Standing Under the Scriptures
June 21, 2009

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

2 Corinthians 5.14-21: Paul calls us, as we have been reconciled to God in Christ, to undertake our own ministry of reconciliation.

Mark 4.35-41: Jesus stills the storm on the Sea of Galilee as he also stills the tumult in our lives.

In our class I have remarked that a main justification for these weekly notices is that they give me a chance to speak of things I should have thought of in the class but did not. We seemed to me to get fairly far into our first reading but I fear we missed the deeper dimension of our second. And this would have been because I failed to raise the question of the relation of the former to the latter.

Our first reading, 2 Corinthians 5.11-17, actually was not quite as in the lectionary. In fact it has some overlap with this week’s. We found it to be something of a non-linear passage, lacking a clear structure of argument. It seemed that this could be accounted for in terms of the preceding part of the letter, in which Paul reveals himself to be not only a tireless missionary and the possessor of the most penetrating theological insights but also a deeply emotional man. For in it he speaks without reserve of undergoing grave difficulties, in the form of not just of the hazards and hardships to which his ministry exposes him but also of disruption of his relationship with the Corinthians themselves. And this, whatever its occasion, has caused great pain not just to them but to him. He trusts that all this is now in the past. But he still bears the wounds of it. And for that reason in our passage he speaks in terms more of emotion than rationality.

Nevertheless in two of the passages verses (14 and 15) we encountered the profoundest of theological insights.

“For the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

At first glance this may seem counterintuitive. To be sure, the notion that the love of Christ controls/constrains/has taken hold of us, and that it does so through his dying, is not so strange. But if the remaining part of these verses sets forth wherein this love consists, we may wonder. For it speaks of how thereby all have died, and dying is not what we ordinarily look for. The explanation of the paradox, however, follows: our dying is so that we may live not unto ourselves, in which there is no future. Instead it is so that we may live unto him, in whom alone is fullness of life, as is made manifest by his not only dying but being raised from the dead.

This insight, concerning our passing in Christ through death so that we may enter fully into life, I take to be basic to the understanding of the two parables which made up our second reading (Mark 4:26-32). And having in the class failed even to raise the question of the relationship between the two passages, I will now try to show what it is.

This second reading consists of two of Jesus’ parables of the kingdom of God: the seed growing by itself once sown, and the mustard seed. We noted that both reflected the agricultural processes of the day and that, agriculture being then the economic mainstay (as it still is in some parts of the world), these processes would have been intimately familiar to Jesus’ hearers. The ability of the gospel to be heard in terms of people’s own experience in fact may be the key to its amazing spread throughout the ancient world. To this I added that on my own interpretation of it, the Pentecost event as described Acts reflects this very ability, in its emphasis on the hearing by the Jerusalem bystanders of the wonderful works of God as in their own native languages, in which they were born. This would have implications for how the gospel is to be proclaimed today.

As for specifics, the first parable speaks of seed once it is sown growing into mature grain without action on the part of the sower. To be sure, he then reaps it, but even that is only as it presents itself for harvesting. The point here we took to be that the growth of the kingdom, albeit not without a human element, takes place essentially by the power with which God has endowed it. And thus it is to be looked at with wonder and awe rather than as our own doing. The second parable complements this point. It speaks of the mustard seed as being of the smallest yet as growing into the greatest of shrubs, so that birds may nest in the shade of its branches. Thereby it conveys the ability of the kingdom of God, however insignificant its beginnings on earth may seem, to grow into the greatest of structures. We may think of the church, for all its defects and vicissitudes, as the primary embodiment of such structure and of ourselves as the birds who are able to shelter in its branches, in that the church affords us both refuge and sustenance in the trials that confront us. Here again we may be moved to awe and wonder.

But there is a problem here. As with Jesus’ discussion of the lilies of the field, this may seem an invitation to sit back and enjoy the spectacle, without much cost to ourselves. This would comport with a gentle Jesus, meek and mild, of the sort portrayed in the 19th century by Ernest Renan in his La vie de Jésus and has been spoken of recently as well. But such a Jesus is no match for the world as we know it, with its multitude of catastrophes, anxieties, and sin. And is this really the one whom the Scriptures tell us about? Indeed, with the lilies of the field we are called not so much to bask in the glow as to put our whole trust God for our sustenance, material as well as spiritual. And humanly speaking this is a most difficult for us to do. So in our two parables may there not be a deeper dimension than in the class we discerned?

That there is emerges I think from a further consideration of the nature of the seed that figures in them. When in the class I was asked what it represented, I said simply the word. But if I had brought to bear on it our first reading, with its account of Christ’s death for us and our death so that we may live in him, I would have seen further than that. For the seed in being sown undergoes a kind of death. And out of this death comes life, the life of the grain made apparent in the harvest, the life of the mustard plant which provides shelter for the birds. So in these parables Jesus is speaking not just of the marvels of the kingdom of God. He is speaking as well of his own death as the source of them through his rising again from the dead, and of our own fullness of life in him. John 12.24 contains much the same thought: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies it bears much fruit.” In this the power of God’s mercy is made manifest. It calls for not only our wonder but also our giving thanks with our whole being.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted