July 13, 2008 Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Proper 10 Commentary by Jeanyne B. Slettom

See also: [2005] [2002]

Ps. 119:105-112
Gen. 25:19-34
Rom. 8:1-11
Matt. 13:1-9, 18-23

In this week and the weeks that follow, we get Matthew’s parables of the kingdom, Paul’s dichotomy of flesh and Spirit, the Jacob cycle, and some of the best sound bites from the Psalms. What an array of choices!

And choice, as it turns out, is a central theme in the texts for this week. Jacob gives Esau a choice between his birthright and lentil stew; Esau chooses the food. The psalmist rejoices in having made the choice of following God’s law, implying that the alternative choice would be wickedness. Paul celebrates the Spirit dwelling within us by distinguishing between flesh and Spirit, with the obvious exhortation to his readers to stick with the Spirit. The parable of the sower appears to offer a wider range of choices, but whether the seed falls on the path, the rocky ground, or the thorns, the key distinction still comes down to a choice between whether those who hear the word choose to “understand” it or not—with “understand” having the broader meaning of exemplifying the word in one’s behavior.

We have a strong tendency, in reading these texts, to see them in terms of either/or; that is, there are only two choices, one is right and the other is wrong, and that’s final. There’s a further tendency to see these choices as once-and-for-all. The either/or choice adds drama to the Jacob-Esau story, highlighted by our knowledge of the whole narrative arc. Esau’s choice is the tipping point that confirms Yahweh as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Romans, Paul is explicit in his either/or dichotomy of flesh and Spirit—the one leads to sin and death, and the other to life and peace. There is no in-between. In Matthew, we have grown so accustomed to hearing the “kingdom” references eschatologically that we regularly interpret the good seed as a good life, with the promised “yield” the reward of eternal life, in which case a misspent life that yields “nothing” is obvious enough. But if we examine these texts more carefully, one at a time, a different sense emerges.

In the story of Jacob and Esau, it’s the story that demands an either/or choice. It takes the complex relationship between these brothers and reduces it to this moment as a device to propel the story forward, with the narrator now free to focus on Jacob (and show his less-than sterling character, too). But even though the story demands this focus, does that mean that God is no longer intimately involved in Esau’s life? Within the narrative structure, one might argue that Esau did a terrible thing. He despised something of value, thus legitimating the Bible’s preference for Jacob. Either/or. Birthright or dinner. Jacob or Esau. But the biblical account is kind to Esau. He marries, he prospers, he has many descendents, and he is a model of fraternal forgiveness, greeting his brother years later with an embrace and a kiss. Before Esau passes from the story, he has the opportunity to refuse gifts from his brother, claiming, “I have more than enough.” Given that, can we really think that at this point he would wish to do it all over? The either/or choice is a fallacy. Jacob had many choices, and the consequences of his duplicities led to some hard years. Esau had many choices, and they resulted in a satisfying life. In each man’s life, in each of his choices, process theology would say that God was present—guiding, transforming, aiming at what is best for that person, given that person’s potential, and aiming at what will contribute to the well-being of the world.

The Pauline text is magnificent in one respect: it repeatedly affirms that the Spirit of God dwells within us. If nothing else, this affirmation can be the basis of a sermon on the steadfast presence of God and the hope that such presence engenders. The difficulty is that Paul casts this claim in the rhetoric of dualism—between flesh and the Spirit—and dualisms are problematic. On the one hand, there is the issue of hierarchical dualisms, where one pole is identified as superior to the other, and on the other hand there is the specific issue of gender, with women consistently identified with the denigrated pole and men with the loftier one (emotion/reason, body/mind). Add Christianity’s historical problem with the body, and you have a text that many understandably shy away from.

The problem is that dualisms are either/or constructions, and Paul is certainly following that convention: it’s either the flesh or the Spirit; no two ways about it. Flesh (the body) equates to sin and death, while Spirit relates to life—except when its polar opposite is death, then the life promised by the Spirit quickly becomes eternal life. In short order, then, one has a text that despises life in the body, here and now, and extols the afterlife. It’s a swift jump to masochistic ascetic practices, acceptance of present misery (rather than a commitment to justice), and eyes fixed only on heaven.

But how accurate is that interpretation? Paul does not say the Spirit will dwell in us only when we die. The Spirit of God dwells in us here and now, in our earthly lives, which is to say, in our physical bodies. Doesn’t that suggest a more respectful assessment of life in the flesh? Paul is concerned about how we live our lives, and since the only way to do thatis in a body, then the either/or choice—in this case between body and soul—is once again a fallacy.

A standard way to overcome the either/or fallacy is to find a bigger concept that holds opposing pairs not as opposites but as contrasts within the larger whole. In this case, the larger whole is embodied life and the choices we make in our daily lives. The Spirit, Paul writes, dwells within us, therefore we have the capability to conform our choices to the Spirit. But that very capacity opens the possibility of making other choices, ones not in line with the Spirit. We know this because we are human! We make good choices, bad choices, indifferent choices, but we make them, all the time. Rather than set up a dichotomy between this life and the next, or between body and spirit, re-focus attention on the myriad of choices we make every single day, and the criterion that Paul offers to help our discernment. Good choices, he writes, the ones we make when we set our minds on the Spirit, lead to life and peace—not only in whatever life there is to come, but in this life, here, now, in our mortal bodies wherein the Spirit dwells.

