Life in the Sower
Golf and grace
Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”
“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law-- indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Romans 8:1-11
The summers of my middle school were spent on Hampton Heights golf course in Hickory, North Carolina. Hampton Heights was not a club for lifestyles of the rich and famous, but a public course off the highway that closed five years ago to become a housing development. Me and about five of my friends filled our summer mornings up learning not only how to putt and swing a driver—or, as it were, learn how to give up hope of ever properly swinging a driver. I also learned the etiquette of the game, including a full vocabulary of cuss words, and learned the joy of your buddy tomahawking his pitching wedge into the koi pond. But did we learn to love the game? If so, we also learned to hate the game, which we did every time we looked at the scorecard and could quantify just how bad we were. I was reminded of all this when my wife recently got me a set of used clubs, getting me back out on the course for the first time in years, where I shot a -1 (that is, I lost three balls in the woods, but found two).
There are a lot of soils and grasses in golf, the thick rough, the low-cut fairway, the smooth greens (which, at Hampton Heights, had patches of dirt), the sand. When we listen to Jesus tell us the parable of the Sower as we heard today, we often get anxiety about which soil we are. Am I the good soil? Am I choked up, thorny, rocky soil? Or am I a paved cart path that the Word just bounces off into the creek? In my observation, we contain a wide variety of soil within us, a whole inner golf course, where parts of ourselves are more responsive to parts of God’s revelation than others. Sometimes we understand Jesus, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we can follow some of Jesus’ teaching even when it’s hard, others we don’t want to publicly embarrass ourselves with. Sometimes we don’t even try following what Jesus teaches because we already know we aren’t ready to pay what it would cost us.
But as I heard a wise priest once point out, the Parable of the Sower is not “the parable of the soils.”1 That’s focusing on us. Look at the Sower. Look at how Jesus, the one who came to give us all life in the Spirit, continually scatters grace no matter what kind of soil you are. He is always showering the grace of the Word whether we respond to it that day or not. Jesus doesn’t give up on us; the sower keeps on sowing. Jesus sees all of our sod and our clay and our dust and our gravel and no matter who we are, he keeps sowing.
And because he keeps sowing, we can learn about living this “life in the Spirit” even when parts of us still live on the flesh’s terms. As we heard today in one of the most important chapters of all the epistles in teaching us about the gospel: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” (Rom 8:1-2) Even more than his teachings, Jesus Christ sowed the Word of his life, God’s very being, to defeat the reign of sin. When we respond to the faithful call to live in him, we do not have to do the impossible of being perfect in the Law, for we have a new Law in Christ. “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (Rom 8:5-6)
What does this mean, exactly, to set our mind on the Spirit and to live according to the Spirit or to live according to the flesh? These are the very questions Christians were asking themselves which Paul was trying to answer. What use does the Law have if we don’t have to live by it? Can we still do sinful things? What does it actually mean, in practical, daily living what it means that we live under “no condemnation”?
First, let me say what it’s not. For Christians, life in the Spirit is not like having a really good score in golf. It’s like playing golf without a scorecard at all. It’s going out on the course with whatever clubs and whatever body you have, fully enjoying God in creation through simply abiding in his presence, and just playing. You may take more or less swings on any given hole, but there is no scorecard for those who are in Christ Jesus.
You might say, “Well, if you don’t keep score, how would you ever know you’re any good at it?” And this has a point; as Paul says, the Law was a teacher, “I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law.” (Rom 7:7) But the Law also becomes the enticer and the taskmaster. Yes, there is some benefit to playing golf with a scorecard when you’re learning it because it is utterly humbling and pointing out what is a theoretically possible standard of par. Calvin said that the Law still has uses for us: it is a mirror that we aren’t perfect, it is a restrainer of evil, and it is a guide to what pleases God, for to love Jesus is to keep his commandments (John 14:15).
