Things That Need Fixing
Commentary
Perhaps you have a list of things at home that need to be fixed, either when you get the time and opportunity to do it yourself, or when you get the money to hire someone to do it for you. But perhaps there is another, more substantive list of things that need fixing. Beyond the dripping faucet and the squeaky door, we recognize that there are other, deeper aspects of life that might also need to be repaired.
Life in this world is filled with obstacles and impediments. So many things can get in the way of our being or doing what we most desire. Sometimes an expert in this field or that I can help us work through our issues. They help us to recognize what it is that keeps us from being more productive at work or more organized at home. They help us to identify the patterns that prevent our bodies from being more physically fit or our relationships from being more fulfilling. This or that expert can help us to identify obstacles to greater efficiency, improved creativity, and financial stability.
This Sunday, we turn to scripture to help us identify what it is that keeps us from spiritual vitality, fruitfulness, and victory.
Our Old Testament passage tells a story. Our two New Testament selections are both teachings. And all three can serve a kind of diagnostic function for us as we endeavor to grow and thrive spiritually.
There's no point in a person staying in a rut in some area of life if the problem can be identified and solved. Why live in frustration if you can be more productive at work or more organized at home? Why live with unhappiness and defeat if that relationship can be improved or that fitness can be accomplished?
And if that is true for other, routine areas of life, how much more in the most consequential stuff of life!
You and I don't necessarily have to adopt the posture of experts this week; scripture can fill that role. Instead, you and I have the opportunity to come up alongside our people and learn together with them. Let us allow God’s word to teach us about our obstacles and about all the goodness that God has in store for us beyond what we have experienced thus far.
Genesis 25:19-34, Psalm 119:105-112
The preacher in my home church when I was a boy once preached a series of sermons on the seven deadly sins. Ours was not a Catholic Church, but our pastor saw great insight in that traditional Catholic listing of sins. And I remember that, when he preached about the sin of gluttony, he titled his sermon, “The Sin We Laugh About.”
He was quite right, of course. Most of us church folks would not joke freely with one another about having shoplifted yesterday afternoon or indulging in pornography yesterday evening. But overeating we do not take so seriously. We do that without apology, and we readily laugh about it.
We live in a time unlike any other when it comes to our relationship to food. Most of our ancestors throughout human history had to work in order to eat any given meal. And even since the industrial revolution, when so many folks in the West no longer hunted or farmed for their own food, still a great deal of preparation was required for almost any meal.
Now, by contrast, not only are we surrounded by supermarkets that have aisles and aisles of food in abundance, including meals already made for us, we can also choose to stay in our homes and have meals delivered to us! Most every other generation in human history would stand agape at the abundance and convenience that we enjoy when it comes to food. We live like royalty and don’t even know it.
Interestingly, however, the abundance and the ease of access does not make us less ruled by food than generations of people who genuinely had to struggle to get food. Whether human beings are desperately hungry or habitually overfed, we are always it seems at risk of becoming like those people about whom Paul said, “Their god is their belly” (Philippians 3:19 ESV).
And so, it was for the father-son duo of Isaac and Esau. The biblical author freely acknowledges the dysfunctional favoritism in that home: everyone knew that Esau was dad's favorite and that Jacob was mom's favorite. But the narrator gives us an additional bit of insight about Isaac's preference for Esau: “Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game.”
That's a sad business, isn't it? It's too bad anytime parents play favorites among their children, but let the favoritism at least be a genuine, heartfelt thing. Yet for Isaac, it was not some special love or affection that he felt for Esau; it was his appetite for game.
And the proverbial apple didn't fall far from the tree. Later in the same passage, we read the infamous story of Esau trading his birthright for a mess of pottage. Just as Isaac's appetite apparently so skewed his vision that he could not see the true value of his sons, so Esau's appetite similarly blinded him to the value of his birthright.
The narrator says that “Esau despised his birthright.” That seems like strong language and a rather harsh conclusion. Is that really how Esau felt about his birthright? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic to say that he despised it?
And yet there may be wisdom in the ancient author’s analysis. Perhaps he would retort that how we really feel about a thing is best evidenced by the way we value it in our day-to-day decisions. Esau regarded his birthright as being less valuable than a single, humble serving of vegetable stew. Perhaps, by the same token, we might conclude that Isaac despised his sons.
