Author: Peter Burfeind

The Sower (God the Father) sows the seed (the Word of God, Jesus Christ) liberally, to spread over a creation which was returning to the “formlessness and void” of its original state. This is the beginning of the recreation, the redemption of God’s creation.

Alas, in its fallen state it is not received as the first creation received the Word. In its fallen state there are thorns, and thistles, and rocks, and hard paths that work against reception of the Word. Today we meditate on the hard path, about which Jesus said, “Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.”

The word for “wayside” is exactly the same as the word for “road” or “path.” What do we make of this allusion? Jesus refers to Himself as the “path” when He says, “I am the way [the same Greek word], the truth, and the life. No one gets to the Father but through Me.” Mystical and gnostic traditions often expound on the metaphor of the path, as in the parable referenced yesterday.

There’s yet another tradition which centered on the “path” or “walkway,” and that is Judaism. According to Judaism, it’s way of life is outlined in the Halakhah. From the verb “to walk,” the word means “the path that one walks.”

What are the sources of the Halakhah? It comes from the Torah (the written Law from the five books of Moses), but almost more importantly, from the oral traditions of the rabbis, and from custom. The Halakhah is exactly what Jesus was refuting when He said, “All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition. For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban”—’ (that is, a gift to God), then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother, making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (Mark 7: 9-13)

The path, being the first object lesson from the Parable of the Sower – even as the Gospel was proclaimed first among the Jews (Romans 1: 16) – nicely invokes the reason for the Jewish rejection of the Messiah, Jesus. Simply put, their “path” (Halakhah) prevented them from hearing the Word. It didn’t even have a chance to germinate, so firm was the rejection. St. Paul’s teaching that the cross of Christ ended the bondage to the rules and regulations of the Torah. Not so for many of the Jews. For them, there was a veil over their hearts that prevented them from receiving the Word, a veil that is taken away only in Christ. (II Corinthians 3: 14)

If that is the specific reference, a more general reference would be any and all who cannot hear the Gospel because their religion is one of legalistic observances: “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle…” (Colossians 2: 21) But the Gospel is one of freedom from all such observances. Yes, there are certain disciplines – even as prayer and fasting are taught by Christ – but these are observed in the freedom of the Gospel, not markers of what a Christian is or does.

Not so for the Jew or for many other traditions, who are all alike in their basic teachings that salvation comes by our “walking the path” toward God, but differ only the legalistic practices they perform.

Here again, Christianity stands out as a religion centered on a new idea of the path. “Make straight the way of the Lord,” said John the Baptist, because He was making His way toward us! Jesus is the way to the Father, because He has first become the Father’s way to us! And the “way” that Jesus is to the Father is not a structured pattern of right behavior or legalistic observance. Rather, it is He Himself, and faith in Him. Unlike all other faiths, our faith doesn’t center on a pattern of life, but on the Life Himself, who eliminates all such patterns of life and sums up the Christian life quite simply: Love God and love others. As the New Testament prophesied of old promised, “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts.” (Jeremiah 31: 33)

Switching gears to another theme in the path metaphor, we learn from Christ that the devil is the one who takes away the Word from their hearts – in the Book of Revelation He warns of the “those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2: 9). There is a psychological side to the devil’s work.

The devil is the author of doubt and despair in the Christian’s life. Doubt is the belief that “This Word cannot be true.” Despair is the belief that “This Word cannot be true for me.”

Doubt has shipwrecked many a young person’s faith when they go to college and face the intellectual and scientific challenges to the faith. Against this, we simply need to remember that, insofar as science is about facts and evidence, Christianity is certainly scientific. 500 witnesses saw the resurrected Christ! That is a fact, a fact many were willing to undergo torture rather than give up. Keep in mind, also, that Christianity gave birth to science, precisely because it laid the foundation for an objective and universal Truth accessible to all (something we are losing to the forces of cultural relativism).

Despair has also shipwrecked many a faith. When the despairing ruminate on the depth of their depravity and sin, they believe they are undeserving of the Gospel. Jesus’ teachings all over should mollify the despairing heart. In the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, the King forgives the Servant the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars. Who has that kind of debt but small nations! Yet, Jesus often uses hyperbole to teach His love. It’s a love that knows no bounds. He instructs His Church to forgive 70 times 7 times, because His death atoned for all sins.

Adherence to a religion of legalistic observance, doubt, and despair, these are all elements that make the path hard, that prevent the Gospel from penetrating the heart. May we always be spared this path, and remain on the true Way!

Some approach the “inclination toward entropy” (the inclination toward disorder) that is the natural state of the world and see a tyrannical law at work. Why is there scarcity of the world’s resources? Why does everything incline toward death, warfare, confusion, famine, and disease? Why does the world seemed destined to return to the formlessness and void from which it arose? And why does it seem a constant upstream battle to make any headway in this world?

Some of a more Gnostic bent will view the world as hopelessly lost and seek to escape it and all its little imprisonments, imprisonments like the need to do work they may not like, or imprisonments like the laws of economics, that govern how society arranges itself given the scarcity of resources. They become darkened in countenance and even dress, melancholy about the state of the world and longing to be free of all its tyrannies.

Others will jealously guard their own lot in the world and make their little heaven on earth. They may have discovered the secret to success in this world: work with the law of entropy and not against it. After all, if you can corner the market on a scarce item or skill, it has great value, no?

And yet others, the more energetic Gnostics, will see this latter group and claim the haves need to be forced to give to the have nots, if there would be any justice. The premise is, because the world is a “zero sum game” world, perhaps we can have some taste of a better world if everything is forced to be shared. Of course, because it is system imposed on nature by legal fiat, reality eventually rebels. The haves cease to care to produce anything at all and everything levels downward. No one likes to be forced to give: God loves a cheerful giver!

All these positions are rooted in a fundamental divergence from the image of God, that is, as revealed in the Sower. The Sower is a cheerful giver. He casts His seed everywhere, with liberality and generosity. The Sower banks on the truth that the world will supply everything that is needed, because He knows the power of the seed.

A single seed – small, hidden, insignificant– will turn dirt into fruit, vegetables, and wood. A seed of a different nature – sperm – will turn biological matter into animals to provide food for each other and for the supreme sperm-spawned creature, man. It all comes down to the seed.

The seed carries on the work of the “let there be” – the Word – of God. The Word brings out of the “formlessness and void” of the first day of creation all the elements of creation. The entire creation is God’s dictionary! Every item we see is a manifestation of God’s unfathomable lexicon, each element spoken into existence. Each given a name, a word.

Is God’s Word infinite in terms of grace and goodness? Of course it is. Is His seed infinite in terms of grace and goodness as well? Of course it is.

The Sower went out to sow his seed. He casts it everywhere, because He’s a cheerful giver. Yes, because of the fallen world, the seed is received perversely, but that’s for tomorrow’s meditation. For today, we rejoice in the liberality of the Sower and the perspective that allows such liberality; it’s a perspective rooted in the truth that the seed will multiply in abundance.

St. Paul teaches about liberality in II Corinthians 9. It’s a liberality that doesn’t vote for the rich to be liberal – that’s not liberality; that’s theft. Nor is it a non-liberality because “it’s each man for himself!” And nor is it a non-liberality because “the world’s just too harsh; I’m checking out of the whole game!” Rather, it’s a liberality with one’s own resources because that is the nature of God, the Sower.

St. Paul draws off Psalm 112 and invokes the “God the Sower” theme laid down in this week’s parable. Psalm 112 describes the righteous man who reflects the image of God: “Wealth and riches will be in his house, And his righteousness endures forever…He is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous. A good man deals graciously and lends…he has dispersed abroad…has given to the poor…[and] his righteousness endures forever.”

St. Paul builds off these words in encouraging the Corinthians to, like the Sower, be cheerful givers. He writes, “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work….Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness, while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God.”

Being grateful, having gratitude, giving thanks, goes hand in hand with liberality, because that is the proper response to gifts. And gifts are what come from God the liberal Sower of seed.

After the “thanksgiving,” the eucharist, we pray that we might have “fervent love for one another.” This is none other than the liberality with our own gifts – sowing them everywhere without regard to reception. It’s not necessary financial, but often is. It can also be whatever it is you have in abundance, that God has blessed you with. He’s given it to you so that you can reflect His own liberality, and be a cheerful sower. You need not fear giving away will leave you with less. That’s not how seeds work. Eat nine apples; throw one away; and watch five apple trees grow, each bearing up to a thousand apples. A gift of one yields 5,000! You get the point. That is how seeds work.

The nature of the seed – to carry on God’s creation in abundance – belies all those views outlined above that argue against liberality. A Christian’s liberality is the grace of God in him.

Jesus spoke by parables. He explains His reason for doing so to His disciples: “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables, so that ‘Seeing they may see and not perceive, And hearing they may hear and not understand; Lest they should turn, And their sins be forgiven them.’” (Mark 4: 11-12)

Jesus was not the only teacher to speak in parables. Gnostic traditions throughout history have used the parable as a means of communication, for instance, in the Zen and Sufi traditions. (Sufism is Islamic Gnosticism.) Christian Gnostics especially loved the above verse because it supported their idea that there was a secret knowledge (a gnosis) known only by the enlightened ones.

But a brief survey of parables in the Gnostic tradition reveals a major difference between Jesus’ parables and the mystical or gnostic ones. By way of example, consider the Sufi “Parable about Variants of Teachings on One Truth.” A disciples goes to his Sufi master and asks, “Why are there so many differences in the Teachings about God and the Path to Him? Why even among Sufi teachers are there so many variants of what they teach, not to mention various religious faiths of different people? They argue and quarrel with each other about how to worship God! Why does this happen?”

The next day the Sufi master takes the disciple out on a small journey through a valley to visit a friend. Along the way they take several paths, each chosen by how greatly it was lit up and beautified by the sun. They take several of these paths, and the disciples learns that while there are many paths, there is the same sun that enlightens them all. So also the paths to truth.

This of course offends Christian teaching, which is rooted in Christ’s words that He alone is the “way [path], the truth, and the life,” the only way to the Father. But it is typical of Gnostic parables.

Here’s a question to understand the difference between Christ’s parables and the more Gnostic parables: What role did God have in the above parable? He’s in the parable only as the sun, which remains, as it were, immovable in the parable. All the movement is on the part of the gnostic seeker. He takes the path. He learns the mysteries. He comes to the enlightenment.

In Jesus’ parables – particularly in the Parable of the Sower (much like last week’s parable) – God is the main actor! God runs the verbs! “A sower went out to sow his seed,” and later we learn that this is the Father sending the Word, His Son. Notice the fundamental shift in focus differentiating the Christian parable from the Gnostic one. The Gnostic god – as well as the gods of all false religions – is a stationary, “out there,” transcendent god that we have to make our way to. Our Lord Jesus is God making His way to us.

Everything about the Parable of the Sower reflects this. Who sows the seed? What does a seed have to do to grow? What’s the power behind a seed’s growth? Is it not the life in it from God that miraculously turns dirt, water, and sunlight into a towering plant?

Even when Jesus talks about those who understand His parables, the language is one of grace: “to you it has been given to know.” This isn’t some secret knowledge known only by an enlightened elite they come upon through their contemplative efforts.

Consider a detail in the parable that seems not to make sense. Ironically, after Jesus contrasts His disciples as those to whom “it has been given to know,” with others who “hearing, do not understand,” He goes on to say to the disciples, “Do you not understand this parable?” And then He goes on to explain the parable to them precisely because, even though they heard, they not understand!

Are the disciples who did not understand among those “to whom it has been given” or not? What do we make of this? It’s simple. They didn’t turn away from Jesus.  Or as the above passage said, “they turned to Jesus [for forgiveness].”  That is what the understanding of the parable hinges on, they kept following Him, and eventually He explained the parable so they did have understanding.

See the point? The understanding of the parable doesn’t hinge on some secret enlightenment gained by special elite persons who have been granted insight. The understanding of the parable hinges on those who continue to stick with Jesus until He explains it to them!

Those who do not follow Jesus hear His parables and say, “Whatever. Let’s get out of here. This makes no sense.” Those who follow Jesus hear His parables – and all His words – and say, “This makes no sense to me either – as it didn’t for the disciples! – but I’m not leaving this movie until the end, because I want to see where it’s all going!” And in the end all is explained.

This is what Jesus means when He says, “Seek and you will find,” or “Knock, and the door will be opened to you.” It’s not about some personal contemplative effort to gain enlightenment that “any path” can achieve. It’s about persistence in looking to Jesus for all answers, trusting that in His time we will indeed have all understanding, even if very often we are like the disciples in their lack of understanding.

St. Paul invokes this truth when he writes to the Philippians, “I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.” (Philippians 3: 14-15)

Our goal is not enlightenment, but the Enlightener. Jesus is not a means to an end, but the end itself. And in His time, in His way, He will reveal all truths to us.

The parable is properly understood not when it is seen as a literary device used to convey some mystical meaning, but when it is seen as something those with faith cling to, knowing from Whose mouth it came.

Mediation for Sunday of Sexagesima:  February 24, 2019

Sexagesima means “sixty,” and though it is not exactly sixty days before Easter, the name has stuck. Again, as we meditated upon last Sunday, the Church readily adopted the schema of Pre-Lent (Septuagesima – seventy; Sexagesima – sixty; Quinquagesima – fifty) because she rightly saw in Israel’s seventy year exile in Babylon a type of the Church, which is exiled in a foreign land, looking forward to its redemption, the resurrection.

By invoking both this “seventy” typology (from Israel’s exile) and the “forty” typology (from Israel’s wandering in the wilderness), the Church has imported a treasure trough of beautiful imagery.

This week’s Gospel is Jesus’ Parable of the Sower from the Gospel of Luke. It has several differences with Matthew’s account of the same parable, demonstrating that this parable was probably one Jesus repeatedly told.

Where Matthew’s account is fuller on the seed that fell on stony and good ground, Luke’s is fuller on the seed that fell on the path. Luke is also more clear on what exactly the seed is. “The seed is the Word of God,” he reveals Jesus explaining.

The seed is the Word of God. The Word of God is Jesus (John 1: 1, 14), which suggests the Sower is the Father. By that action – the Father sending forth His Son into the world to bring about fruits – our minds are directed to a preeminent theme which goes back to the beginning.

On the first day of creation, the world was “without form, and void.” Like the field in spring, there was no life. Just as the field needs a Sower to go out and sow, the creation needs a Creator to apply His own “seed” to germinate life. Life doesn’t just happen.

What was that seed? It was, just as the parable says, His Word: “Let there be” (a single word in Hebrew, “yehi”). That is the word that brought life into the formlessness and void. God is life; God “is.” And by Him saying “Let there be,” it was like Him saying, “Let My life bring other lives into being as I have life.” Or again, “Let others share what I have.”

Each seed – each Word – brings about different lives, individual lives. No two are the same. What a miracle existence truly is! For multiple beings to enjoy the glory of existence, sharing in a single source of life, while each enjoying this life as an individual.

After each day of creation, God named what He had created: day, night, heavens, earth, land, sea. Adam, made in the image of God, continued the Lord’s work by naming each animal. He was participating in the divine life in so doing. But for sin, each of us could gaze upon any given created form and see a reflection of God Himself, the very Son in whom all things hold together.

The curse upon mankind and upon this creation is a reversal of the days of creation. It’s the reverting of all creation back to the “formlessness and void” of the first day. From dust came life; to dust life must return. But God did not abandon His creation. He sent His Word once again, into the flesh, to bring about life from that dust. The Word, as a Seed (Jesus), was buried like a seed, and sprouted three days later, growing into the heavens, to the right hand of God, to be the ultimate Tree of Life for His new creation.

This is the Seed. The seed is a remarkable little thing. Small, seemingly insignificant, dry, hidden among the dirt and dust, it has the power to turn dirt into life. Think of that! A small little seed can take dirt and turn it into a living being. And this isn’t just true about plant life, but animal life as well.

Hand in hand with the creation of individual beings is the creation of language. God’s creation of individual beings parallels the rise of language, which has a one to one correspondence with the created order. Without the creation of individual beings, which “live out” their individual existence through matter, there would be no language. What reference would a noun have? What would an adjective describe? What movement in time would a verb describe if there is no matter to occupy space and time?

As God and Adam named the elements of creation, there was given to us the ability to communicate, build community, and have communion with God Himself. That is the image of God in man. Even as God cast His Word into the formlessness and void to bring about life – life which exists in communion with Him – so does man cast his own words into the “formlessness and void” of the space between him and his neighbor, to bind himself together with him, to build community, a reflection of the divine communion itself.

Of course, sin and Babel ruined a lot of this, but language remains with the potential to be an instrument of divine communication, just as it has in the Scriptures and in the proclamation of the Gospel, which gets us back to the Parable of the Sower.

Gnosticism, because it rejects the created order and all its physicality, rejects language, which only makes sense in a material world. Language, for the Gnostic, can only be a false construct, a deceit, an illusion, even a prison house set up by the rulers of this age to imprison minds in its structures of power. For instance, Gnosticism would support the notion that the simple pronouns “he” or “she,” every time they are used, prop up the male/female sex binary. This, the Gnostic would say, undermines the truth that we are truly abstracted Selves that have no relation to our sex parts.

Not so the Scriptures. The Word is held in such high regard in both the Christian and Jewish traditions because we recognize it as a reflection and herald of the created order. It truly has power, the power to bring life into the formlessness and void. If the fallen creation has yielded a fallen language, the new creation yields a new language, the language of the Gospel.

The Parable of the Sower is about the Father sending Christ to redeem and rebuild the world which was falling back into the dust. As at the beginning, He does it through the Word. Not everyone, however, would respond to His Word. Why not? That is the teaching this parable spells out for us.

Jesus concludes the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard declaring, “So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen.”

Who are the chosen? They are the last who are set to be the first. In the context of the parable they are those to whom the landowner chose to “do what he wishes” with his own things, which was “whatever is right (just)” and “good,” as the parable makes clear.

Simply put, the chosen are those God wishes to select as the objects of His abundant goodness, something He declares right and just. They receive their wages not as reward, but as “whatever is right (just)” due to God’s goodness. As St. Paul writes to the Romans, “Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.” (Romans 4: 4-5)

What about the “few”? Why does Jesus say, “Few are chosen”? Are only a few to be in heaven? Are the “called” the many who are baptized and go to church, but the “few” are the elite frozen chosen who really give their hearts to Jesus? Who truly surrender to Jesus? Or who join a monastery? Or who among all the “sheeple” are enlightened?

Indeed, that is as the Gnostics believed, that there is an elite few who truly received the grace of gnosis. Gnostic movement throughout history has always begun when a handful of “frozen chosen” in any congregation believe the are elect by God and have a special insight into the truth, who are purified above the rest.  The text does not support that interpretation. The focus is on the chosen as the object of grace, not on the special insight they gain because of this fact.

What then? Who are the few? The Greek word for “few” can also be “small” or “little.” It’s the same word used when Jesus says, “Oh you of little faith.” It’s not a quantitative statement, but a qualitative one. It’s in the spirit of St. Paul’s words when he says:

“For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.” (I Corinthianss 1: 26-30)

God has chosen the few, the small, the little, the weak, the things that are not. Ultimately, what drives this theology is the cross of Christ.  On the cross Jesus was all these things.  Christianity has always been a religion of the “few,” the little, and the weak.

But it all begins with Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate “chosen one,” as Isaiah 42: 1 reveals: “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights!” You can’t get fewer than One!

This truth – the Christ is the Elect One – helps us grapple with predestination as well. The doctrine of predestination was never intended to cause anxiety for Christians, as it does for all puritan movements – Am I among the elect??? Do I demonstrate my election by my purity enough??? – but hope and joy. Rather, when your focus is not on whether you are elect or not, but that Christ is the Elect One, your goal is no longer to validate your election by reference to yourself, but to be in Christ.

In reference to yourself, you’ll always have nagging doubts – Am I pure enough? Knowing whether you’re in Christ or not – precisely because He is in the flesh and His Church is His Body – is a rather simple question. Are you baptized? Are you in communion? Are you in the Church? Then you are elect! St. Peter, when discussing how to make your election sure, ultimate counsels his readers to fall back on baptism: The one who doubts his election is the one who “has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.” (II Peter 1: 9)

Do you see how Christ’s incarnation makes election a simpler issue than it does when the incarnation is downplayed? Think of it this way. Let’s say you’re a contestant on the Bachelorette. It’s down to five bachelors remaining and the bachelorette is going to choose one of you (I have no idea how the show runs so I’m going to frame it that way) for her final mate. As you stand there in a row of five, the bachelorette facing all five, you wonder whether you are the chosen one. All you have are feelings, intuitions, dreams, and whatnot. In other words, you have nothing. Not until you get that rose and a hug from the bachelorette – both physical things and signs – do you know for sure.

God’s election works the same way. Between God’s election and us is Christ’s physical person and physical Church, Who is and Which is God’s Elect One. To be in Christ and His Church is to be in the Elect One. This St. Paul teaches when he writes, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.” (Ephesians 1: 4)

Now, what of the called. “Many are called, but few are chosen.” Again, how silly to turn this into a passage more conducive to Gnosticism, where the chosen are those who “go the extra mile” and do something greater, higher, and more pure than all those run-of-the-mill sheeple who fill the pews. The chosen aren’t the “go the extra mile” types, but just as it says, chosen. Chosen by God’s grace.

But back to the called. Who, then, are the called?

Given the Jewish context of the parable and Jesus’ big theme that He is something greater than Moses, the Temple, and the Sabbath itself, and that God will raise up a new people from the stones, we can’t help see in Christ’s parable a contrast between the Jews, who “bore the burden and heat of the day” and the gentiles, who are latecomers to God’s grace.

With this framework, the many who are called would be the “many sons of the called one,” Abraham. Abraham was called in Genesis 12, and Abraham’s name means “Father of many.” In Abraham’s call, many were indeed called. Many were called, but many also fell away in faithlessness, getting the evil eye of jealousy that God’s grace would be open to those who didn’t bear the burden and heat of the Law.

That should not be a cause of pride for gentiles, those late-comers to God’s goodness, but as St. Paul writes, “Because of unbelief they [the Jews] were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness.”

Yes, continue in His goodness. The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard is all about the landowners’ goodness.  May we continue in it and not become haughty, but fear.

“Or is your eye evil because I am good?” These were the words of the landowner to the workers in the vineyard who bore the burden and heat of the day, but were paid the same amount as those who only worked an hour. He invokes a cross-cultural legend, the evil eye.

The “evil eye” is among the most enduring and ubiquitous legends in all of human history. Its malicious look, usually from envy, can curse the object of its stare. Heliodorus, the ancient Greek playwright, describes it: “When any one looks at what is excellent with an envious eye he fills the surrounding atmosphere with a pernicious quality, and transmits his own envenomed exhalations into whatever is nearest to him.”

Wanting what is not given, that’s envy, or covetousness.  In the Bible, coveting is twice covered in the Ten Commandments. This for a reason. In his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, idolatry is identified with covetousness. St. James writes, “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

Jesus says of the eye, “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

A bad eye is an envious, covetous eye, and that is the root of idolatry. How does this work? Idols are projections of human yearning “otherized” so as to make them sacred and lifted to the status of cosmic significance. Athena, the goddess of reason, was nothing more than the Greek esteem for reason projected onto an “other.” Being “other,” it avoids solipsism and the anxiety-inducing sense that what one deems sacred is nothing more than one’s own proclivities lifted to divine status. In other words, it means more to say, “Reason is an objective good sitting among the gods,” rather than “I like reason a lot.” The same is true for sexual love (Aphrodite), martial skills (Ares), and so on.

It all begins with human desire, or covetousness, or the eye looking toward something and wishing it belonged to oneself. If that light in us is darkness, how great that darkness! It’s the darkness leading to idolatry.

Of course, there is a demonic angle to this as well, for demons are the darkness behind the idols. This only magnifies the pernicious work of demons and the strong correlation they have with our own minds. Demons lurk behind the phantasms that arise in our minds when the eye – the eye of darkness – allows a false light to come in and induce the covetous will.  Eve saw not a simple apple – forbidden at that – but the phantasm of what would make her like God, and wise. The bitter soul wallowing in envy sees not simple stuff – her neighbor’s new car, a picture in an advertisement, a series of Facebook posts – but the phantasm of a better life, however that life is defined. The infatuated lover sees from afar not a simple woman with flaws, but the phantasm of his ideal. These phantasms are the material from which idols are made, when the phantasm becomes projected onto an idol of our own making that has no correlation to the actual object of our desire!

(What happens when we go through that process, and then name that idol “Jesus”? It happens all the time! Perhaps a meditation for another post.)

The first workers were at the beginning of the road to idolatry, giving in to a covetousness rooted in their evil eyes. That idol would have been the Reward God. It’s probably the most popular god, a god shared by most non-Christian religions. But it’s a god made with men’s hands – or perhaps more subtly, crafted from phantasms arising from men’s desire – that “otherizes” and places with cosmic significance the seemingly true phenomenon that you should be rewarded for what you do.

But the landowner blows that all away with his behavior. He pays the last first, and pays them just as much as those who worked all day. It’s not about being rewarded for what you do. It’s about God doing “what he wishes with His own things,” out of His goodness.

Lest we condemn the first workers too much, we see the landowner calls them “friends,” reminding us of Jesus’ title as a “friend of sinners.” They still have a chance to repent and not go down the path of covetousness ending up at the feet of the Reward God.

Reward gods, like all other gods, have this quality about them. It’s the “Midas Touch” syndrome. They give you exactly what you want. With the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, you realize this is something terrifying to contemplate.

What is justice? At some level we understand justice has something to do with what is fair. We think of Lady Justice holding her scales to weigh the evidence for or against the accused. We think of the concept that “the punishment should fit the crime.” There’s even the Old Testament teaching of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” We think of the blindness of justice – each person is equal under the law and no one should be given privileges on account of who they are.

There is a lot of Biblical support for this understanding of justice. There’s the Biblical teaching quoted above, and there are a host of Old Testament passages in which the Lord condemns the judge who takes a bribe. The Bible, at root, is for fairness under the law, and as Christians we rightly expect this fairness to translate into our politics and law.

Something revolutionary is happening with justice. “Social Justice Warriors” will claim there’s a fundamental unfairness going on in that certain privileged people do in fact get more breaks in life – both economically and legally – not because of who they are as individuals, but who they are as members of a group.

How is that group defined? Usually by sex or race or religion or what you’re attracted to. So, your friend Joe who got accused of a crime is not an individual who stands before the law on his merits or demerits. Rather, he’s abstracted according to his identities and interpreted accordingly. He’s “white heterosexual man with a history of privilege behind him” who will, on account of his privilege, get different justice than Jenny, who also is not seen as an individual but as “black female lesbian.”

Accordingly, justice must mean equalizing not individuals before the law, but equalizing entire systems. Justice requires sapping entire groups of their supposed privilege. It’s about “leveling” the field by taking from one and giving to another. If Asian-Americans are over-represented at Harvard at the expense of “people of color” – then standards need to be adjusted so that fewer Asian-Americans are admitted and more “people of color” are. The same could be said of men vs. women in engineering.

This revolutionary understanding of justice is at root Marxist, of course, which has always been a soul-crushing ideology which ends up leveling the field down to the lowest level.

But then there’s God’s justice as revealed in the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. It’s like the opposite of leveling everything downward. It levels everything upward. It’s not “fair” at all, but the fairness runs in the direction of… grace for everyone!

The landowner in the parable promised to pay the first workers a denarius, but those afterward he promised to pay, “whatever is right.” The word for “right” here is the same word for “just,” thus the meditation on the word “justice.” What is God’s justice? What is God’s righteousness?

“Whatever is right” ends up being a denarius, a full days wage, given even to those who worked only an hour. Lots of gift there! Lots of grace! But toward the end of the parable we learn that “whatever is just” is what the landowner “wishes to give,” and is defined as being “good.”

That’s God’s justice! He wishes to give, and this is good. Is it fair? Not at all. But the fairness doesn’t fall on the side of tearing down those “with privilege” – as is the case with the modern Social Justice Warriors – but rather building up those whom God wishes to bless with His gifts.

What Does Grace Look Like?

One of the interpretations of the three Pre-Lent Sundays – Septuagesima, Sexgesima, and Quinquagesima – is that each corresponds to “the three sola’s.” Sola Gratia (by grace alone) goes with Septuagesima; Sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone) with Sexagesima; and Sola Fides (by faith alone) with Quinquagesima. By this arrangement, Septuagesima’s Gospel of the Parable of the Vineyard is a meditation on God’s grace.

Some reject the premise of the three solas altogether in favor of “By Christ Alone” because He is the focus of the three solas, and each sola will become abused if this is forgotten.  Still, given the rise of Gnosticism in our culture in all areas, the three sola’s provide a nice framework to contemplate the potential damage Gnosticism can do to the Gospel. This is especially true with the doctrine of grace.

According to Gnosticism, the physical world is a cosmic mistake; the spirit world (what they call the pleroma) alone is important. A man’s alienation from the spirit world is not because of sin, but rather because he exists. He should have remained in blissful union with the Gnostic Pleroma and its Monad (what they call God), undifferentiated from all other beings, but he fell into his material husk and became separated from all other such beings which likewise fell into their physical husks.

Matter allows diverse beings to be separate from one another, and this is the fall. The division caused by individual beings “falling” into their various physical shells is the basis for all the divisions in our world, the separation of males from females, the different races and nations, the random importance of the family into which you arbitrarily fell, the random importance of the religion in which you randomly find yourself.

Only an escape from your physical person – the release of your spirit from its shell – and a return to the spirit world can save you. This is the Gnostic resurrection, which, if you notice, needs no body to happen. You can have resurrection right now if you have proper gnosis! All you need is a woke spirit to ascend into the glorious unity of the Pleroma.

We could probe the many ways this fundamental principle of Gnosticism drives so much of our culture. The bottom line is Gnosticism rejects reality insofar as reality is tied up with our material world. Hence our grappling with such things as “what is male and female?” or “what is marriage?” – things we’d never have thought twice about in less Gnostic times. And what does it mean to be “woke” today, but to realize bodily realities – who you are as defined by what your body is and where it puts you – are nothing more than false constructs you set aside in pursuit of your “authentic Self.”

Needless to say, this fundamental principle of Gnosticism has a profound effect on how we understand grace. If the cosmos is fundamentally one, as the Gnostics think, without the differentiations caused by physicality, what would grace look like? It would be whatever it is that causes our sleeping spirit to awaken to the illusion this world is and be drawn upward and outward back into the Pleroma. It would be an “inside out” phenomenon, the working of spiritual powers internally with internal faculties like the mind, the will, and the emotions. There would be a fuzziness as to what was you and what was, say, Sophia (one of these powers). Grace is the raised consciousness leading to one’s self-salvation.

What does grace look like in a world in which its material nature was deemed “good” by its Creator? This would be an “outside in” phenomenon. It’s gift. It’s what can only be possible when you have two distinct beings whose separation by flesh is ordained by God. There will always be Giver and Receiver, and the two will be separate.

Furthermore, the Giver is not simply some aspect of the Receiver activated through internal activities, some psychological phenomenon causing someone to gain enlightenment or moral improvement. No, the Giver is truly a separate “Other” giving something of himself up for the Receiver. There is no fuzzy line between the two.

When we appreciate that in the beginning God created the world by separating things and giving them existence with material properties – the light/darkness, the sky/earth, the land/water; the plants and animals; man and woman – we begin to realize that all the universe is governed by networks of grace! The limiting aspects of time and space which physicality introduce demand it! All of creation is one thing giving of its limited time and space for others.

If this giving is transactional (meaning, the giving only happens with an expectation of return), it is called economics, the science of how people organize themselves given the problem of scarcity – scarcity a necessary byproduct of our limitations by time and space. If this giving is not transactional, it is a gift.

In the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, the landowner is revealed as freed from the limits that govern our physical world, while still operating within its rules. This is what Jesus Christ is! He is Spirit – God from eternity without physicality – and He is man, governed by the rules of limitation.

So on one hand, he does give each worker a denarius. A denarius is a day’s wage, an emblem of transaction, something the landowner implicitly had to give of himself for. It seemed fair. But to the workers who worked less time and received a denarius, it was gift, the landowner doing the good he wished to do with his own things, a resource we know he has unlimited reserves of.

