Homily by The
Rev. Marcia McRae
St. Francis
Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, 16 July 2017, Proper 10
Year
A RCL: Genesis
25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Jesus
says, seeds & good soil yield positive results.
Think
about positive results we see planting seeds in good soil &
tending both plants & soil: Seeds grow, bear fruit & feed a
hungry world. This is important & takes time.
Often
hunger is literal. Notice Esau's urgent plea in our 1st
lesson.
What he says sounds more urgent in The
Jewish Study Bible:
“Give me some of that red stuff to gulp down…”1
Often
hunger is figurative, an inner yearning to assuage an emptiness,
something that needs our gifts – your special ability.
What
emptiness & longing lingered in hearts of baseball's Chicago Cubs
& their fans after the Cubs won the World Series in 1907 &
1908? They struggled, starved & persevered more than 100 years &
feasted after winning the 2016 series.2
What
struggle, yearning & family discord
we see in our 1st
lesson!
Esau & his twin, Jacob, are so different in
how they live.
How do we war within ourselves? What “fleshy” cares leave us so
famished we forfeit our blessings from God?
Paul
tells us in Romans, although we
are fleshy, we are also spiritual beings. The Holy Spirit dwells in
us & guides us away from sin & into grace3
– away from fleshy focus into deeper spiritual relationship with
God.
Flesh
& spirit are realities & more than the individual.4
Flesh
& spirit demand a “deliberate choice of values & human
effort...[in
our]
relationship to God”: We're either defiant or cooperative.5
As
God's beloved children, we know “...freedom in [Jesus]... is aimed
at...reshaping...human life,...individually & corporately,
according to the good...God wills for it,”6
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. When we are planted
in God-centered soil, the soil feeds us with holy nurturing & we
produce an abundant harvest of God's love.
We
are
healthy & nourish others because Jesus is our Lord, who has died
so 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.
How
different are the stories of human discord in Genesis & in our
news?
Perhaps the differences are in the customs of our day & those of the Middle Bronze Age [about 22 BC until the 15th or 14th century BC7] when our Genesis stories take place.
Details
of life & customs then, such as a 1st
son selling his inheritance rights, are known from sources in
addition to the Bible: archives
in places on the Euphrates River, in Mesopotamia & the law code
of Hammurabi from 1700 BC.8
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. Notice the family dynamics we also see in
21st
century families: Esau is his dad's favorite son & Jacob his
mom's favorite.
Jacob,
whose name means “supplanter”9, will repeat this dynamic with his favorite son, Joseph, who receives
a fancy coat10 from his dad.
Esau’s
name comes from a verb meaning “to stuff an animal with food,”11
[appropriate
for what he asks his brother today].
Esau
focuses on the real human, fleshy need for food.
Notice
how “fleshy” Jacob sounds when he demands Esau swear to give up
his inheritance right in exchange for the food Jacob cooked. Esau
focuses on the urgent cares of this world & agrees to this
impulsive decision which 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 First12.
Jesus
teaches us this difference so when we are sowers of the seed, we
won’t scatter seed willy-nilly because it's easier, but
intentionally so we can carefully tend the seeds. The Holy Spirit
will guide us to learn & to adjust our lives so 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.
Think of Peter walking on the water to Jesus.13
Focused
on the important resource, Jesus, he walks. Suddenly distracted by
the urgent-sounding storm, Peter starts sinking.
We
do face times when things are important & urgent: being with
friends in an emergency, handling a leak flooding your kitchen which
keeps
you from a parish gathering.
Through
the grace of the Holy Spirit, we can stay focused on God’s work
when cares of this world clamor urgently. 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 this we positively impact our
lives & 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],
which we will read in unison. Let
us pray:
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.14
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.
Bastain,
Jordan. Carrie Muskat.“Cubs are heavy wait champions!” MLB.com. 3
Nov. 2016.
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/207938228/chicago-cubs-win-2016-world-series/
Accessed: 14 July 2017.
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.
Covey,
Stephen R. First
Things First.
New York: Simon & Schuster. 1994.
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.
Jacobs,
A.J. The Year of Living Biblically: One
Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.
New York: Simon & Schuster. 2007.
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.
Ortberg,
John. If You Want to Walk on Water,
You've Got to Get Out of the Boat.
Grand Rapids: Zondervan. 2001.
Sidebotham,Jay.
The Old Testament from A-Z: A Spirited
Romp through the Hebrew Scripture.
Harrisburg: Morehouse. 2005.
2
Cubs reference inspired by Ortberg, John. If
You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat.
P. 23. Data:
https://www.google.com/search
& Bastain,
Jordan. Carrie Muskat.“Cubs are heavy wait champions!”
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/207938228/chicago-cubs-win-2016-world-series/
Accessed: 14 July 2017.
4
Ibid. P. 1151.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
8
Ibid. Boadt. P. 134.
11
Ibid. Harper's. P. 101.
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