And what about us? Forbid it that we should look critically at these biblical characters without also looking in the mirror. So, what do we despise? Not that we would ever say it with our words, but perhaps we say it with our actions. What appetite so drives and controls us that we have willingly traded in far more precious and important things just to satisfy the momentary craving? Whatever our answer is, it is most certainly nothing to laugh about.
Romans 8:1-11
The good news of Romans 8:8 may be lost in the present generation. The declaration that “there is now no condemnation” is only a cause for rejoicing if one understands in the first place that condemnation was the sure and certain reality. But since the prevailing culture tends to deny that reality, the gospel message falls on deaf ears. It’s hard to bring the good news of a cure when the patient refuses to believe he is sick.
But good news it is!
Left to my own devices, without the gracious intervention of Christ, condemnation is both what I deserve and what I can expect. There is a holy and righteous judge, and the recurring testimony of scripture is both that he steps into time and space to execute judgment in temporal and finite ways and that, in the end, all persons will stand before him as Judge. And inasmuch as I am guilty — guilty of thoughts, words, and deeds that are contrary to his laws and repugnant to his character — condemnation is what I deserve and should expect.
It is against the backdrop of that reality, then, that the Apostle Paul declares the immeasurably Good News that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Jesus, then, becomes the shelter to which every reasonable person would flee. Consider any other calamity that one might see coming — hurricane, financial collapse, fatal traffic accident, terminal diagnosis, and then imagine that there is some option available. Imagine a place to hide where you are certain to be safe; an investment that is always secure; a protection that will not fail; some miracle cure — every reasonable person would avail himself or herself of that good alternative. Such is the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of the condemnation which dwarfs all other calamities combined!
Then Paul goes on to explain theologically what has happened for “those who are in Christ Jesus.” Specifically, he expounds on two dichotomies: the law vs. the salvation offered in Christ, and the flesh vs. the Spirit. And while these pairs are not synonymous (i.e., the law does not equal the flesh, and salvation in Christ is not the same as the Spirit), they do go together. The rest of Paul’s argument proceeds, therefore, on the assumption that the law and the flesh combine to doom us, while salvation in Christ and the Spirit combine to raise us up to new life.
Within that larger flow of thought, a few specific observations might be made.
Paul acknowledges “what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh.” The law, therefore, was not itself imperfect, but it was given to imperfect human beings, and was handicapped as a result. A supremely expensive violin in the hands of a beginner is going to squeal and screech. The fact that it has potential for sublime music does not mean that it can rise above its player. By contrast, life in the Spirit does precisely that — it rises about the capacity of the human player, for it is a life empowered not by you but by him.
Paul’s juxtaposition of the mind that is set on the flesh with the mind that is set on the Spirit recalls his charge to the Christians in Colossae: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2 ESV). The underlying Greek word is the same in both passages. And, in concert with our observations about the Old Testament lection, we think, too, of Paul’s lament to the Philippians about certain people: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:19 ESV).
Finally, Paul insists that the empowerment of the Spirit is not for this life only. On the contrary, the apostle declares the Spirit in you is the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead. On the one hand, that may be a truth that we take for granted. When we stop to ponder the implications, however, we discover that it is a wondrous prospect to contemplate. Picture the dead body of Jesus, wrapped, stiff, and cold in that cave on the outskirts of Jerusalem. And then, as you watch it, you suddenly see it become warm, fill again with color, throw off its rigor mortis, set aside its grave clothes, and rise to life. What could possibly make that happen? Well, Paul assures, the Spirit that made that happen is the same Spirit that lives in you!
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
I recall that, back in the 1970s, it was very fashionable to ask people, “What's your sign?” It was, of course, a reference to the zodiac. The popular presumption was that when you found out that this person was a Sagittarius, an Aquarius, a Leo, or some such, you immediately knew important things about them. In the years since then, I have met people whose great interest is in categorizing and understanding people in terms of their Myers-Briggs initials. And, still more recently, I have known a few folks who swear by the insights of the enneagram.
This week’s Gospel Lection suggests to me a different approach. Rather than categorizing and understanding people in terms of the twelve signs of the zodiac, or their initials, or their number and wing, I believe it is much more significant to think in terms of the four categories suggested by Jesus in our parable. Rather than asking one another, “What's your sign?”, let us instead begin by asking ourselves, “What's my soil?”
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a parable that is literally down to earth. In a largely agrarian culture, his audience recognized every detail of the picture he painted. They knew about scattering seeds. They knew about the hard packed path, about the shallow soil with rock so close to the surface, and about the dastardly and oppressive weeds. As Jesus described each of those settings along with the fate of the seeds that fell on each, the audience members no doubt nodded in recognition.
And then, of course, there was also the good soil — the soil that didn't have any of the other soils’ tragic flaws. That soil produced abundantly. Indeed, its yield was so superabundant that it more than made up for all the seed that didn't come to fruition in the other three soils.
About the time that the farmers in the audience were saying, “I know just what he’s talking about,” the disciples pursued Jesus for an explanation. They sensed that they didn’t know what he was talking about — that his real meaning had to do with something other than seeds and soils. And so, later in chapter 13, we are fortunate to have Jesus’ own interpretation of the parable that he had told.
The seed evidently represents a message — the Word of God, the Good News of the kingdom. And the soils, in turn, represent the different ways that people respond to that message. Some are impenetrably hard. Some are enthusiastically responsive at first, but don’t last. The hearts and lives of still others are too crowded to leave much room for the things of God to flourish there. And then, in the happy ending, there are those in whom God’s Word takes root, perseveres, grows, and bears fruit.
The farmer in Jesus’ original audience heard about this soil or that and said, “I know just what you’re talking about.” You and I, however, hear about this soil or that, and we might say, “I know just who you’re talking about.” And perhaps, in one of those instances, we would volunteer: “That’s me! He’s talking about me with that particular soil.”
These are the spiritual categories, then, into which all human beings fall. At any given moment, each person is characterized by one of these soils. And, in the end, each soul will have been ultimately described by one of these soils.
So, what’s your soil?
The attributes of the first three soils are described for us. In a sense, the good soil is never described. But we may infer by process of elimination what that good soil is like. For if it is not like the other three, then the good soil is soft and receptive; the good soil has depth; and the good soil is available, free of the competition that chokes out the things of God. This is the soil we want to be deliberate about cultivating, both in ourselves and in our congregations.
What’s your soil?
Application
We noted above in our treatment of the Gospel Lection that the four kinds of soil offer us four categories by which reflective human beings might assess themselves. And if the attributes of the soils themselves are not enough to give each of us a clear self-diagnosis, perhaps the various outcomes would do the job. In other words, consider what happens to the seed that falls on each soil, and see which one feels most biographical for you.
Does the pathway tell my story? Do I find that God's Word never really penetrates, but just bounces around on the surface? If so, then Jesus's explanation of the parable suggests that the impediment to be solved is a lack of understanding.
Or perhaps the shallow soil feels most personally familiar. Perhaps I recognize the pattern of immediate, enthusiastic responses, but without the kind of perseverance that leads to real fruitfulness. If so, then I know my obstacle is a lack of depth: a superficiality of commitment and of application.
Alternatively, I may find that it’s the crowded soil that matches my profile. Perhaps mine is a life where many other things are growing and thriving, but the things of God are not. In that case, Jesus tells me that "the anxiety of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth" are my great impediments.
In his letter to the Romans, meanwhile, Paul is less detailed in his diagnosis. For him, the fatal obstacle to God's work in a person's life is the flesh. At first blush, that may seem quite unfair, for what choice do we have? After all, we cannot be rid of the flesh in this life. It has its legitimate needs, as well as its genuine weaknesses. If my problem is the flesh, then is not my condition hopeless? For I am unavoidably made of flesh.
Yet Paul tells me that I do have a choice. It's not a choice of whether I am made of flesh or not; it's a choice of whether I set my mind on the flesh or not. That, then, reveals both the impediment and the resolution: you and I are invited to set our minds on the things of the Spirit.
Finally, what we have in Matthew and in Romans are both teachings, but what we have in Genesis is a story. Yet it is no less instructive.
The story of Esau trading his birthright for a mess of pottage is a powerful metaphor for the larger human condition. There is no comparison in terms of value: it should not have been a tough choice for Esau to make. Yet, driven by his appetites, he made the foolish exchange. Momentary gratification cost him his lifelong status and fortune.
