Equalizing the Inequality
Commentary
There are situations of inequality between us as individuals. How do we treat each other equally when we are not equals in different ways?
No question, though Jacob and Esau are twins, they’re not equals. Esau was stronger, and better equipped to live as a hunter/gatherer. Jacob may be more intelligent when it comes to being a game player, but in some ways, he is not as emotionally intelligent when it comes to treating his father and brother as real people.
Paul talks about different qualities of humanity, soma, sarx, pneuma, sometimes translated “body,” “flesh,” and “spirit.” These inequalities probably reflect different levels of spiritual intelligence.
And in the parable told by Jesus, the seed falls on different sorts of soil. For the seeds, this is not a level playing field. In one sense all the seeds are the same, but their maturation is dependent on the inequality of the soils they fall on.
Yet the whole point of biblical history is that all nations will be blessed through Abraham, and then all nations will be saved through the grace of Jesus Christ.
Genesis 25:19-34
Words matter. How we use words to describe each other says a lot about how we view the human family. In some languages, there are only negative terms to describe people who are different developmentally. As the father of a special education teacher, I’m appreciating one term that is sometimes used — the “spectrum.” One says that a person is on the spectrum before describing a specific condition. What I like about it is that we’re all on the spectrum. We all have different gifts and different limitations, but we’re connected, and we are one human family.
I wonder sometimes if Esau wasn’t somewhere on the spectrum, at a much different place than his brother Jacob. Esau was not able to make a reasoned choice between the value of his birthright and his famished condition. To what extent was he even qualified to make such decisions? Jacob may have been shrewd, but he also seems at times to have been morally bankrupt. He must have been aware of his brother’s talents, capabilities, and inabilities. Didn’t he have a responsibility to take both his brother’s talents and limitations into account? Instead of simply feeding his famished brother, he took advantage of him. He also lied to his aging father who could no longer see or hear clearly.
Evidently Jacob is the kind of raw material God works with, which may suggest that we are not a lost cause either.
These fraternal twins had the potential to accomplish much together. Their complementary talents should have enabled the two of them to succeed together and accomplish great things. Instead their warfare began in the womb and evidently continued through childhood to adulthood. Their rivalry fractured the family and even their eventual reconciliation seems to have left them both wounded and unable to work together.
I’m sure there’s plenty of blame to go around, but I have to wonder, could Jacob have treated his brother Esau’s gifts with more respect? Could Jacob have made the family a “safe” place for Esau to be Esau?
Of course I can do nothing about the past, but I can ask myself, and we can ask ourselves, can we take responsibility to make our churches safe places for all of us, wherever we may find ourselves on the spectrum?
Romans 8:1-11
There’s a great line in Robert A. Heinlein’s science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. Simply put, it’s the story of a human named Michael Valentine Smith who grew up as a martian and was brought back to earth as an adult. He struggles to learn earth’s ways and the English language. The novel notes that at one point “early in his learnings….he had discovered that long human words rarely change their meaning but short words were slippery, changing without pattern. …short words were like trying to lift water with a knife.”
That’s exactly how I felt over forty years ago in seminary. I took Greek and New Testament Theology my first year, and I was soon introduced to the short Greek words sarx, soma, and pneuma. Their meaning Greek was tough enough, but added to the complexity of lifting water with a knife was the fact that Paul was also using them to define Hebrew terms. We have to translate them into English because it’s the world language now, just as Greek was the language of the Roman Empire in that time, but when we do so we add some preconceptions that come from our way of looking at things.
Sarx, a short word, is translated in the NRSV as another short word: “flesh.” Likewise, soma is translated“body,” and pneuma as spirit. One might conclude from Romans that flesh is evil and spirit is good, and that we want to transcend or leave the body to become pure spirits. This is not the case. Both the Greek and Hebrew way of looking at the world understood the physical universe, including our flesh, to be beautiful. Like all of creation, God proclaims our bodies as “good.”
Paul seems to be saying in Romans 8:3 that sin entered the body through the flesh, but that really means, as my New Testament theology professor, the late Dr. Graydon F. Snyder taught us, “only because we seek our own self-fulfillment.” (See Romans 8:6-8). It is the seeking after self-fulfillment that needs to be destroyed.
How is soma (body) different than the flesh (sarx)? Soma stands for many different things. It can stand for a planet. It can stand for a human being. But it also stands for the community, and that is Paul's meaning here. Because we are one body, one community, when sin enters our shared body through an individual seeking only self- fulfillment the whole body dies, dead through sin as it says in 8:10.