Christ’s cross parallels the denarius. Insofar as Christ is a human limited by physicality, He had to sacrifice His person – give something up of Himself – to give to us who are also flesh. Insofar as Christ is unlimited as God, He has an abundance to give out. The gift of His body and blood will never end.

Will there be economics in heaven? On one hand, we will be resurrected bodies limited by our physicality, necessitating the problem of scarcity. On the other hand, without the limitation of time, a key component of the problem of scarcity will be gone, allowing for heaven to be a realm of pure grace, a feast of unlimited morsels.

So what does grace look like? It looks like Jesus. A physical being giving up of Himself for the sake of others; while also a spiritual being (God) who has an unlimited reserve of what He gives up.

In the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, the vineyard clearly belongs to the landowner.  It’s His, and the workers work in it as the landowner’s stewards. The vineyard imagery is rooted in Isaiah 5, which reads:
My Well-beloved has a vineyard
On a very fruitful hill.
He dug it up and cleared out its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine.
He built a tower in its midst,
And also made a winepress in it;
So He expected it to bring forth good grapes,
But it brought forth wild grapes.
“And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah,
Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard.
What more could have been done to My vineyard
That I have not done in it?
Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes,
Did it bring forth wild grapes?
And now, please let Me tell you what I will do to My vineyard:
I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned;
And break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.
I will lay it waste;
It shall not be pruned or dug,
But there shall come up briers and thorns.
I will also command the clouds
That they rain no rain on it.”

In the Bible the wilderness has always been a symbol of God’s curse on humanity. Eden was the first “vineyard” into which God placed the first “workers,” Adam and his helpmate Eve. But like the curse in verse 6 above – there shall come up briers and thorns – so also the curse given to Eden. “Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.”

Israel was intended to be a restored type of Eden, a place of rest from God’s enemies, a place flowing with milk and honey. But because of Israel’s faithlessness, it became a desert, as the Isaiah prophecy promises. John the Baptist does his ministry in the wilderness for a reason. It’s an action prophecy of what Israel had become. He preached among the stones of the wilderness and proclaimed, “bear fruits worthy of repentance” or God would raise children from the stones who would.

It was to the wilderness that sinners went to confess their abject desolation and be renewed by the waters of John’s baptism, which only awaited Christ’s presence and ministry to fulfill it when He first went there for His own baptism. Jesus and sinners meet in the waters of the wilderness like the Word and Spirit meeting the “chaos and void” of the original creation at the face of the waters, in order to bring about new life.

Not only does Septuagesima hearken to this imagery insofar as it reminds God’s people of its exile and pilgrim status, but once the first week of Lent arrives – Invocavit – we get another tidal wave of imagery invoked as the Church embarks on a forty day wandering with Christ, drawing off of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness for forty years.

But so as not to send us off our journey in despair, this first week of our 70 day exile we get a reminder of what our goal is. The vineyard full of fruit-bearing gifts received by God’s stewards – His new Adams – is always the goal. It’s the new Eden. It’s the Promised Land of rest. It’s the world to come. It’s the earth the meek inherit. Israel was a foretaste of the feast to come. The feast comes with Christ’s return.

The point is, it’s not solely a spiritual redemption. It’s a physical, material one. God created the world by His Word, bringing each “thing” of creation by His Word. In Hebrew the word for “to speak” is the verb form of the noun, “thing.” For God to speak is for Him to speak things into existence.  The point is powerful. Each life-given thing of creation has a correspondence to a word of God, from the Word of God. Which is to say, language is a divine gift, and to participate in communication is to commune with the Word itself, acting out our image of God, which image is Christ. (See II Corinthians 4: 4 and Colossians 1: 15)  It is also to commune with one another in holy conversation.

The wilderness, like the formlessness and chaos preceding creation, is the collapse of “things” back into their futility. And it’s the acknowledgment of that state of existence we must go – marking ourselves with ash – if we would be renewed by Christ. Christ the Word makes life out of ashen, formless chaos. Where else would we go?

Lets take things (ahem) to the next level. Corresponding to the collapse of things is the collapse of language itself into futility, the corruption of language, the loss of grammar, the use of language for deceit, as a toy, an ironical plaything. The Gnostics could not tolerate a healthy use of language because they could not tolerate the physical or material brought about by God’s language. For the Gnostic, the spirit is all that matters, and escape from our physical world is its salvation, and corresponding to this is an escape from language itself. Letters are fetters, as the deconstructionists told us.

Part of the redemption of the world which is Zion, the Church, is also the restoration of speech, its ability to create life, its liturgical use as an Eden-forming tool by the Word Himself. As the proverb says, “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life.”

The Gnostics would never tolerate that this world is worth redemption, or even possible for redemption. For them, the world is a dark, oppressive realm of oppression ruled by dark overlords who use their words to construct prisons for our minds.  The first of such dark lords, they wickedly believe, is the God of Scriptures Himself.

They could never tolerate that the Landowner possesses a vineyard and cares for it.

To work in God’s vineyard – not escape it – is to serve in the new creation, of which the Church and its liturgy are a foretaste by faith. It is to participate in divine language, reaping its fruits, the fruits of Jesus’ lips first, but also from each other’s lips. As St. Paul says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”

Is the “Divine Service” work? Technically yes, even as Adam’s work in Eden was work – it takes work to extend ones hand to pluck from the Tree of Life. But its not work resulting in payment or reward, as this parable makes clear. It is work participating in the vineyards fruit-bearing gifts, the fruits of Christ’s and our lips, leading up to a glorious revelation of God’s grace after the heat of the day is complete.

