Understanding the Crisis of Relevance

6 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 10, July 16,2017
Isaiah 55:10-13 Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Romans 8:1-11  Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Lectionary Link

Probably the most original school of American philosophy is called Pragmatism.  It is associated with such philosophers as one of the James Brother, William James.  It is associated with John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce.

Pragmatism means that something is true partly because it has functional value.  What functional value is there in knowing how many angels can dance on the head of needle?  Aside from the entertainment for persons interested in irrelevant arcane speculation, not much.

We need to be pragmatic interpreters of the Bible.  How do we do that?  By reading the Bible and asking what would be the function of this writing within a community of people?

You and I can look at the function of the Parable of the Sower for the people who are responsible for collecting, writing, editing and re-editing the Gospel of Matthew.

Parables are presented in the Gospel as a favorite teaching method of Jesus.  A parable is a story that teaches a moral or spiritual lesson and it provides insights into one situation by looking at a parallel occasion in nature.

The Parable of the Sower is relevant to us today at St. John’s because we are all interested in the secret of relevance.  How can what we do be effectively relevant to the lives of people?

Why is ministry of St. John the Divine relevant or effective to the lives of some and not of others?  Why do so many people find it so easy to avoid ever entering this church?  Why do some people seem to be 90 day wonders in their religion and then suddenly are absent and gone?

The crisis of relevance is a recurring crisis in the life of a person or an institution.  What I had of hair turned gray very early in my ministry because of facing the continuing crisis of relevance.  Does anything I do in ministry have sufficient relevance to engage the lives of enough people to keep a parish alive and well?

The message of Jesus Christ had enough relevance to create quite a historical movement but in the early days of the movement, there was discussion about the crisis of relevance.

What were the questions of relevance?  What does the message of Jesus have to do with me?  Why is the message of Jesus Christ successful in the lives of some people and not in others?  Why have the Gentiles become enamored with the message about Jesus Christ?  Conversely, why have members of the synagogue rejected the teachings of Jesus Christ?  And why have some people been very active in the Jesus Movement and then suddenly or gradually quit and left the movement?  Why have Jews who once embraced the message about Jesus suddenly changed their minds about Jesus and have returned to the synagogue?

The Parable of the Sower is a parable in the early church which addressed the crisis of relevance.

We might expect the parable of Jesus to give us an air-tight answer about the cause of the success or failure of the message of Jesus in the lives of people.

But what is the insight given by the Parable about the success of the word of God in people’s lives?  Why is the Gospel successful in someone’s life? The conditions are right.

The conditions are right.  That sounds like the universal cliché answer for why anything occurs.  Why did it happen?  Well, the conditions were right.

A farmer or gardener knows that plants will grow and do well if the conditions are right.  What can a gardener control?  The seed or seedlings.  The preparation of the soil.  The amount of water through irrigation.  The weeding, the thinning, the pruning all can be controlled by the farmer.  What cannot be controlled is the climate and the general weather conditions, or grasshoppers and other pests.

Why is the message of the Gospel successful or not?  It depends on the conditions.

What insights can we learn from the Parable of the Sower?  Any life condition includes influential factors out of our control and things in our control.

The Sower in the parable is a broadcast seeder.  The Sower throws the seeds toward the intended place of growth but this is not a very efficient way of planting seeds.  The wind can carry the seed away to fall on the path or on the rocky places.  The seed is the universally hybrid and winsome Word of God.  The rather indiscriminate casting of the seeds is a metaphor for the Word of God being offered to everyone, always, all of the time.

The seed arrives in a variety of conditions.  People can lie about the identity of a seed so that it is not understood.  Rising stalks of corn can be called useless weeds if people don't know their food value and therefore of no use for food.  A seed may not grow because it does not get buried; it remains on the surface to get burned up by the sun or eaten by the birds.  A seed can be crowded out by many other weeds that there is not enough soil nutrition for the seed to become a successful plant.  But the seed can also land in good soil and have different levels of crop yield.

The most important aspect of the Parable of the Sower is the quality of the seed.  The prophet Isaiah wrote that the word of God is infallible and ultimately irresistibly winsome.  God's word goes forth and will not return as empty.  God’s word will ultimately be relevant to everyone's life.

The early preachers of the Gospel believed that the Good News was winsome, infallible and irresistible, even while they recognized that everyone was not yet convinced.  The early preachers of the Gospel knew that there was competition; there were alternatives to Gospel in the lives of people.  The weather, the climate and pests are factors in farming.  What happens to us are factors in how we embrace and express our faith.  Some events can support and encourage our faith while there are events of shame, persecution, loss and disappointment which can discourage or impede our expression of devotion to Christ.

St. Paul, in the letter to the Roman church wrote a spiritual psychology.  He wrote about how we could understand ourselves and prepare ourselves to find the relevance of Jesus Christ in our lives.  St. Paul said that we needed to find what was infallible and perfect in our lives.  The Holy Spirit is infallible and perfect and we need to find and know the infallible and perfect to deal with everything in our lives which is imperfect and changing. 

St. Paul wrote about the conditions of the flesh being a wrong relationship with desire.  We can focus our desire on so many things that compete with what is worthy and perfect. Experiencing the Holy Spirit as underneath our desire and directing it to be expressive of love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, meekness and self-control is the goal expressed in the spiritual psychology of St. Paul.

So what do you and I do with this Gospel cliché today?  Things happen in the way in which they do because the conditions are right.

As we consider the right conditions today, let us remember:  The message is universally offered.  The message is perfect, infallible, irresistible and winsome.  God the Sower is patient.  The conditions may not be right now, but in the patience of God, they ultimately will be favorable to the universal relevance of God in our lives.

What is our responsibility in enhancing our receptivity to the Word of God?  I think it is well expressed in what is called the Serenity Prayer: God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Today, let us be encouraged to do all that we can to have a favorable hearing of God’s Word in our lives.  Let us be convinced of God’s infallible Spirit within us.  And let our community build a spiritual ecology to support the very best outcomes for the success of the life Christ with us and in our world.  Amen.