Rabbenu
A Discussion of Messianic Judaism, the Emerging Messianic Jewish Paradigm, and Related Leadership Issues from the Preoccupied Mind of Rabbi Stuart Dauermann, PhD.
All Contents ©2004-2007 Stuart Dauermann - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Sow What? A Meditation on the Parable of the Soils - Matthew 13
I have been sick with something or other lately. I don’t know yet what it is, but I have had occasional vertigo, some listlessness, and alarmingly high blood pressure for the past week. It is not the flu, but apparently something that is “going around.” And yes, I did go to the doctor.
When we experience sudden illness we think of our own mortality—that we’re not going to live in this life forever. Actually, during this past week, when I have at times felt like death warmed over, I have had occasion to be grateful for illness. One of the things it does for us is remind us to weigh what our life ought to be about.
Today’s passage from the teachings of Yeshua is related directly to the issue of spending our lives productively. I invite you to consider four lessons from this text.
1 That same day, Yeshua went out of the house and sat down by the lake; 2 but such a large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there while the crowd stood on the shore. 3 He told them many things in parables: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he sowed, some seed fell alongside the path; and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on rocky patches where there was not much soil. It sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow; 6 but when the sun had risen, the young plants were scorched; and since their roots were not deep, they dried up. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 But others fell into rich soil and produced grain, a hundred or sixty or thirty times as much as had been sown. 9 Those who have ears, let them hear!" 10 Then the talmidim came and asked Yeshua, "Why are you speaking to them in parables?" 11 He answered, "Because it has been given to you to know the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, but it has not been given to them. 12 For anyone who has something will be given more, so that he will have plenty; but from anyone who has nothing, even what he does have will be taken away. 13 Here is why I speak to them in parables: they look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding. 14 That is, in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Yesha`yahu which says, `You will keep on hearing but never understand, and keep on seeing but never perceive, 15 because the heart of this people has become dull -- with their ears they barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, so as not to see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and do t'shuvah, so that I could heal them.' 16 But you, how blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear! 17 Yes indeed! I tell you that many a prophet and many a tzaddik longed to see the things you are seeing but did not see them, and to hear the things you are hearing but did not hear them. 18 "So listen to what the parable of the sower means. 19 Whoever hears the message about the Kingdom, but doesn't understand it, is like the seed sown along the path -- the Evil One comes and seizes what was sown in his heart. 20 The seed sown on rocky ground is like a person who hears the message and accepts it with joy at once, 21 but has no root in himself. So he stays on for a while; but as soon as some trouble or persecution arises on account of the message, he immediately falls away. 22 Now the seed sown among thorns stands for someone who hears the message, but it is choked by the worries of the world and the deceitful glamor of wealth, so that it produces nothing. 23 However, what was sown on rich soil is the one who hears the message and understands it; such a person will surely bear fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirty times what was sown."
A perspective to adopt – What does it mean to invest our lives well? According to this text, we spend our lives well whenever we are growing in understanding and fruitfulness. Notice that the payoff verse of the parable, verse 23, reminds us, “What was sown on rich soil is the one who hears the message and understands it; such a person will surely bear fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirty times what was sown." We live well when we continue growing in understanding and fruitfulness.
What is understanding? Understanding in this context is an ever-renewing clarity on what it means to walk with God in our particular set of challenging circumstances and opportunities. What does it mean to seek justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God not in general, but in the most minute details of my particular day to day life and within the full range of my relationships? Although there will certainly be overlap, my pathway of faithfulness and yours will not be the same, and cannot be the same. The areas where my integrity and love for God is being tested are different from yours, the relationships where my faithfulness must be worked out are mine, as yours are yours. But we do have this in common: growth in understanding means ever-renewing clarity on what the LORD our God is requiring of us in the here and now.
And what is fruitfulness? Fruitfulness is a life that consistently expands our knowledge of God and that pleases Him. As Paul describes this kind of life in Col 1:10, this is a life of “bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Fruitfulness is the kind of life that reflects well upon our Father in Heaven—it means bearing the family likeness. “Live such good lives among the pagans that . . . they will, as a result of seeing your good actions, give glory to God on the Day of his coming.”
It is “bearing fruit in every good work”—a fruitfulness evident throughout the entire range of life experience.
A process to choose— spiritual avoidance leads to spiritual poverty, spiritual acquisition leads to spiritual wealth. To put it otherwise, those who choose immaturity fail to grow, and those who choose to grow, mature. Yeshua names this process in verse 12: “For anyone who has something will be given more, so that he will have plenty; but from anyone who has nothing, even what he does have will be taken away.”
If we are not constantly acquiring more insight and more wisdom, if our spirituality is not expanding, it is shrinking—that is the only other choice. No one stands still. And there is no neutral place to stand. Yeshua articulates and assumes this perspective frequently: “Those who are not with me are against me, and those who do not gather with me are scattering . . . Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Lk 11:33; 17:33). Spiritual shrinking leads in one direction, downward, and it only grows worse and worse.
It is the sick person who has no appetite. If he/she does not eat, he she will not get well, but will become more and more ill. The spiritually avoidant, the person only feebly and reluctantly engaged with the things of God, the person who just doesn’t want to be bothered right now, and who is too busy to make room for the demands of the Kingdom, the person who cannot be bothered to dig in and devour Kingdom living—living in the power of the Spirit, in unavailable to the initiatives of God. Such people are destined to become weak, enfeebled, and shrink back until they disappear. Not happy news!
And what is Kingdom living? It is wholehearted responsiveness to the invitation to engage with what God is up to in the world—to partner with the Spirit of God in tikkun olam—setting right a world that is out of joint. The invitation to Kingdom engagement is not simply general, but is specific—there are times when God nudges us to “Arise, leave your nets, and follow me.” If we are too busy to respond, or deaf to the invitation, we don’t just stand still: we fall behind.
