Seventh Sunday after Pentecost; 16 July 2023; Proper 10A (RCL); Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23.
I’ve always found (and still do find) the parable of the sower a little bit troubling. Sowing seed was often used in the ancient world as a metaphor for teaching, but in most cases, the focus of the metaphor was on the careful preparation of the soil. The philosopher/teacher spent a great deal of care in preparation of the soil, so that the implanted seed would take root and bear fruit.
In this case, the sower seems supremely uninterested in where the seed falls. Some falls on the path, some on rocky soil, some in thistles, and some in good soil. What kind of a farmer is this guy? Interestingly, I’ve only just recently read Dieter Georgi’s book, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians. What Georgi makes clear is that there was intense competition in religious and philosophical propaganda in the ancient world. The behavior of the sower in this parable fits much better with the activity of a propagandist than with the activity of a teacher. Throw the word out there and see who responds. I guess I’m much more interested in the painstaking work of the teacher than in the haphazard work of a propagandist. It seems more rewarding to me. And I’m not sure the world needs any more religious propagandists than we’ve already got.
In a way, Paul was one such propagandist, but he seems more intent on the patient work after the seed has been sown than the sower in the parable. He visits and revisits his communities (and stays a long time — three years in Damascus, and 14 years in the regions of Syria and Cilicia he tells us in the letter to the Galatians). He writes letters to them and intervenes in their internal affairs (read the Corinthian correspondence).
In the letter to the Romans, he is writing to a community he has not yet met, to clarify his “gospel.” Some other propagandists have put some disinformation out there about what Paul is preaching, claiming that he is preaching a kind of license, since we have been freed from the law. That’s certainly the mistake the Corinthians had made, and it looks like Paul is writing the letter to the Romans in the immediate aftermath of his showdown with the Corinthians over the value of the Law, trying to clarify his view of it.
In Chapter 7 of Romans, he claims that the Law is in fact good, but Israel has not been able to keep it (the “I” of 7:7-25 is Israel). At the end of Chapter 7, he makes Israel’s great lament: Wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?
Chapter 8 gives the answer — there is no condemnation for those who are in (the Body of) Christ. They are of the spirit, not of the flesh, so God has done in Jesus what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. For Paul, the flesh is the arena in which we draw distinction (male/female, slave/free, Jew/Gentile — add your own list). But here, he seems to set another, immovable distinction — flesh/spirit. Hasn’t he just done what he has accused the law of doing — separating those outside from those inside, this time drawing the line at flesh/spirit?
What the law was supposed to do was give the life that God intended for humanity all along, the life of righteous community as stewards of creation. But, weakened by the flesh, we used it to bring death, separation of inside/outside — that is our great sin. So, God dealt with sin a different way. God sent his son in sinful flesh, as a sin offering, to put sin to death, so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. Hasn’t he just set up another inside/outside distinction?
It’s important to remember that Paul is using the epic of Israel as the outline for his argument. Chapter 5 dealt with slavery in Egypt/slavery to sin, and Chapter 6 dealt with crossing the Red Sea/dying to sin in baptism, and Chapter 7 dealt the giving of the law. Chapter 8 then deals with the journey through the wilderness. We are making the journey from life in the flesh toward life in the Spirit. We have not arrived yet, but what God did in Jesus is the guarantee that the journey will be completed. We will arrive at the promised land.
We all know that we set our minds on the things of the flesh: food, clothing, wealth, status, ethnicity, sexuality, any form of identity politics you can think of, because to some extent, we are still of the flesh. It’s important to note that the sentence in verse 11 begins in the past tense (If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead) shifts to the present tense (dwells in you – as the Spirit of God dwelt in the tabernacle in the wilderness) and ends in the future tense (the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through the Spirit that dwells in you). We’re not there yet; we are on our way.
The journey through the wilderness (the sufferings of this present age Paul will speak about later in the Chapter) provides the discipline which helps us shift from living in the flesh to living in the Spirit. We are on our way from slavery to sin toward the promised land of life in the Spirit.
That’s the hard work the parable of the sower seems to ignore. All of a sudden, there is a harvest of thirty-, sixty-, or a hundred-fold. Gaining converts is one thing; learning to live in the Spirit is an altogether different thing.