But as Dr. Snyder used to put it, “The Spirit is God’s power to guide the human community towards the end time.” (257) Living in the Spirit makes it possible for us as individuals as well as the community of faith to achieve identity and fulfillment. Though we are all unequal in our abilities, in our personal aims and desires, in what each member of the body can do, and what others among us cannot do, things we refer appropriately to as gifts of the Spirit, as one body we can all be fulfilled.
(I have notes from the classes I took nearly forty-five years ago, but I also relied on a couple of books by Dr. Graydon F. Snyder, including First Corinthians: A Faith Community Commentary, which specifically referred to this passage in Romans when defining these difficult words.)
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Twenty-two years after he retired as a cartoonist, Gary Larson established a website for his Far Side cartoons. These cartoons were originally published in newspapers from 1980-1995. These off-beat single panels were great favorites for many, and they often ended up tacked onto bulletin boards — physical bulletin boards, the kind that hung in workplaces before the internet.
I mention The Far Side because if you understood a cartoon you laughed out loud. Really. Quite different from typing “lol.” And if you didn’t understand that day’s cartoon, you were almost afraid to admit it. Sometimes the only remedy was for someone else to explain it to you, or maybe it was your turn to explain it to someone else. Kindly, I hope.
This week’s scriptures have been about our basic inequality, our placement on the spectrum. For some of us, reading is a devouring passion. Others don’t read — they interpret the world through music. Even if they don’t play an instrument, they listen, and hear things some of us don’t. Some of us are gardeners, who interpret the world through the soil. Some of us see the big picture, and some of us are detail people. Some of us, by simply being, make the world a better place.
The failure of Jacob and Esau to work together broke the family apart. Paul challenges the Roman Christians to find fulfillment as a body, a community of believers. And now Jesus preaches about seeds.
The world is basically unfair. There is inequality among people not only in terms of ability, but especially in opportunity.
We don’t all share the same talents. I’d have been a great ball player except I couldn’t hit, run, catch, or throw.
Rotten people live to be a hundred. Some of the good people we love dearly are taken far too soon. (Little known fact. The famous quote, “Only the good die young” is a misquote. What the playwright Menander really said is, “Those the gods love they take.”)
Jesus tells a parable about inequality involving a sower, seed, and soil in Matthew 13:1-9. An explanation follows in 13:18-23. Some seeds are snatched away by the birds. Some fall on rocky soil. Some fall on good soil and thrive.
According to Jesus, these are the people who do not understand the word of the kingdom and get snatched away by the evil one. The seed that falls on rocky soil is the believer whose roots fail to take hold so that when persecution comes, they have nothing to fall back on. Delight in riches and the cares of the world are the downfall of the seeds sown among thorns.
Now is there really a lesson here? Because this parable seems to say that life is unfair. Can we really help our outward circumstances? It seems to me if you’re born into the right circumstances, everything will turn out right. Otherwise, you’re in deep trouble.
But the thing about a parable is that you’re supposed to wrestle with it. It’s not supposed to be easy. So, I’d begin my study of this parable by asking: What’s in a name?
Specifically, what’s the name of this parable? Is it parable of the sower? This sower seems to scatter the seed indiscriminately and then he’s gone. We don’t see him weed, water, or tend the growing plants.
Some call it the parable of the seeds. But the seeds get cast about willy-nilly and have no control over the soil they find themselves in.
But I wonder if we should be calling it the parable of the soil? If all the seeds are the same what should we, who as a congregation are the soil, do so we can be nurturing, choking, or uninviting? What should we as the church do so these seeds thrive? If we are a spirit-led community, then our basic inequalities become like pieces of a puzzle in which we only become complete together!
Those people, like the seeds eaten by birds, don’t understand the Word of God. How do we as a congregation mold disciples who understand what it means to live the Word, not just repeat it?
Take the rocky soil, which is persecution. In every Amish home there is a copy of the Martyr’s Mirror. It’s often given as a wedding gift, and it is read aloud to children. This huge volume consists of stories of martyrs faithful to God who endure torture and death for the kingdom.
Speaking of thorns, rich and poor alike can become distracted from the good news of Jesus Christ. How do make sure no one suffers want and all are cherished not for their bank account but for what they have to offer in service to Christ?
Our basic inequality becomes immaterial when the rich soil of a living church ensures that everyone is loved and cherished for the uniqueness we bring to our shared mission in Christ!