This is where the things we have been identifying as obstacles and impediments prove to be more voluntary than we sometimes care to admit. The issue is not simply that I am made to be a certain sort of soil, or that I am unavoidably saddled with my flesh. The issue is that I am continually presented with choices to make. When I am at my best, I recognize the true value of things, and I choose wisely. When I am functioning like one of the first three soils, however, or when I am setting my mind on the things of the flesh, then I follow Esau into the folly of making a truly bad deal.
Alternative Application(s)
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 — Good News for the Sowers
I attended an event recently which put me back in touch with a woman who had been a teenager in the youth group I led 35 years ago. It was lovely to reconnect, and I had the privilege of meeting her children on that occasion. When she introduced me to her 20-year-old son, she said to him, “This is David, who was my youth minister when I was a teenager. He led me to Christ.” The young man shook my hand appreciatively, and said, “Your work has multiplied exponentially. You led her to the Lord, and now she has raised seven children to know him and to serve him!”
Such as the nature of the fourth soil, the good soil, right? It reproduces in abundance. Indeed, it yields such a spiritual return that it more than compensates for the unresponsive soils along the way.
Those of us who are in the ministry have been called to scatter the seed. And you and I know the disappointment that comes from some of the places where that seed falls. We know the frustration of those who are altogether unresponsive. And we know the heartbreak of those folks who respond enthusiastically at first, but who fall away for one reason and another. We shake our heads and wonder what we did wrong. But sometimes it is not the fault of the sower or the seed: sometimes it's a reflection of the soil — how hard or shallow or crowded it is.
I am fortunate to have lived long enough, and to have been in the ministry long enough, to see the evidence of those souls who have persevered in their response to God's Word. They have not withered, and they have not been choked out. On the contrary, they have reproduced for the kingdom in a myriad of ways. This one woman's young adult children are just one example. And of course, I can only imagine what those young men and women will turn around and do to touch other lives and lead other people to faith in Christ.
I tell you this story to encourage you. You probably have similar stories of your own. And if you do, then keep them in mind as you go out and faithfully scatter the seed again this Sunday. It will, no doubt, fall in a variety of places. But you and I can count on it that some of those hearts will be soft, and they will have depth, and their lives will make room for the things of God; and those good souls will produce thirty, sixty, and one-hundred-fold what you and I have sown in them!
Life in this world is filled with obstacles and impediments. So many things can get in the way of our being or doing what we most desire. Sometimes an expert in this field or that I can help us work through our issues. They help us to recognize what it is that keeps us from being more productive at work or more organized at home. They help us to identify the patterns that prevent our bodies from being more physically fit or our relationships from being more fulfilling. This or that expert can help us to identify obstacles to greater efficiency, improved creativity, and financial stability.
This Sunday, we turn to scripture to help us identify what it is that keeps us from spiritual vitality, fruitfulness, and victory.
Our Old Testament passage tells a story. Our two New Testament selections are both teachings. And all three can serve a kind of diagnostic function for us as we endeavor to grow and thrive spiritually.
There's no point in a person staying in a rut in some area of life if the problem can be identified and solved. Why live in frustration if you can be more productive at work or more organized at home? Why live with unhappiness and defeat if that relationship can be improved or that fitness can be accomplished?
And if that is true for other, routine areas of life, how much more in the most consequential stuff of life!
You and I don't necessarily have to adopt the posture of experts this week; scripture can fill that role. Instead, you and I have the opportunity to come up alongside our people and learn together with them. Let us allow God’s word to teach us about our obstacles and about all the goodness that God has in store for us beyond what we have experienced thus far.
Genesis 25:19-34, Psalm 119:105-112
The preacher in my home church when I was a boy once preached a series of sermons on the seven deadly sins. Ours was not a Catholic Church, but our pastor saw great insight in that traditional Catholic listing of sins. And I remember that, when he preached about the sin of gluttony, he titled his sermon, “The Sin We Laugh About.”
He was quite right, of course. Most of us church folks would not joke freely with one another about having shoplifted yesterday afternoon or indulging in pornography yesterday evening. But overeating we do not take so seriously. We do that without apology, and we readily laugh about it.
We live in a time unlike any other when it comes to our relationship to food. Most of our ancestors throughout human history had to work in order to eat any given meal. And even since the industrial revolution, when so many folks in the West no longer hunted or farmed for their own food, still a great deal of preparation was required for almost any meal.
Now, by contrast, not only are we surrounded by supermarkets that have aisles and aisles of food in abundance, including meals already made for us, we can also choose to stay in our homes and have meals delivered to us! Most every other generation in human history would stand agape at the abundance and convenience that we enjoy when it comes to food. We live like royalty and don’t even know it.
Interestingly, however, the abundance and the ease of access does not make us less ruled by food than generations of people who genuinely had to struggle to get food. Whether human beings are desperately hungry or habitually overfed, we are always it seems at risk of becoming like those people about whom Paul said, “Their god is their belly” (Philippians 3:19 ESV).
And so, it was for the father-son duo of Isaac and Esau. The biblical author freely acknowledges the dysfunctional favoritism in that home: everyone knew that Esau was dad's favorite and that Jacob was mom's favorite. But the narrator gives us an additional bit of insight about Isaac's preference for Esau: “Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game.”
That's a sad business, isn't it? It's too bad anytime parents play favorites among their children, but let the favoritism at least be a genuine, heartfelt thing. Yet for Isaac, it was not some special love or affection that he felt for Esau; it was his appetite for game.
And the proverbial apple didn't fall far from the tree. Later in the same passage, we read the infamous story of Esau trading his birthright for a mess of pottage. Just as Isaac's appetite apparently so skewed his vision that he could not see the true value of his sons, so Esau's appetite similarly blinded him to the value of his birthright.
The narrator says that “Esau despised his birthright.” That seems like strong language and a rather harsh conclusion. Is that really how Esau felt about his birthright? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic to say that he despised it?
And yet there may be wisdom in the ancient author’s analysis. Perhaps he would retort that how we really feel about a thing is best evidenced by the way we value it in our day-to-day decisions. Esau regarded his birthright as being less valuable than a single, humble serving of vegetable stew. Perhaps, by the same token, we might conclude that Isaac despised his sons.
And what about us? Forbid it that we should look critically at these biblical characters without also looking in the mirror. So, what do we despise? Not that we would ever say it with our words, but perhaps we say it with our actions. What appetite so drives and controls us that we have willingly traded in far more precious and important things just to satisfy the momentary craving? Whatever our answer is, it is most certainly nothing to laugh about.
Romans 8:1-11
The good news of Romans 8:8 may be lost in the present generation. The declaration that “there is now no condemnation” is only a cause for rejoicing if one understands in the first place that condemnation was the sure and certain reality. But since the prevailing culture tends to deny that reality, the gospel message falls on deaf ears. It’s hard to bring the good news of a cure when the patient refuses to believe he is sick.
But good news it is!
Left to my own devices, without the gracious intervention of Christ, condemnation is both what I deserve and what I can expect. There is a holy and righteous judge, and the recurring testimony of scripture is both that he steps into time and space to execute judgment in temporal and finite ways and that, in the end, all persons will stand before him as Judge. And inasmuch as I am guilty — guilty of thoughts, words, and deeds that are contrary to his laws and repugnant to his character — condemnation is what I deserve and should expect.
It is against the backdrop of that reality, then, that the Apostle Paul declares the immeasurably Good News that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Jesus, then, becomes the shelter to which every reasonable person would flee. Consider any other calamity that one might see coming — hurricane, financial collapse, fatal traffic accident, terminal diagnosis, and then imagine that there is some option available. Imagine a place to hide where you are certain to be safe; an investment that is always secure; a protection that will not fail; some miracle cure — every reasonable person would avail himself or herself of that good alternative. Such is the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of the condemnation which dwarfs all other calamities combined!
Then Paul goes on to explain theologically what has happened for “those who are in Christ Jesus.” Specifically, he expounds on two dichotomies: the law vs. the salvation offered in Christ, and the flesh vs. the Spirit. And while these pairs are not synonymous (i.e., the law does not equal the flesh, and salvation in Christ is not the same as the Spirit), they do go together. The rest of Paul’s argument proceeds, therefore, on the assumption that the law and the flesh combine to doom us, while salvation in Christ and the Spirit combine to raise us up to new life.
Within that larger flow of thought, a few specific observations might be made.
