Sermon for Sexagesima Sunday
admin | 20 February 2022“The seed is the word of God”
The ‘Gesima Sundays’ mark the transition from learning to living, a turn to the practice of the virtues as transformed by divine love to become the means of our participation in Christ’s work of human redemption. That will be the project of Lent, the pilgrimage of love that brings us to the book of love opened out for us to read on the cross of Good Friday. Already we are being turned towards Easter.
Today the virtues of courage and prudence are set before us in the Epistle and Gospel respectively. This focus on the classical virtues as transformed by divine love to become forms of love themselves locates the ‘Gesima Sundays’ within a larger tradition of ethical thinking. They connect to the great ethical turn in philosophy by Socrates and Plato, for instance, along with others in what has been styled the “axial age” (Karl Jaspers) and thus to the idea of philosophy as something lived, the idea of the good life.
Such ancient interests speak to our modern concerns. What is the good life? It is a pressing question in our current circumstances economically, politically, socially, environmentally, and religiously. The Christian Faith speaks to our current distresses even if nothing more than to raise the necessary ethical questions, the questions that are rooted in an understanding of the dynamic between God and Man in Jesus Christ. “I am come”, Jesus says, “that they may have life and have it more abundantly.” He doesn’t mean more and more of everything materially but spiritually and intellectually.
It means a kind of thoughtfulness in the face of the fearful thoughtlessness of our world and day. The question about the good life is the question we all face. The contemporary preoccupation with ‘wellness’ suggests one way in which this is pursued largely through the various techniques of physical exercise and diet. At best, this might relate to the virtue of temperance, of the self-control of our appetites, in a culture of excess and addiction. Endorphin high or cannabis high? There is a difference, I suppose, which lies in the question of intention at the very least.
But in another way this points to the unlivable character of contemporary life in a global world that confronts us with enormous iniquities and inequalities on a scale of magnitude that is scarcely imaginable. It signals the loss of a way of understanding that belongs to the mediating institutions, such as schools and churches, between the leviathan of modern governments and the behemoth of multinational corporations. As governed by technocratic reason, they are profoundly anti-life and effectively reduce us to passive little technobots, mere cogs in a machine ruled by technocrats. The levelling nature of this form of thinking has no respect for the organisations and institutions that once contributed to the social and spiritual well-being of our communal lives, let alone the ethical and spiritual principles which animate such institutions.
In part, the collapse of the churches belongs to the embrace of contemporary culture at the expense of the principles of the Gospel. For too long Christians have wanted to identify their faith with society and have allowed and even actively participated in the destruction of the ethical and spiritual principles of the Christian Faith. The dignity of dying with grace, for instance, is often displaced with an essentially technocratic approach to end of life issues (M.a.i.d), Wanting to die and wanting to alleviate suffering is one thing; causing death itself is quite another. It is about the ethical.
Our task and challenge is about a renewed commitment to thinking the essential principles of the Christian Faith. For Anglicans what does it mean to be “an integral portion of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic church” (Solemn Declaration, 1893, BCP, p. viii)? The question belongs to how we think about our humanity spiritually and ethically.
Our formularies and liturgies are clear about this claim but it is undermined by the cultural forces that dominate our hearts and minds and which deny to the Scripture, as doctrinally understood, any compelling voice, forces which are actually anti-culture, anti-life. To counter those forces means attending to the ethical and theological teachings that belong to our classical heritage and identity.
It all comes down to matters of essential faith, not social prestige and standing, and certainly not some sort of techne. The churches do not exist to be reflections of ourselves to ourselves or of contemporary technocracy but to place us with one another in communion with God. God is not simply our humanity writ large as some have imagined. Neither are we caught in the mindlessness of some sort of cosmic ‘matrix’ nor are we merely “organic algorithms” as some would have us think (Yuval Noah Harari). Such views are all part of our technocratic delusions which effectively deny human dignity and freedom, effectively denying ourselves as selves. But “the wisdom of the ages and the sages” as Neil Postman puts it, is that there is really no escaping ourselves. God makes himself known to us in his sovereign freedom through the pageant of revelation in which we learn about our humanity. We are part of a wonderful tradition of doctrine about God through which we learn something about ourselves and the good life, the good life now of life with Christ.
Learning as living, living out what we are learning. This is the focus of the ‘Gesimas’ and more. It is the challenge of the contemporary church.
Today’s readings present a kind of paradox; the turn from learning to living is always about learning. Thus the learning isliving. The ‘Gesima Sundays’ are really all about instruction. Here Christ teaches us through parables, not through deeds and actions, and even more he explicates the parable. What he teaches speaks to the actions of our lives on the ground, as it were, in the communities where we are placed and, even more, to ourselves as ground. A powerful metaphor, it connects us in our disconnected age to nature and to God. “The seed is the word of God” and we are “the ground”, an image which recalls us immediately to creation. At issue, is what kind of ground?
The ethical teaching challenges us directly about the good life. But beyond the parable, Jesus provides us here with the interpretation. The disciples ask, as perhaps you do, “what might this parable be?” What does it mean to talk about “a sower going forth to sow his seed” which falls by “the way-side”, “upon a rock”, “among thorns”, and then “on good ground”? Without the interpretation we might get the general and literal idea that you aren’t going to have much of a harvest unless you plant wisely. Farming, after all, requires prudence, an active and practical wisdom that guides our actions.
The interpretation catapults us into something more profound and does so in ways that recall at once the forms of Socratic questioning that uses everyday activities such as shoemakers, cooks, shipbuilders, shepherds, and other techne, meaning skills, to open us out to a higher way of thinking, pushing things analogically, and to what will be an integral feature of Christianity, namely its sacramental character. That is the way in which the things of this world and the things of human labour become vehicles of divine grace. In both the teaching calls us up higher rather than reducing things downward. In both we learn that there is no wisdom in ‘know-how skills’; in short, no wisdom, no virtue in techne or in technology. There is no knowing-that or knowing-what.
The interpretation of the parable is perfectly clear. The metaphors of agriculture are applied to our lives with God. God is imaged as a farmer who plants his seed, “the seed”, we are told, “is the word of God”. Do we have regard for that idea, the idea of the word of God? Does it mean anything to us? Does God mean anything to us or is the church simply a social entity? It is but also something far more. That something more has to do with the spiritual realities of living and dying, the patterns of Christian faith that belong to our life here but also connect us to a greater and a living community that extends far beyond our local scene. To have a hold of that vision is saving grace.
The interpretation of the parable makes it perfectly clear that we are the ground into which the seed of God’s word is sown. The parable challenges us about what kind of ground we are, making it unmistakably clear that something is required of us; namely our active engagement with the word of God. The wayside ground is about going along with the world, hearing with our ears but without anything taking root in our hearts; the devil snatches us away because we do not let the good take a hold of us in our lives. The rocky ground, too, is about not persevering with what has been sown in us; not resisting temptations of one sort or another. The thorny ground especially speaks to our frantic and frenetic age of endless busyness and distraction, our inability to stop and think and, even more, our desire to equate the good life with the riches and pleasures of this life. The reality is that we are consumed by cares and worries. We are not happy and cannot be.
So what is left? Only the good ground which is “an honest and a good heart”. This is nothing less than “hear[ing] the word, keep[ing] it, and bring[ing] forth fruit with patience”. How is that to happen? Only through our prayerful attentiveness to what belongs to the patterns and practices of our life together with God in Word and Sacrament. It is about living what we are constantly learning. Therein lies our joy and our good.
“The seed is the word of God”
Fr. David Curry
Sexagesima, 2022 (revised)