No question, though Jacob and Esau are twins, they’re not equals. Esau was stronger, and better equipped to live as a hunter/gatherer. Jacob may be more intelligent when it comes to being a game player, but in some ways, he is not as emotionally intelligent when it comes to treating his father and brother as real people.
Paul talks about different qualities of humanity, soma, sarx, pneuma, sometimes translated “body,” “flesh,” and “spirit.” These inequalities probably reflect different levels of spiritual intelligence.
And in the parable told by Jesus, the seed falls on different sorts of soil. For the seeds, this is not a level playing field. In one sense all the seeds are the same, but their maturation is dependent on the inequality of the soils they fall on.
Yet the whole point of biblical history is that all nations will be blessed through Abraham, and then all nations will be saved through the grace of Jesus Christ.
Genesis 25:19-34
Words matter. How we use words to describe each other says a lot about how we view the human family. In some languages, there are only negative terms to describe people who are different developmentally. As the father of a special education teacher, I’m appreciating one term that is sometimes used — the “spectrum.” One says that a person is on the spectrum before describing a specific condition. What I like about it is that we’re all on the spectrum. We all have different gifts and different limitations, but we’re connected, and we are one human family.
I wonder sometimes if Esau wasn’t somewhere on the spectrum, at a much different place than his brother Jacob. Esau was not able to make a reasoned choice between the value of his birthright and his famished condition. To what extent was he even qualified to make such decisions? Jacob may have been shrewd, but he also seems at times to have been morally bankrupt. He must have been aware of his brother’s talents, capabilities, and inabilities. Didn’t he have a responsibility to take both his brother’s talents and limitations into account? Instead of simply feeding his famished brother, he took advantage of him. He also lied to his aging father who could no longer see or hear clearly.
Evidently Jacob is the kind of raw material God works with, which may suggest that we are not a lost cause either.
These fraternal twins had the potential to accomplish much together. Their complementary talents should have enabled the two of them to succeed together and accomplish great things. Instead their warfare began in the womb and evidently continued through childhood to adulthood. Their rivalry fractured the family and even their eventual reconciliation seems to have left them both wounded and unable to work together.
I’m sure there’s plenty of blame to go around, but I have to wonder, could Jacob have treated his brother Esau’s gifts with more respect? Could Jacob have made the family a “safe” place for Esau to be Esau?
Of course I can do nothing about the past, but I can ask myself, and we can ask ourselves, can we take responsibility to make our churches safe places for all of us, wherever we may find ourselves on the spectrum?
Romans 8:1-11
There’s a great line in Robert A. Heinlein’s science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. Simply put, it’s the story of a human named Michael Valentine Smith who grew up as a martian and was brought back to earth as an adult. He struggles to learn earth’s ways and the English language. The novel notes that at one point “early in his learnings….he had discovered that long human words rarely change their meaning but short words were slippery, changing without pattern. …short words were like trying to lift water with a knife.”
That’s exactly how I felt over forty years ago in seminary. I took Greek and New Testament Theology my first year, and I was soon introduced to the short Greek words sarx, soma, and pneuma. Their meaning Greek was tough enough, but added to the complexity of lifting water with a knife was the fact that Paul was also using them to define Hebrew terms. We have to translate them into English because it’s the world language now, just as Greek was the language of the Roman Empire in that time, but when we do so we add some preconceptions that come from our way of looking at things.
Sarx, a short word, is translated in the NRSV as another short word: “flesh.” Likewise, soma is translated“body,” and pneuma as spirit. One might conclude from Romans that flesh is evil and spirit is good, and that we want to transcend or leave the body to become pure spirits. This is not the case. Both the Greek and Hebrew way of looking at the world understood the physical universe, including our flesh, to be beautiful. Like all of creation, God proclaims our bodies as “good.”
Paul seems to be saying in Romans 8:3 that sin entered the body through the flesh, but that really means, as my New Testament theology professor, the late Dr. Graydon F. Snyder taught us, “only because we seek our own self-fulfillment.” (See Romans 8:6-8). It is the seeking after self-fulfillment that needs to be destroyed.
How is soma (body) different than the flesh (sarx)? Soma stands for many different things. It can stand for a planet. It can stand for a human being. But it also stands for the community, and that is Paul's meaning here. Because we are one body, one community, when sin enters our shared body through an individual seeking only self- fulfillment the whole body dies, dead through sin as it says in 8:10.