Paul acknowledges “what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh.” The law, therefore, was not itself imperfect, but it was given to imperfect human beings, and was handicapped as a result. A supremely expensive violin in the hands of a beginner is going to squeal and screech. The fact that it has potential for sublime music does not mean that it can rise above its player. By contrast, life in the Spirit does precisely that — it rises about the capacity of the human player, for it is a life empowered not by you but by him.
Paul’s juxtaposition of the mind that is set on the flesh with the mind that is set on the Spirit recalls his charge to the Christians in Colossae: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2 ESV). The underlying Greek word is the same in both passages. And, in concert with our observations about the Old Testament lection, we think, too, of Paul’s lament to the Philippians about certain people: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:19 ESV).
Finally, Paul insists that the empowerment of the Spirit is not for this life only. On the contrary, the apostle declares the Spirit in you is the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead. On the one hand, that may be a truth that we take for granted. When we stop to ponder the implications, however, we discover that it is a wondrous prospect to contemplate. Picture the dead body of Jesus, wrapped, stiff, and cold in that cave on the outskirts of Jerusalem. And then, as you watch it, you suddenly see it become warm, fill again with color, throw off its rigor mortis, set aside its grave clothes, and rise to life. What could possibly make that happen? Well, Paul assures, the Spirit that made that happen is the same Spirit that lives in you!
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
I recall that, back in the 1970s, it was very fashionable to ask people, “What's your sign?” It was, of course, a reference to the zodiac. The popular presumption was that when you found out that this person was a Sagittarius, an Aquarius, a Leo, or some such, you immediately knew important things about them. In the years since then, I have met people whose great interest is in categorizing and understanding people in terms of their Myers-Briggs initials. And, still more recently, I have known a few folks who swear by the insights of the enneagram.
This week’s Gospel Lection suggests to me a different approach. Rather than categorizing and understanding people in terms of the twelve signs of the zodiac, or their initials, or their number and wing, I believe it is much more significant to think in terms of the four categories suggested by Jesus in our parable. Rather than asking one another, “What's your sign?”, let us instead begin by asking ourselves, “What's my soil?”
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a parable that is literally down to earth. In a largely agrarian culture, his audience recognized every detail of the picture he painted. They knew about scattering seeds. They knew about the hard packed path, about the shallow soil with rock so close to the surface, and about the dastardly and oppressive weeds. As Jesus described each of those settings along with the fate of the seeds that fell on each, the audience members no doubt nodded in recognition.
And then, of course, there was also the good soil — the soil that didn't have any of the other soils’ tragic flaws. That soil produced abundantly. Indeed, its yield was so superabundant that it more than made up for all the seed that didn't come to fruition in the other three soils.
About the time that the farmers in the audience were saying, “I know just what he’s talking about,” the disciples pursued Jesus for an explanation. They sensed that they didn’t know what he was talking about — that his real meaning had to do with something other than seeds and soils. And so, later in chapter 13, we are fortunate to have Jesus’ own interpretation of the parable that he had told.
The seed evidently represents a message — the Word of God, the Good News of the kingdom. And the soils, in turn, represent the different ways that people respond to that message. Some are impenetrably hard. Some are enthusiastically responsive at first, but don’t last. The hearts and lives of still others are too crowded to leave much room for the things of God to flourish there. And then, in the happy ending, there are those in whom God’s Word takes root, perseveres, grows, and bears fruit.
The farmer in Jesus’ original audience heard about this soil or that and said, “I know just what you’re talking about.” You and I, however, hear about this soil or that, and we might say, “I know just who you’re talking about.” And perhaps, in one of those instances, we would volunteer: “That’s me! He’s talking about me with that particular soil.”
These are the spiritual categories, then, into which all human beings fall. At any given moment, each person is characterized by one of these soils. And, in the end, each soul will have been ultimately described by one of these soils.
So, what’s your soil?
The attributes of the first three soils are described for us. In a sense, the good soil is never described. But we may infer by process of elimination what that good soil is like. For if it is not like the other three, then the good soil is soft and receptive; the good soil has depth; and the good soil is available, free of the competition that chokes out the things of God. This is the soil we want to be deliberate about cultivating, both in ourselves and in our congregations.
What’s your soil?