But if you aren’t careful, you will forget the basic grace of this life, like getting to play a beautiful, weird game invented by some Scottish ancestors, and instead become obsessed with your score. I could get so angry at myself as a kid, constantly setting my mind on my failures. Every now and then, I’d make a good shot, sink a putt, and imagine myself being on TV next to Tiger, tipping my cap and waving to the crowd. But most of the time, golf is the feeling like you’ve tried your best to do everything right, you’ve practiced enough, and you just keep slicing it, or hitting it fat, or it goes in the water, and suddenly you’re on your eighth stroke on a par four hole, written down next to a string of 7’s and 9’s. Maybe this is also your experience of Christianity.
Many of us don’t play golf, but are there areas of life where you are keeping a scorecard? If so, you will either be constantly condemned by it, or worse, deluded into pride. Spiritually thinking, almost the worst thing that can happen to us is getting really skilled at something. Our gifts become a source of pride when we display our talent as better than others, or a source of self-hatred when you don’t live up to it. That’s not life in freedom. That’s life under a million little slaveries. And we do it not just with sports and skills, but with our very sense of being Christ followers—what’s my moral scorecard this week? It’s the soil that we actually feel most comfortable in, where even if you become “number one”—and there’s always someone better—it becomes impossible to live up to for long. But when we live in Jesus Christ, to have his Spirit who has died to the flesh living in us, we are not condemned by any moral score.
That doesn’t mean there’s not a right or wrong way to play. It doesn’t mean all swings are just as good as others, that we can live however we want and it doesn’t matter because there’s no rules. In fact, the rules of love are even harder than golf. The grace Jesus offers us is free, but growing as his disciples will take a lifetime of effort, persistence, and dealing with the constant roommate that is our sinful selves. We Christians can be so close to being right, but then you get one idea devastatingly wrong, and you’re missing it completely. You may even get the gospel completely, and practice and practice, only for there to be something very slightly off—just two degrees left, a grip a little too tight—and next thing you know, you’re in the pine needles.
But as we grow in imperfect obedience our whole lives, Christ will keep sowing and sowing his grace, whether we notice it or not. He will never give up on you. Some of us are Christians despite how hard it constantly feels like we’re never living in the Spirit. But just like it is actually possible to enjoy golf, with the love of God, you can grow in living in the Spirit until you actually enjoy being a Christian (if you can believe it!). But there’s only one path to getting better: love. Love God, and love your neighbor. You only get better at a game like golf by loving the game enough to pay close attention to what makes for good play. Likewise, we don’t grow in obedience to God by hating God, but by loving God enough to mind the details. And then it comes time to play, you have to let go, say a prayer, and just let it swing.
We know what Paul would tell his friends in Corinth about love: it keeps no record of wrongs (1 Cor 13:5). Christ obliterated the moral scorecard by which we all fail. As Luther taught, the Law can diagnose, but it can’t save.2 Likewise, “life in the scorecard” might tell us where we’re falling short, but can make us fixated on what type of sinful soil we are. We must turn our minds back to Jesus Christ.
By looking at Jesus, we can learn the spiritual laws of creation and the physics of loving one another. Jesus teaches us that life in the Spirit is a life of continuous grace, where the Sower is constantly spreading grace to all, whether they “deserve it” or not, because he gave his grace to you when you didn’t deserve it. You don’t get better at loving God and loving neighbor by setting your mind on how bad you are, but by setting your mind on how the Sower lives and moves in love, and doing likewise. And when you hit it in the water again, Christ’s heart will be wounded again, but the Sower will keep pouring his love out on you. Scripture says, “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” (Rom 13:8) Just as love is the fulfillment of the Law, love is the fulfillment of the game. Life in the spirit is the pure love of God and love of the game he’s invited us to play.
One week at Hampton Heights, when one of my buddies was especially upset, someone suggested: what if we only used our putters for the entire round? What if we teed off with our putters, hit it out of the sand with our putters, and…come to think of it, what if we putted with our drivers? To this day, that was the most fun I’ve ever had playing golf. I have no idea what we shot. We weren’t thinking about that. Because “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God,” (Rom 8:7), but beloved, “you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” (Rom 8:9) Set your mind on these things. Amen.
For more on this week’s readings:
Fr. Aaron Burt, At Home with the Lectionary
H/t Loren Richmond Jr.’s recent post