But as Dr. Snyder used to put it, “The Spirit is God’s power to guide the human community towards the end time.” (257) Living in the Spirit makes it possible for us as individuals as well as the community of faith to achieve identity and fulfillment. Though we are all unequal in our abilities, in our personal aims and desires, in what each member of the body can do, and what others among us cannot do, things we refer appropriately to as gifts of the Spirit, as one body we can all be fulfilled.
(I have notes from the classes I took nearly forty-five years ago, but I also relied on a couple of books by Dr. Graydon F. Snyder, including First Corinthians: A Faith Community Commentary, which specifically referred to this passage in Romans when defining these difficult words.)
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Twenty-two years after he retired as a cartoonist, Gary Larson established a website for his Far Side cartoons. These cartoons were originally published in newspapers from 1980-1995. These off-beat single panels were great favorites for many, and they often ended up tacked onto bulletin boards — physical bulletin boards, the kind that hung in workplaces before the internet.
I mention The Far Side because if you understood a cartoon you laughed out loud. Really. Quite different from typing “lol.” And if you didn’t understand that day’s cartoon, you were almost afraid to admit it. Sometimes the only remedy was for someone else to explain it to you, or maybe it was your turn to explain it to someone else. Kindly, I hope.
This week’s scriptures have been about our basic inequality, our placement on the spectrum. For some of us, reading is a devouring passion. Others don’t read — they interpret the world through music. Even if they don’t play an instrument, they listen, and hear things some of us don’t. Some of us are gardeners, who interpret the world through the soil. Some of us see the big picture, and some of us are detail people. Some of us, by simply being, make the world a better place.
The failure of Jacob and Esau to work together broke the family apart. Paul challenges the Roman Christians to find fulfillment as a body, a community of believers. And now Jesus preaches about seeds.
The world is basically unfair. There is inequality among people not only in terms of ability, but especially in opportunity.
We don’t all share the same talents. I’d have been a great ball player except I couldn’t hit, run, catch, or throw.
Rotten people live to be a hundred. Some of the good people we love dearly are taken far too soon. (Little known fact. The famous quote, “Only the good die young” is a misquote. What the playwright Menander really said is, “Those the gods love they take.”)
Jesus tells a parable about inequality involving a sower, seed, and soil in Matthew 13:1-9. An explanation follows in 13:18-23. Some seeds are snatched away by the birds. Some fall on rocky soil. Some fall on good soil and thrive.
According to Jesus, these are the people who do not understand the word of the kingdom and get snatched away by the evil one. The seed that falls on rocky soil is the believer whose roots fail to take hold so that when persecution comes, they have nothing to fall back on. Delight in riches and the cares of the world are the downfall of the seeds sown among thorns.
Now is there really a lesson here? Because this parable seems to say that life is unfair. Can we really help our outward circumstances? It seems to me if you’re born into the right circumstances, everything will turn out right. Otherwise, you’re in deep trouble.
But the thing about a parable is that you’re supposed to wrestle with it. It’s not supposed to be easy. So, I’d begin my study of this parable by asking: What’s in a name?
Specifically, what’s the name of this parable? Is it parable of the sower? This sower seems to scatter the seed indiscriminately and then he’s gone. We don’t see him weed, water, or tend the growing plants.
Some call it the parable of the seeds. But the seeds get cast about willy-nilly and have no control over the soil they find themselves in.
But I wonder if we should be calling it the parable of the soil? If all the seeds are the same what should we, who as a congregation are the soil, do so we can be nurturing, choking, or uninviting? What should we as the church do so these seeds thrive? If we are a spirit-led community, then our basic inequalities become like pieces of a puzzle in which we only become complete together!
Those people, like the seeds eaten by birds, don’t understand the Word of God. How do we as a congregation mold disciples who understand what it means to live the Word, not just repeat it?
Take the rocky soil, which is persecution. In every Amish home there is a copy of the Martyr’s Mirror. It’s often given as a wedding gift, and it is read aloud to children. This huge volume consists of stories of martyrs faithful to God who endure torture and death for the kingdom.
Speaking of thorns, rich and poor alike can become distracted from the good news of Jesus Christ. How do make sure no one suffers want and all are cherished not for their bank account but for what they have to offer in service to Christ?
Our basic inequality becomes immaterial when the rich soil of a living church ensures that everyone is loved and cherished for the uniqueness we bring to our shared mission in Christ!