This notion of life not as a stark either/or but as a series of unfolding of choices, given narrative expression in the stories of Jacob and Esau, and philosophical expression in Paul’s letter to the Romans, receives succinct metaphorical expression in the Psalm. “Your word,” the psalmist writes, “is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” A lamp, as biblical scholar Ronald Farmer points out, gives off just enough light to show us the next step or two along the way. It’s not a floodlight illuminating the future. Life proceeds—a step at a time, a choice at a time—and becomes the accumulation of many steps and multiple choices: seldom either/or; seldom once and for all. Farmer wrote a wonderful reflection on this Psalm in Creative Transformation (Summer 2002). It’s worth reading in full. You’ll find it on page 12.

One of the wonderful things about the parable of the sower is its very earthiness. The parable uses organic images; in its very message it is rooted in the earth. So why do we so often interpret these parables of the kingdom in eschatological terms? The problem is one of translation: the “kingdom” of translation is the basileia of New Testament Greek. “This radically relational metaphor,” writes Catherine Keller, “proposes nothing resembling any historical kingship, empire, patrilineage dictatorship, or top-down power, let alone the ahistorical place that came to be meant by “heaven” (On the Mystery. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007, 133). Quoting John Cobb, who suggests that the term signifies a realm “organized for the common good,” she suggests that “Jesus meant it ‘to be a world in which God’s will is done, God’s purposes are fulfilled.’ He saw his work and that of his community as ‘foreshadowing’ that world—by beginning to actualize it here and now” (133).

As if to underscore this point, the promise is that one who “bears fruit” will see yields of “a hundredfold,” “sixty, and “thirty.” These are references to earthly abundance. But the question then follows, “is this personal wealth?” There are those who regard personal wealth as a sign of God’s favor, but no careful reader of the gospels can find any indication therein that Jesus advocated the private accumulation of goods. If the basileia is organized for the common good, and if it is a place where God’s purposes are fulfilled, and if it is to be actualized here and now, then the biblical concept of abundance is shared abundance. It no more refers to private wealth than to private salvation.

And again, the choice is not either/or: either we hear the word and understand it, thus bearing fruit, or we hear the word and fail to understand it, thus bearing nothing. The larger container here is the multiplicity of our days. Every day, moment by moment, we make choices, we either “understand”; i.e., we act according to God’s purposes, we heed the indwelling Spirit, or we act according to our own purposes, following what Paul characterizes as the “flesh.” In either case, we are living in this world, making choices that affect us and others—as well as the rest of creation. We are aiming for the basileia, for alignment with the indwelling Spirit, for this-worldly abundance, which is to say, for justice. An either/or mentality suggests that we’re on the hot seat only once, but there’s more to it than that. If we blow one choice, we don’t get to quit. We get another choice, and another. In fact, the imperative is less the making of a single right choice than the making of continual choices, every moment of every day. Giving up making choices is not an option, so the affirmation of an indwelling Spirit is really important!

The challenge in all these texts is that they are essentially repeating the deuteronomic imperative—to choose life. In its most literal meaning, that would be embodied life, here and now, “in the land which you are about to enter and occupy” (Deut. 30:16). This is not a reference to some heavenly realm, but to the land of Israel, the place where one will grow up, marry, have children, plant fields, harvest, graze sheep, and eventually die. The problem is that for centuries Christians have understood so much through the lens of eschatology. Up against the ultimate of eternal life, choices do take on an either/or, once-and-for-all character.  

The liberation theologians object to this heavenly bent by pointing out how emphasis on the afterlife ignores the biblical call for social and economic justice; in fact, ignores Jesus’ central teaching of the basileia, the call to a common good, where God’s will is done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Process theologians object to the either/or fallacy, that everything comes down to one choice, after which our fate is sealed and our path forever determined. Instead, there are multiple choices, and multiple possibilities, and all of them operate within the creative, transforming power of God. With God, there is always a new beginning. If I make a mistake, like Esau’s flippant response to his birthright, it may result in someone else’s realization of a dream. That doesn’t mean I was “right” to make the mistake; it simply means that God is not limited to an either/or determinism, but continues to take what is and fashion it into what can be. This suggests not a simple either/or choice, but a multiplicity of possibilities, ever changing in response to an ever-changing world. All of us continue to make choices, and the Spirit of God continues to dwell in us, and with that lamp guiding our feet, we have a shot at making choices for the common good, for a shared abundance, for actualizing the basileia of God in our time, in our place, in our sphere of influence, however great or small.

The Rev. Dr. Jeanyne Slettom is associate pastor of Brea Congregational UCC, in Brea, California, and managing director of Process & Faith. She has taught as adjunct faculty at Claremont School of Theology and United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She is the editor of The Process Perspective, by John B. Cobb, Jr. (Chalice Press).

If you found this lectionary helpful, please consider contributing to Process & Faith by making a donation or becoming a member.

---

Process & Faith is a program of the Center for Process Studies, an affiliated program of the Claremont School of Theology.
This site and all content ©2006 Process & Faith, unless otherwise noted.