Natural Man
Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19
Psalm 86:11-17
Romans 8:18-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Tim
Christoffersen
Holy Cross
Castro Valley
July 17,
2005
I am delighted to be here again at Holy Cross this morning. Many of us still miss Mark at St. Timothy’s in Danville and I am certain he is a great blessing to you here at Holy Cross.
The words of Paul and the parable of the Kingdom of Heaven told by Jesus are a challenge to us today. They are a challenge because they confront us with a spiritual understanding of the world in which we live. Our day to day world is the ‘natural world’ or in Paul’s words, the world according to the flesh.
Paul challenges us to live according to the Spirit and put to death our bondage to the world according to the flesh. For if we live according to the Spirit, we are heirs with Jesus in the Kingdom of God. The explanation of the parable uncovers the spiritual reality. The bad seed, the weeds, are planted by the Evil One, the Devil, and the good seed are planted by the Son of Man and are the children of the kingdom.
The difficult part in this for most of us is the testimony of Paul and Jesus that we live in a world in which there is spiritual warfare between Good and Evil. The evil we read about virtually daily in our newspapers is not just the result of poverty or bad parenting. It is a personal reality that is a hidden part of our natural world and confronts us sight unseen.
The six episodes of Star Wars are a contemporary parable about the spiritual warfare between Good and Evil in our world. The principal characters are humans that are no different than you and I. But when Luke Skywalker taps into the Force in his epic battle with Darth Vader, we know the Force is a spiritual reality. And we know that Darth Vader has been captured by the Dark Side, a power that transcends his personal reality.
Let me go back and describe what I think are characteristics of the natural world. I am speaking now largely of the predominant view of our secular culture that informs our television shows and our newspapers. I think we all to varying degrees live our daily lives according to or influenced by the realities of the natural world.
There is no God nor is there personal evil in our natural world. That is the fundamental reality. Sins with a small ‘s’ exist, but Sin with a capital S, a spiritual reality, does not exist.
In the natural world, we humans make the final decisions about events and choices in our lives. We take what we see and experience as the givens and we deal with them as they face or confront us. The challenges we face in our work, in our relationships with our children, our parents, our friends and strangers are just there. We accept them as part of the landscape of our lives.
Our voices and our hearts may cry out about unfairness and suffering, but we accept this as our fate. We do not see Evil as a spiritual reality.
We have a hard time understanding evil. As a natural man we tend to see evil as a result of circumstances or how a person was raised. We look at gang membership in Richmond as largely the result of poverty and lack of choice to live elsewhere. We listen to the Biblical story of Job and we want to hear or understand God’s allowing the spiritual forces of evil to test Job to be a parable of Job’s own psychological struggle with good and evil in his own conscience. We resist an understanding of a spiritual life and death struggle going on that touches our own lives. The story of Job is just a story after all.
But now we have to come back and listen again to Paul and Jesus speaking to us. Yes, we live in the world of the natural man. But the words directed to us do not allow us to remain isolated in the natural world if our hearts and minds are open to God calling to us. How do we ‘hear’ God calling out to us?
Listen again to what the disciples ask of Jesus and Jesus’ response. “Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, ‘Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.’ He answered, ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age….”
Now you and I have a choice. We can turn a deaf ear to these words of Jesus and simply not confront our being told that our lives in the natural world are set in the larger purpose of God’s creation where there are spiritual forces of good and evil that are real and that we cannot see. Star Wars is a parable about the reality in which we live our lives.
How do we remain open to God’s calling to us and live our lives in response to God’s call?
For me personally, the challenge is how to ‘see’ what is going on? How do I ‘see’ the spiritual realities that surround me and recognize or ‘hear’ God calling to me. I have lived much of my life in my head. I was very comfortable in the natural world. I got along quite well without having to face God’s calling out to me. In my case, it was the simple act of being a LEM II about 6 to 7 years ago and taking communion to parishioners in their homes that led me to ‘hear’ what God was calling me to do.
A few of us can ‘hear’ God’s calling to us in the reading of Scripture and respond to it. For most of us, hearing God calling to us is a little tougher. We have some decent defenses we have built up as children of the natural world. It usually requires engagement with helping others, in some manner, as God’s children in addition to having our hearts and our minds open to hearing God’s word.
Another cornerstone to ‘hearing’ God’s calling out to us is in prayer. In prayer we simply acknowledge God’s presence in our lives and we listen. I suspect many of you can remember a time when you struggled with a decision and you went around and around in your thoughts without a conclusion that felt right. But when you prayed about that decision, a path and a choice emerged that felt clear and right to you. You heard God speaking to you. A reality deeper than your own thoughts emerged and you knew the decision was the right one.
Let’s go back to the words of Paul about hope in the reading. Paul says, “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
As we hear God’s calling to us and ‘see’ the reality of spiritual forces of good and evil in our lives here in the natural world, we live in hope. For our lives will not be free from evil and suffering, but we know in our response to God’s calling to us that our life has purpose and we are God’s children. We cry Abba! Father! We live according to the Spirit.
Amen.
