Homily by The
Rev. Marcia McRae
St. John’s
Episcopal Church, Bainbridge, GA, 13 July 2014, Proper 10
Year A RCL:
Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans
8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-2
Today's scriptures share several ideas that I express in haikus:
Twins
struggle in womb – family discord resumes
We
war with ourselves
Fleshy
cares leave us
famished & so we forfeit
our
blessings from God
When
we scatter seeds, we leave many untended,
subjected
to chance
Our
divergent work – together in prayer – brings forthGod's harvest of Love.
Paul
tells us in Romans that, although we are
fleshy beings, we are
spiritual beings. The Holy Spirit dwells in us & guides us away
from sin & into grace1
– away from life's fleshy focus, into deeper spiritual relationship
with God.
Flesh
& spirit are realities that are more than the individual person,
as
one Bible commentary says.
2
It says:
Flesh & spirit demand a “deliberate choice of values &
human effort...(in
our) relationship to God”: we are either defiant or cooperative.3
As
God's beloved children, we know “...freedom in (Jesus) Christ is
aimed at the reshaping of human life, both individually &
corporately, according to the good that God wills for it,”4
as Paul
says in Romans.
Our
freedom in Jesus means we can be healthy, growing, productive seeds,
nurtured in the good, nourishing soil of Jesus, who tells us
today's parable: Healthy soil receives the seeds & feeds the
seeds.
When
we are planted in God-centered soil, the soil feeds us with Holy
nurturing so that we produce an abundant harvest of God's love.
We
are healthy & we nourish others because Jesus is our Lord, who
has died so that our fleshy selves are renewed to be spiritually
mature, centered in God's love.
What
a contrast we see between our life centered in God's love & what
we read in Genesis of the cares of this world. I wonder how
different are the stories of human discord that we read in Genesis
when we hear so much discord in our news.
Perhaps
the differences in the cares of this world are in the customs of our
day & those of the Middle Bronze
Age (about
22 BC until the 15th
or 14th
century BC5)
when these Genesis stories
take place.
Details
of life then, of customs such as the 1st
son's selling his inheritance rights, are known from sources other
than the Bible: archives in places on the Euphrates River, in
Mesopotamia & the law code of Hammurabi
from
1700 BC.6
So
what may seem odd to us is a life-style in a particular time &
place. The basic human disconnect between how people live &
living in God's love is the same.
Genesis
tells us that Esau & Jacob struggle in the womb. Their clash
continues in their lifestyles: Esau is a hunter in the wild; Jacob is
a stay-at-home farmer.7
Esau’s
name is from a verb meaning “to stuff an animal with food,”8
(rather
appropriate for what he asks his brother today).
Esau’s other name, Edom, means red, like the red soil of the land
that bears his name, like the red blood of animals this hunter kills,
like his hot blood that cries out to his brother for help when he
comes home from hunting & their clash takes a new twist.
Esau
is starving & says: “Let me eat some of that red stuff…”
The way he
says this in The Jewish Study Bible sounds more urgent:
“Give me some of that red stuff to gulp down…I am famished…”9
Esau
is focused on the real human, fleshy need for food. Notice: Jacob is
just as fleshy as he demands that Esau swear to give up his
inheritance right in exchange for food Jacob has cooked.
Esau is so
focused on the urgent cares of this world he agrees to this impulsive
decision that changes the future.
God-centered
timing, God-centered decisions demand a pause, demand the wisdom of
knowing
the difference between the urgent & the important,
as author Stephen R. Covey discusses in First
Things First
(pp. 32-39).
Jesus
teaches us this difference so that when we
are sowers of the seed, we don’t scatter seed willy-nilly because
that's easier, but intentionally so that we can carefully tend it.
The Holy Spirit will guide us to learn & to adjust our lives so
that we respond to God’s perspective of what’s urgent, what’s
important, what’s fleshy, what’s of the Holy Spirit.
The
important often has
no urgency,
no deadline, so it’s easy to let slide the really
important in life, in God’s work, while we handle the urgent.
There
is usually something urgent
to distract us from God’s work.
Some
things are
important &
urgent: being with friends in an emergency, handling the leak in the
Parish Hall ceiling & consulting with experts about a new
energy-saving air system that will be healthier for God’s creation
& for our stewardship of Church finances.
Through
the grace of the Holy Spirit, we can stay focused on God’s work
when the cares of this world clamor urgently. The power of the Holy
Spirit can assuage
our hunger for that red stuff that we want to gulp down.
Prayer
is
central to our work as the
Body of Christ,
central to our discerning the urgent & the important.
Our worship complements our work,
whether our worship is together as we are now or
“together” as we
read Morning Prayer,
Evening Prayer, any of the daily offices
wherever we are.
Wherever
we do this, we join with each other, with angels & archangels &
all the company of heaven to worship God. Doing so. we positively
impact our lives & the lives of others.
This IS important work.
As
you do this important work, consider the
prayer For
Social Justice
(Book of Common Prayer p. 823):
Grant,
O God, that your holy & life-giving Spirit may so move every
human heart & especially the hearts of the people of this land,
that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, &
hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in
justice & peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.10
Bibliography
Barclay, William. The
Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Matthew.
Vol. 2. Revised Ed. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1975.
Barclay, William. The
Daily Study Bible: The Letter to Romans.
Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press. 1971.
Boadt, Lawrence. Reading
the Old Testament: An Introduction.
New York: Paulist Press. 1984.
Book of Common Prayer.
New York: The Church Hymnal Corp., and The Seabury Press. 1979.
Brown, Raymond E. An
Introduction to the New Testament.
New York: Doubleday. 1997.
Dios Habla Hoy: La Biblia.
New York: American Bible Society. 1983.
Harper’s Bible Commentary.
General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers. 1988.
Holy Bible. New Revised
Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH
Translation. New York: Oxford University
Press. 2004.
Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Creed:
What Christians Believe and Why It Matters.
New York: Doubleday. 2003.
The New American Bible for
Catholics. South
Bend: Greenlawn Press. 1986.
2
Ibid. Harper's. P. 11151.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
8
Ibid. Harper's. P. 101.
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