The Gospel for Septuagesima is the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. To summarize: A landowner sends out five shifts of workers working various lengths of the day. After hiring the last shift who only work an hour, he proceeds to pay each shift a denarius, beginning with those who worked the least amount of time. The Gospel is a contemplation of God’s grace as revealed in the landowners words to the complaining 1st shift workers: “Is it not lawful for me to do [good] with my own things?”

The first eight words invite pause as we contemplate the force of its meaning: “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner…” The landowner is the main actor. His action drives the entire narrative. And this is the kingdom of heaven. His action, not ours. We stand in the parable as the passive recipients of His action.

Psalm 115 lays down a good foundation for the parable’s meaning:
Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us,
But to Your name give glory,
Because of Your mercy,
Because of Your truth.
Why should the Gentiles say,
“So where is their God?”
But our God is in heaven;
He does whatever He pleases.
Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of men’s hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak;
Eyes they have, but they do not see;
They have ears, but they do not hear;
Noses they have, but they do not smell;
They have hands, but they do not handle;
Feet they have, but they do not walk;
Nor do they mutter through their throat.
Those who make them are like them;
So is everyone who trusts in them.

This Psalm, coupled with the parable, suggest the idolatrous end of those who miss the point of the first eight words of the parable, who believe we have an active role in bringing about the kingdom of heaven, that it’s part our show, or God and we working together.

Historically, evangelical movement has most often yielded to a confusion about this concept. Their movement leaders speak in terms of “cooperating with God to bring about His kingdom.” It’s the heart and soul of the “evangelical fervor” driving many a Church Growth program: We have to get out there to advance God’s kingdom!

It was this confused spirit that drove many to see the Civil War as a divine crusade: My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Robert Schuller propagated his “Self Help” Reformation in which he believed we would “be caught up in a vision of a cause, a crusade, a divine calling . . . [we] will accept God’s invitation to play our important part in the kingdom he is busy creating NOW in this world.” (Remember what I said yesterday about the NOW of the immanentizers of the eschaton!)

The recent Emergent movement heavily drunk from this well. As one Emergent wrote, “The practices of the church are, then, gifts of the Holy Spirit and as such participation in God’s embodied story.”

The progressive leanings of the Emergent Church movement came honestly, because evangelical movement has always devolved into unitarian progressivism. Progressivism itself began as a project on the part of 19th century philosophers to de-spiritualize the idea of Christ’s coming kingdom – to strip it of all its doctrinal or sacramental components – and reconstitute it through political movement: It’s the woke, awakened consciousness working with Historical forces which will cause humanity to progress to the next stage of human evolution and bring about a world where Christ’s teachings of love will be writ into human DNA.

Here is the idolatrous end of this belief that the kingdom of heaven is something we cooperate with God to bring about. It ends up being an idolization of humanity. Just as the Psalm says, “Those who make [the idols] are like them.” Here explains the current religious fervor and idolatry we see in Leftist politics: political movement has become their replacement God/church!

Septuagesima’s Gospel is the antidote. The kingdom of heaven is like… someone other than us doing something. The same truth is suggested in the Our Father petition, “Thy kingdom come.” That this is a prayer and not a command often eludes Christians (in the same way Christ’s prayer for unity is taken by the ecumenical movement not as something answered, fulfilled, and confessed by faith, but something we bring about by working together.)

On the contrary, prayer puts us in a posture just as the Psalm says, “Not unto us.” In prayer, we’re helpless, on our knees, in a posture of utter need, which is perhaps why elderly widows are often highlighted for their prayerful faith. As St. Paul says, they “continue in supplications and prayers night and day.” Widows aren’t exactly in the business of building kingdoms or leading crusades, but great at depending on others, which is exactly the sort of faith the Lord seeks.

But something more is afloat in the evangelical understanding of God’s coming kingdom, and it’s the inherent Gnosticism going on. So long as God is understood as completely distinct and “other” from me, then there should be no confusion about where God ends and I begin. Prayer also makes sense: He’s the giver; I’m the receiver. But if there is a fuzzy line where God ends and I begin, that’s where the problems begin.

The orthodox understanding of Christ allows for no such fuzzy understandings, because in Him there are fleshly borders on God (the specific thing Gnostics could not bear). And this translates into presence of Christ in the Church as well: the Kingdom of God is something going on in delineated Word and Sacrament, located outside of me, bordered by clear forms which make God’s grace and operations distinct from me.

Whereas in evangelical movement, with its Gnostic understanding of God – an understanding which rejects the physical presence of Christ through the sacraments – God sort of leaks out of Christ into my heart and soul, so that a nameless spirit leads me to be a “christ” in this world taking part in bringing about God’s kingdom. (Reread the Emergent quote above!)

And you thought the differences over communion between Lutherans and other Protestants were just minor doctrinal differences! Not at all. Dislocating God from His divinely ordained means – turning Him into a mere symbol of His “real” activity going on in the heart – releases spiritual forces we claim to be God into the soul to do all manner of shenanigans.

Today’s parable is the antidote. The Kingdom of Heaven is like… NOT US. May this put us ever in a posture not of looking to politics or our own action for our salvation, but a posture of prayer, which looks unto God for all good. (This is not to deny the need for Christians to be politically active, but this is for another day.  In short, politics should be a tool to support the family, not an arena for working out ones mis-perceived divine impulses.)