely so that we can gain the deeper knowledge and understanding necessary to achieve a more just and equitable society. In the matter of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, I suspect that the problem is more that while we largely do know what needs to be done, in too many places too many of us have been unwilling or unable to do it. My aim in saying this is not to be judgmental but simply to reiterate the point that our need is not only for the knowledge and understanding of what we ought to do, but also for the grace and power faithfully to accomplish it.

The good news in this picture comes, appropriately enough, in the Gospel reading: “And [Jesus] told them many things in parables, saying, ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow …’” In the interpretation that our Lord himself supplies, the seed represents the Good News of the Kingdom, and the different types of ground—the path where the birds eat up the seed, the rocky ground where the seed can’t gain deep roots, the thorns that choke, and the good soil where the seed flourishes—all represent different types of responses to God’s Word. But these allegorical features can all too easily distract us from the most remarkable character of all: namely the Sower himself. I think it’s fair to identify the Sower as a figure of God. And the sower’s wildly indiscriminate scattering of the seed is a vivid image of God’s extravagant generosity in distributing his gifts of knowledge, understanding, grace, and power to his people.

Despite the seemingly wasted effort of scattering seed in places where it cannot grow, enough still falls on good soil to yield a harvest of amazing abundance. And notice how the final verse of today’s Gospel ties in with the Collect of the Day: “But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

To play with this imagery just a little bit more, one remaining question is how we can know what kind of ground we’re supplying to receive God’s Word and God’s gifts in our own lives. How can we make ourselves into good soil that brings forth an abundant harvest of good works?

Well, it’s a trick question. The answer is that we cannot. Only God can do that. But God is the creator of both the seed and the soil. The good news, again, is that God can and will make us into such good soil, if only we ask him to do so, by the power of his Holy Spirit.

Here today’s Epistle from Romans comes to our aid. The distinction that Saint Paul makes between “Spirit” and “flesh” can be a bit misleading. It’s not a dualistic distinction between the spiritual and material realms, but rather between a life oriented towards God in the world, and a life oriented towards the world apart from God. What Paul calls life “in the flesh” is the attempt to live relying on our unaided human resources and abilities. And what he calls life “in the Spirit” is life lived relying on God to do in us what we could never do for ourselves.

So Paul writes, “you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” And then, for good measure, he adds this amazing promise: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”

In other words, all this imagery of Sower, seed, sowing, and harvest refer not only to this life but even more to the life of the world to come. Eternal life in Christ is the hope we proclaim and the gift we pray for. We ask God, then, to send his Holy Spirit to make us into fertile soil capable of hearing and receiving his Word, so that we in turn may bring forth an abundant harvest to the glory of his Name.