On the other hand, one CAN choose the alternative—One can choose to knock, to seek, to find, to press on to make our own that for which Messiah has grasped hold of us. One can choose to authentically engage. The spiritually healthy person cultivates a healthy appetite, and grows stronger and stronger, and, as their spirituality expands, so does their appetite. Such persons are engaged today, and will be engaged tomorrow. And such persons continue to grow.
So the choice for all of us is to dwindle or to grow, to decrease or to increase. And if one is going to choose growth and increase, one will need to hear, to learn, to engage, to practice what one learns with conscientious regularity. If you cannot be bothered too engage with spiritual learning and to practice what you learn, you will end up suffering the effects of spiritual malnutrition.
Problems to avoid - The four environments where the seed is sown, the three soils, describe four mindsets, three of which strangle the productivity of the Word in our lives.
(1) Not bothering to engage, not bothering to understand. This is the seed sown along the path. The inability to understand is not due to a lack of intelligence, but rather to a lack of interest. Yeshua speaks rather caustically here of such people because they could have and should have understood, but such understanding only comes to those who seek it. And if we will not aggressively engage with the things of God, with the life of the Kingdom, we will become ever more dull of hearing As Yeshua says here, “. . . in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Yesha`yahu which says, `You will keep on hearing but never understand, and keep on seeing but never perceive, because the heart of this people has become dull -- with their ears they barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, so as not to see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and do t'shuvah, so that I could heal them.'” It is a dangerous thing to close ones ears and eyes to the things of God, to defer engagement with the invitation to the Kingdom.
(2) Superficial non-sacrificial spirituality. This is the second kind of soil, sown on rocky soil. These are people who wrongly imagine that the invitation to Kingdom engagement is only life-enhancing, that it simply fills in the empty places, while making no demands, involving no risks, and requiring no sacrifice. Such a message is prevalent today—it is the common assumption about Yeshua oriented spirituality: but it is a lie. People who accept this lie tend to bail out and back off when encountering the social stigma, inconvenience, or painful consequences entailed in heedin the Kingdom invitation. As Paul put it later, “all who desire to life godly lives in Messiah Yeshua will suffer persecution.” Many people are not up for that: they succumb to their first reflex: to back off, to disengage, to retreat from what God is calling them to, to always protect what they have and minimize risk. And it is my observation that the older we get, the more self-protective we get—younger people take risks because loss does not seem fully real to them, but older people tend to conserve resources they consider to be finite and ever dwindling. The question is, when we hoard our resources of time, treasures, and talents, could it be that we ourselves are dwindling while the resources are protected?
This is not to say that the Kingdom of God is all suffering, sacrifice, and martyrdom. Far from it! But it is to say that, like everything else worthwhile, there is a price tag involved. And those who are not willing to pay the price, get nothing in return.
(3) Seduction by other priorities - Verse 22 speaks of this kind of person: “Now the seed sown among thorns stands for someone who hears the message, but it is choked by the worries of the world and the deceitful glamor of wealth, so that it produces nothing. “The worries of the world”—that is the fear response, and “the deceitful glamour or riches”—that is the surfeit response—the person who believes that material possessions and fame will lead to ultimate fulfillment. Of curse this is not so, but people get seduced by priorities and options in such a manner as to blunt the endge
A priority to honor- This brings us back to verse 23, where we began our contemplations: “However, what was sown on rich soil is the one who hears the message and understands it; such a person will surely bear fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirty times what was sown." We must be a people who above all take care to be receptive custodians of the Kingdom.
Yeshua teaches extensively about Kingdom engagement. Before I did, he used the metaphor of an invitation. Perhaps the bottom line for these teachings can be found in the simple phrase: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.” This must become priority one, because that is the only way it works. We need to devour the truth and let ourselves be devoured by its demands. Paul puts it this way: Present your bodies as a living sacrifice.
Of course this is paradoxical language: by definition, sacrifices are dead. What is a living sacrifice? A living sacrifice is someone who has allowed him/herself to die to an old priority system, an old way of thinking and being, that something new might live. Paul put it this way. So Paul could say to the Philippians: “For to me, life is the Messiah, and death is gain. . . When the Messiah was executed on the stake as a criminal, I was too; so that my proud ego no longer lives. But the Messiah lives in me, and the life I now live in my body I live by the same trusting faithfulness that the Son of God had, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”
There is an exchanged life here, that Someone else’s point of view and priority system should prevail in my life. This is what it means say a deep “Yes” to the Kingdom invitation.
It helps me to reduce all of this to one sentence, one metaphor. With that in mind, my goal at this time in my life is to make my life a whole burnt offering. It is not a once for all thing, but a daily challenge. I only know this: it is what I feed that will grow. If we sow to the flesh, if we nurture our immaturity and self-centeredness, we will become more and more immature, but if we sow to the Spirit, if we respond to the Kingdom invitation and its demands, we will grow.
What are you sowing to? Are you choosing to grow? Or are you on your way to the vanishing point?
posted by Stuart Dauermann @ 8:43 PM
2 comments
May we all have and feed the righteous appetite and be committed to the process. Reading this I was struck again by the depth of my own shortcomings. Thankfully, this process of "hearing and understanding" can take place anew each day.
This sounds a bit like "we will hear/do and we will understand" at Mt. Sinai.
On those rare occasions when I am reminded of my own mortality, I think about G-d too. I am reminded of the joke about the couple going on a cruise during a storm. Seeing the captain, the anxious couple asked, “Is there anything we can should do?” The captain calming responded, “I think we have things under control but you can pray.” Wide eyed, the couple exclaimed: “Things are that dreadful that we have to pray?”
Too true,
Rocky Soil
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