Truth X

Jay began the meeting by noting that the untimely death of our classmate Harry was bound to have us struggling a bit today. He noted that Harry taught us several spiritual lessons: First, was that an historical perspective on the bible could intensify its meanings; Second was his insistence that we sometimes conflate capital-T Truth with small-t truth; and Third, he taught that a spiritual journey was far from easy. The journey would involve pain and loss and misunderstanding, but trial and tribulation were necessary for deepening one’s understanding of god’s love and grace.

Jay: Seed seems insignificant, yet it has potential to grow into a mighty tree. Similarly, the seed of god’s word within us has the potential to expand his love and grace. Matthew 13 is all about seeds. 1 Peter 1:22-3 tells us that god’s seed is imperishable. Genesis 8:22 tells us that the cycle of seeding and harvesting are part of the natural order of god’s creation. Mark 4:6-29 expresses wonder at the ineffability, the mystery, of the seed: How can such insignificant things develop into such mighty and fruitful and significant structures?

Last week, Nick suggested that without mystery we cannot have faith. Charles also saw mystery as essential to the process of revelation and discovery of the truth about god. Paul talks about mystery a lot. For instance, 1 Corinthians 2:1-8:

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

David asked whether the existence of god was meaningful without soil—without people. How essential are people to the mystery of the seed?

David: My question was influenced by the theory of process theology, which posits that god is both a Being and a Becoming. In his Becoming aspect, god needs us to help him Become. According to this theory and the Omega Point Theory proposed by physicist Frank Tipler, we are co-evolving with god until the unifying Omega Point of the Big Crunch—the contraction of the universe to a unidimensional point—which is simultaneously the Alpha Point, the Big Bang of Creation. So as I understand Process Theology, seed without soil would be a contradiction. Yes, the seed is imperishable, but it can never fruit without soil.

To me, this theory has spiritual explanatory power. It helps make sense of the Truth about god—that god exists; it demystifies.

Jay: Last week, you also raised the danger of mystery; that when seemingly spiritual, metaphysical mysteries turn out to be mundanely physical after all, we lose faith in the existence of a god who underwrites mystery.

Robin: 1 Corinthian 3:5-11:

What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

I think this is intended to contrast that each person has something to do with the building of the church, but it is god who handles the increase. Harry often said, despite his doubts, that he believed in god and in Jesus. I think of Harry when I read 1 Peter 1:22-25:

Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God. For,

“All flesh is like grass,
And all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
And the flower falls off,
But the word of the Lord endures forever.”

And this is the word which was preached to you.

Chris: In Mark 4:10-12, after the parable of the sower and the seeds, it says:

As soon as He was alone, His followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the parables. And He was saying to them, “To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven.”

I wonder if the mystery has to do with making people think and dwell upon the concepts Jesus was trying to teach. If one is given something at face value, one tends to appreciate it less. One doesn’t take it quite so seriously as one takes something that seems to contain more than meets the eye. Perhaps mystery is just a technique to make us think, and through thinking arrive at a deeper understanding and make a more sincere commitment to acting upon the message in the gift.

David: That’s an interesting theory, yet it seems back-to-front. He removes the mystery of the parable for the disciples, who presumably should have deeper insight anyway than the multitude and be better able to penetrate the mystery, but he does not do so for the multitude, leaving them to wallow in doubt and misunderstanding. That, to me, is a real mystery!

Somewhere else Jesus goes on to say that what little understanding the multitude manages to salvage, will be taken away from them; while the disciples, who understand better than the multitude but still not fully, will have their eyes opened completely. How unfair, how un-beatific, how un-Christian, is that? This too does not make sense; this too is a mystery.

Charles: Scripture is a way of providing context for exploring such mysteries. Similes of soil and seed enable exploration of the concepts of the cycle of birth and death in the natural world. They lead us to wonder about the ultimate, transcendent causes of these timebound, transient natural conditions, and to wonder what then can be permanent, what can be eternal, what is enduring, what is forever? The only possible object of such wonderment is a higher power, a supernatural power: god. Otherwise, nothing makes sense.

Scripture is just designed to lead us to this contemplation and wonderment, and ultimately to the capital-T truth of the existence of god.

Chris: The object of contemplation is never the surface of a thing. We contemplate on what lies below the surface, beyond the boundary. We contemplate the unseen, the unknown.

The disciples were with Jesus every day. The multitudes were not. So the disciples were contemplating the mystery every day, but the multitude only had a brief exposure to it. Therefore, they needed to be made to contemplate it; hence, the parable was not explained to them.

Robin: If someone says they know for sure that a valuable pearl is buried in the field, we are likely to make more effort to find it than if we were told it is lying in plain view in the middle of the field.

David: The indisputable decline in Christianity and growth of secularism in Europe, can probably be attributed at least in part to the unmasking, the demystification, of spiritual mysteries by science. But I wonder whether the decline in religiosity is the same as a decline in spirituality? The more we uncover the mysteries of the physical world, the closer we get to god, perhaps? We may be drawing away from temples and scriptures, but we are not drawing away from god.

I believe this to be the general case, though it does not prevent a sense of disillusionment setting in on those who are told the earth is flat because god made it so, only to be shown pictures taken from the surface of the moon showing that the earth is round, and scientific proof that its roundness has a physical cause.

Robin: The building of the Christian church, which Paul refers to, was not a building of buildings, but a building of faith.

Charles: The forward march of human progress, or human destiny, is in many ways parallel to what was laid out in Genesis: Man has everything laid out before him, for his control. But since the beginning of history, Man has been consumed by the physical reality, first by the need to survive, and then the perceived need for things he wants but doesn’t really need. In the process of conquering that physical reality, we have become deluded about the degree of control we exert over it, but every now and then a tsunami or other cataclysmic event shatters our delusion.

The bottom line is that we have made some progress in our journey of understanding and controlling the physical world, but in parallel, science has recently opened up human communication on a scale that was unimaginable not long ago. It may be that the interconnectedness and interconnectivity among people of the world, which results from our physical journey, has opened up possibilities for spiritual interconnectedness, spiritual understanding, and spiritual development that also seemed unimaginable. Our understanding is now so fine-grained that we seem set to be left with nothing to contemplate except the ultimate mysteries.

Don: Is global interconnectedness reflected metaphorically in the ubiquitous and indiscriminate casting of the seed in the parable? There is no limit to the broadcasting of the seed. I wonder what it means with respect to the word of god in Europe today? I can’t help coming back to the importance of the seed, which contains the transformational power. No matter which way up it is lands, if it falls in fertile soil it will unfailingly send roots downwards and shoots upwards. Birds may eat seed even on fertile ground. So there is a greater message here, a mystery, in the ubiquitous sowing of seed and in the mystery of its germination, in its transformation from an inert, unproductive object to an actively living and fruitful plant (that produces even more seed), and in its sacrifice—its death as a seed—for the sake of the plant that springs from it.

The richness of this metaphor, taken together with the points raised in our discussion today, suggest to me that we ought to spend more time on this parable.

Jay: I wonder if the mystery of the seed is somehow connected with what Chris alluded to about how Jesus relates to the multitude who are left mystified and the disciples who are not? Chris suggested that the disciples don’t so much understand the mystery but rather are living the mystery. Christ is the mystery. The disciples lived with the mystery every day. They “have” the mystery, yet they must (and are able to) come to Christ every day for explanation.

Don: Perhaps the disciples also have no insight into what Jesus meant in the parable.

Charles: Is there something to the lack of discrimination in the sower? Is this another way of showing that god does not think as we think? We think it is foolish to waste good seed on stony ground or in a thicket of thorns, but perhaps the parable is pointing out that god’s ways are not our ways. Perhaps god understands that as long as he keeps sowing the seed, it will eventually take root even on the stony ground, even in the thicket of thorns.

Robin: The seed is meant for everyone, for the multitude. In Mark 4:21:

And He was saying to them, “A lamp is not brought to be put under a basket, is it, or under a bed? Is it not brought to be put on the lampstand? [Robin: Perhaps a mystery is like a lamp in this regard.]  For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” [At this point, the listener must be dying to know what Jesus is talking about! Then he explains:] And He was saying to them, “Take care what you listen to. By your standard of measure it will be measured to you; and more will be given you besides. For whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.”

This is not a curse, it is merely an explanation.

Don: It is indeed not a value judgment. It does influence one’s productivity, one’s fruitfulness; but it is not a judgment parable. The hard soil is not being judged. There is some other meaning to it.

Charles: We understand the harvest, clinically and on our time frame. We may judge a harvest to be abundant or not, according to various criteria—the weather, the quality of the soil, and so on. But Farmer God is not affected by these criteria and has more than all the time in the world to wait for a good crop.

Don: Exactly. As Isaiah 55:8-9 says:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.

He then goes directly into the seed metaphor (verses 10-11:)

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And do not return there without watering the earth
And making it bear and sprout,
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
It will not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.

This passage suggests that the sowing is intentionally indiscriminate. Then (verses 12-13:)

“For you will go out with joy
And be led forth with peace;
The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you,
And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
[Here comes the transformation]
“Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up,
And instead of the nettle the myrtle will come up,
And it will be a memorial to the Lord,
For an everlasting sign which will not be cut off.”

David: The goal of a seed is to produce more seed. Yet in his indiscriminate sowing, god evidently has an inexhaustible supply of seed anyway. So god (who was the Word, the seed, in the Beginning, at the Alpha Point) always exists, is always in inexhaustible supply; but he needs soil (humans) to establish a kingdom of heaven that is inclusive of all of creation at the Omega Point.

So I might grudgingly accept that the parable has some meaning to it!

Kiran: We think the purpose of seed is to produce more seed, but in the parable, the purpose of the seed is to transform the soil, perhaps especially the hard and stony and thorny soil, by breaking it up over time and making it more fertile and fruitful. In Galatians 2:20 Paul says: “[I]t is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me….” So soil is passive in this process; it is the seed that is actively transformational. I like to think that I have a part in my transformation, but the reality is that I have nothing to do with it. That realization changes my view of my fellow man, and it changes my relationship with god. It is difficult to accept.

David: That reminds me of a topic I hope we will discuss: The “glory of god.” If the purpose of seed is to produce more seed, then it is fulfilling a “glory of god” role. If its purpose is to transform the soil (us) then the seed has a more human-centered role. I’ve never liked calls to give glory to god: He surely cannot need it and I doubt he wants it. Perhaps it’s a definitional problem: If glorifying god means helping god to establish his kingdom, then I could understand it.

Charles: What if the metaphor of the sower and the seed is not about the word of god but about the vehicle for spreading the word, about the container for the spirit of god—the human form? That would throw a new light on the metaphor.

Don: Let’s examine that idea.

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