8 Pentecost - 13 July 2008 - Proper 10A
Genesis 25: 19-34; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
James V. Stockton
Genesis 25: 19-34; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
James V. Stockton
Contemporary society is often identified, and probably rightly so, with a culture of instant gratification. If the pay-off isn’t immediately available, then one is hard-put to persuade people that the effort is worth it. Those of you who are teachers, and those of us who are students also, are likely quite familiar with the phrase, “Will this be on the test?” And the answer, of course, is ‘yes.’ It may not show up in a question on a quiz or on a final exam. But whatever it is, one likely to be tested over it some day, in some way. And it’s the ‘some day’ that makes it a hard sell. It’s the waiting, the waiting, the waiting.
Patience is a virtue. ‘God, grant me patience,’ so goes the prayer. ‘God, grant me patience, and please, do it right now!’ As one with a reputation for driving with a quickened pace, I identify with that prayer. And lest there be any skeptics present who doubt that God listens, please notice in response to our prayer for patience, God has sent us Windows Vista® and the new Apple iPhone®.
‘Patience is a virtue;’ so goes the saying. And as a thing that is good, one may assume, rightly, I suggest, that patience is also a thing that is godly. The question becomes, then, how do people of God find their access to the virtue of patience? Where do they go to download patience? Where’s the drive-through where they can place their order?
Someone has said, “The secret of patience is doing something else in the meanwhile.” And the Apostle Paul just might agree. Paul writes to the Christians in Rome that, the way he sees it, there is on one hand the life of the flesh, of carnality, in terms of today, the life of immediate gratification. On the other hand, there is the life of the Spirit. But if it seems that Paul is suggesting that one is important to God and the other is not, then this is a great example of why it is important to avoid taking texts of scripture out of the larger context. Paul’s point is that through life in the Spirit of God, people find the patience to tend, in a way that is proper, virtuous, and even godly, to the concerns of their lives, and of the lives of those around them. It is exactly because they are waiting for those blessings of life in the Spirit that come to them in God’s good time, that what they do in the meanwhile matters all the more.
I read a story about a driver at an intersection. It is rush hour, traffic is heavy, and his car stalls. The light turns green, and for all his efforts, he cannot get his car started again. A symphony of honking horns rises up around him. He tries and tries to get his car running, but he is unable. Finally, he gets out his car, goes to the driver immediately behind him, and says, “I’m sorry, I can’t get my car started. If you’ll go up there and give it a try, I’ll stay here and honk your horn for you.”
“The secret of patience is doing something else in the meanwhile.” The parable of sower that Jesus tells in the gospel for today offers insight into what people can do in the meanwhile. First, it is probably instructive that the first thing Jesus does is sit down. ‘Jesus went out and sat beside the sea.’ He doesn’t rush to the people, the people come to him. He just goes out and takes a seat at the seashore. In itself, it s a scene of serenity, of watching the waves, of listening to the water, of allowing things to happen as they will, while one simply observes. It is a picture of patience. As the crowds gather, Jesus gets into a boat; and we can just allow ourselves here to infer personally what we will about any sort of divine imprimatur upon the act of sitting in a boat out on a lake somewhere, perhaps with a line in the water.
From here, Jesus begins to speak to the people. And again, his example offers yet another insight and invitation. “Listen,” he says. Simply, ‘Listen.’ It’s no exaggeration to say, I think, that listening, like patience, is an increasingly rare expression of the art of being human. “Listen,” says Jesus. And it is almost enough to stop the reading there. In his book Go and Do Likewise, author William C. Spohn writes, “…the practices of Christian spirituality form the bridge between the texts of the New Testament and the virtues needed to live out a Christian way of life.” He goes on, “A single dramatic insight into a biblical story or image may impress us for a lifetime.” “However,” he notes, “regular disciplines are the usual way that these [stories or images] become habits of the heart.”
That ‘single dramatic insight’ is something that a culture of instant gratification can relate to well. But instant enlightenment, instantaneous illumination, immediate gratification of the desire to meet and to know God is hard to achieve. A meaningful experience of worship can offer hints of the transport and bliss of that union with God that is to come, but the singular dramatic experience is never meant to substitute for the regular relationship with God or with God’s people.
And so, ‘Listen.’ Jesus calls the people to the regular discipline of the patience to listen for a living word spoken to their heart from the heart of God. The parable of the sower of the seeds describes for the followers of Jesus the reality that he encounters, and that they in their turn will encounter, too. You and I can only imagine how this parable takes on growing significance for the disciples after Jesus has ascended and they begin to lead and serve the emerging fellowship of the infant Church. And the point of the parable is not so much the sower, though that is how it has come to be identified. The point is the soils, the inevitably different soils, upon which falls the seed.
In Jesus’ day, in the days of the apostles, and in our own, the Word of God falls across the ears and the hearts of persons of all sorts and conditions. Persons who hear but do not understand fall prey to losing what might have sprung up in their lives. People who welcome the Good News of God’s Love for them may lose what they gain when they discover that though God is near, they’re not yet in heaven, and troubles will continue to arise. Persons who hear, who understand the concepts, who even appreciate the theory, may miss out on what God is hoping to grow up in their lives, when they succumb to the lure of the world around them. Be it, as for Esau, a simple bowl of stew on a hungry afternoon, or as for his brother Jacob, access to the power and wealth around them, the lure of immediate gratification can threaten to leave them deaf and numb to Jesus’ call to ‘listen and be patient in the meanwhile.’
And so, for Jesus in his day, for the apostles in theirs, and now for you and me, this means that sharing the Word of God must always be more than sharing a text, a book, or a recorded reading. It means that the Word of God that lively lives is found less printed on paper pages, flashed across monitor screens, or encoded on digital media, and more often found composed upon human hearts upon yours and mine. It means that the Word is annotated, if you will, by we and all those whose lives, are already fertile with a lived relationship with its author. For all those into whose lives God plants its seed, the Word is given meaning that is personal, immediate, and lasting in your actions done for them, and in mine, in your words spoken to them, and in mine, and in the time we take just to listen; to practice our belief that patience is a virtue, and to sit with them beside the sea of God’s blessing: God’s Love for each of us and for us all.
So may Almighty God, source of life and lover of souls, bring us to the fullness of grace for which God, through Christ our Savior, has prepared both us and all whom God has made; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, One God, for ever and ever. Amen.
© 2008, James V. Stockton
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