Application
We noted above in our treatment of the Gospel Lection that the four kinds of soil offer us four categories by which reflective human beings might assess themselves. And if the attributes of the soils themselves are not enough to give each of us a clear self-diagnosis, perhaps the various outcomes would do the job. In other words, consider what happens to the seed that falls on each soil, and see which one feels most biographical for you.
Does the pathway tell my story? Do I find that God's Word never really penetrates, but just bounces around on the surface? If so, then Jesus's explanation of the parable suggests that the impediment to be solved is a lack of understanding.
Or perhaps the shallow soil feels most personally familiar. Perhaps I recognize the pattern of immediate, enthusiastic responses, but without the kind of perseverance that leads to real fruitfulness. If so, then I know my obstacle is a lack of depth: a superficiality of commitment and of application.
Alternatively, I may find that it’s the crowded soil that matches my profile. Perhaps mine is a life where many other things are growing and thriving, but the things of God are not. In that case, Jesus tells me that "the anxiety of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth" are my great impediments.
In his letter to the Romans, meanwhile, Paul is less detailed in his diagnosis. For him, the fatal obstacle to God's work in a person's life is the flesh. At first blush, that may seem quite unfair, for what choice do we have? After all, we cannot be rid of the flesh in this life. It has its legitimate needs, as well as its genuine weaknesses. If my problem is the flesh, then is not my condition hopeless? For I am unavoidably made of flesh.
Yet Paul tells me that I do have a choice. It's not a choice of whether I am made of flesh or not; it's a choice of whether I set my mind on the flesh or not. That, then, reveals both the impediment and the resolution: you and I are invited to set our minds on the things of the Spirit.
Finally, what we have in Matthew and in Romans are both teachings, but what we have in Genesis is a story. Yet it is no less instructive.
The story of Esau trading his birthright for a mess of pottage is a powerful metaphor for the larger human condition. There is no comparison in terms of value: it should not have been a tough choice for Esau to make. Yet, driven by his appetites, he made the foolish exchange. Momentary gratification cost him his lifelong status and fortune.
This is where the things we have been identifying as obstacles and impediments prove to be more voluntary than we sometimes care to admit. The issue is not simply that I am made to be a certain sort of soil, or that I am unavoidably saddled with my flesh. The issue is that I am continually presented with choices to make. When I am at my best, I recognize the true value of things, and I choose wisely. When I am functioning like one of the first three soils, however, or when I am setting my mind on the things of the flesh, then I follow Esau into the folly of making a truly bad deal.
Alternative Application(s)
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 — Good News for the Sowers
I attended an event recently which put me back in touch with a woman who had been a teenager in the youth group I led 35 years ago. It was lovely to reconnect, and I had the privilege of meeting her children on that occasion. When she introduced me to her 20-year-old son, she said to him, “This is David, who was my youth minister when I was a teenager. He led me to Christ.” The young man shook my hand appreciatively, and said, “Your work has multiplied exponentially. You led her to the Lord, and now she has raised seven children to know him and to serve him!”
Such as the nature of the fourth soil, the good soil, right? It reproduces in abundance. Indeed, it yields such a spiritual return that it more than compensates for the unresponsive soils along the way.
Those of us who are in the ministry have been called to scatter the seed. And you and I know the disappointment that comes from some of the places where that seed falls. We know the frustration of those who are altogether unresponsive. And we know the heartbreak of those folks who respond enthusiastically at first, but who fall away for one reason and another. We shake our heads and wonder what we did wrong. But sometimes it is not the fault of the sower or the seed: sometimes it's a reflection of the soil — how hard or shallow or crowded it is.
I am fortunate to have lived long enough, and to have been in the ministry long enough, to see the evidence of those souls who have persevered in their response to God's Word. They have not withered, and they have not been choked out. On the contrary, they have reproduced for the kingdom in a myriad of ways. This one woman's young adult children are just one example. And of course, I can only imagine what those young men and women will turn around and do to touch other lives and lead other people to faith in Christ.
I tell you this story to encourage you. You probably have similar stories of your own. And if you do, then keep them in mind as you go out and faithfully scatter the seed again this Sunday. It will, no doubt, fall in a variety of places. But you and I can count on it that some of those hearts will be soft, and they will have depth, and their lives will make room for the things of God; and those good souls will produce thirty, sixty, and one-hundred-fold what you and I have sown in them!
