Standing Under the Scriptures
July 20, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

The readings we are considering this Sunday are the following:

Romans 8.12-25: This passage, overlapping a bit with our previous consideration, goes on to speak of liberation not just of fallen humanity but of the whole creation. The rest of the chapter, for your information, is among the most magnificent passages in the biblical literature.

Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43: Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds, together with his interpretation, shows how finely, in dealing with people, God discriminates.

Last Sunday I had to leave the class about 10 minutes early. I am told that in my absence the discussion was particularly lively. I am wistful about having missed it, but it turned out as it should have. The aim of the class is not just to impart information but to enable people to apply the biblical framework themselves.

Before I left we looked on Romans 8, from which our first reading (verses 9 to 17) was taken, as the necessary counterpart of Romans 7.13-25a, our first reading previous Sunday. In that, you will recall, Paul speaks of the bind that one is in when, in the fallenness of one’s humanity, one is under the Law but without Christ. This results in knowing right from wrong but at the same time finding oneself unable to act rightly. For the Law teaches what is right but without providing the means to overcome the forces pulling in the opposite direction. These are the impulses of the flesh more broadly conceived of as the attractions of the world and its way of looking at things. Thus Paul agonizes, likely out of his own pre-conversion experience, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” In verse 25a he concludes, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” But as for how Christ delivered him, and delivers us---a question raised in the class---his explanations begin in Chapter 8.

The key we saw to be in verse 3: “For God has done what the Law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh… “The corollary of this divine assumption of our humanity in all its limitation, even to the point of death on the cross, is that by it we are exalted into sonship with God. We do not thereby cease to be sinners, far from it, but we are made available to the Holy Spirit, who can then operate in us. And we are no longer bound to sin in the way Paul describes in chapter 7. He elaborates on our liberation in last Sunday’s reading (verses 9-17).

“But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit… If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies… For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…. “

The Law may not be for us quite what it was for Paul. But in our own way we are bound to the flesh, if not to carnal desires then to the values which prevail in the world and which the world imposes on us. And Christ’s liberating power, which Paul proclaims, avails also for us.

We spent rather more time, at least when I was present, on Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matthew 13.1-23). And this was fitting, for it presents a paradox, without the resolution of which we are likely to miss its deeper meaning. To summarize, the sower sows so that the seed falls on four different sorts of ground: on the path where the birds devour it, on rocky ground where it springs up quickly but wilts under the sun, among thorns which on its emergence choke it, and on good soil, where it yields superabundantly. The disciples then ask Jesus why he speaks to the people in parables. He answers, seemingly, so that the people will not understand, and he backs this up with a lengthy quotation from Isaiah. He concludes with an explanation to the disciples of the parable’s meaning.

The salient question is, if the parable is intended to conceal rather than reveal meaning, why tell it at all. Also to be asked is why the meaning that is concealed from the people is revealed to the disciples. The answer to the first question is to be found, I proposed, in the nature of the Isaiah quotation. It follows directly on the prophet’s vocational vision in the Temple, when he saw the Lord “high and lifted up.” By this he was convicted of his own sinfulness. But a burning coal applied to his mouth took his sin away. And when the Lord called, “Whom shall I send?” he answered, “Here am I, send me.”

The point is that Isaiah is sent to prophesy against the people, to confront them with not only their corruption and idolatry but also their blindness, deafness, and lack of understanding. And Jesus is saying, both directly and in the quotation, that he will encounter the same incomprehension, not only among the scribes and Pharisees but among the generality of the people as well. This is part of what he faces in his mission. As for imparting the secrets of the kingdom instead to the disciples, it is not that they are quicker on the uptake. In fact in numerous instances they show themselves to be uncomprehending. It is rather that they are open, their openness being shown by their willingness to ask Jesus why he speaks in parables. It may also be because they will be entrusted to carry on Jesus’ ministry after his departure.

And so Jesus interprets for them the four types of ground in the parable: The path on which some seed falls is those who hear the word but fail to understand it---understanding entailing the recognition of Jesus for who he is. The devouring birds are the evil one who then snatches the word away. The seed springing up quickly from the rocky ground only to wither is those who fall away under tribulation and persecution. The thorns choking the seed growing among them are the anxieties of the world and the attractions---the deceitful attractions---of riches (here the parable approximates what Paul says about the law in his members at war with the law in his mind). And finally the seed falling on good soil is those who bear fruit so abundantly for the kingdom.

On the basis of the foregoing the parable can be seen as about not just people in Jesus’ time or people today whom we may know. For it obliges us to consider which of its two categories we are in: those who see without seeing and hear without hearing and understanding or, like the disciples, those who are open to the Jesus’ message, seeking to understand it. If we are honest, we will acknowledge that we in the former, at least mostly, that one or more of the types of ground that he speaks of identifies us. But this is not an occasion for despair; indeed, lack of concern on this score would be the real worry. For God, in our acknowledging of our falling short and turning to him, never fails to accept us. The assurance of this is as formulated by Paul: God’s sending his own Son in the likeness of our sinful flesh, so that his Spirit may dwell in us.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted