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Meet Father KempSexagesima – 7 February 2010
Fifty years ago, choosing a type of wheat seed to plant in the spring was the easiest part of spring planting. The difficulty came in the intensive labor: tilling the ground, fertilizing the soil, creating a seedbed and finally planting the seed. Today, much labor is still required to prepare the ground, but the advances in machinery have taken away many of the physical aches and pains. It is choosing the wheat seed that is now difficult. There are wheat seed engineered to withstand drought, but if it is wet, they yield no fruit. There are seeds engineered to withstand specific diseases, but they are extremely vulnerable to other diseases. There are seeds engineered to produce protein, but they are low yielding and do not produce much fruit. There are seeds engineered to grow in cold weather, but if the weather is hot, the plants wither and die. There are a nauseating number of choices a farmer must make in picking the seed to plant and with every choice he makes, there is a different risk involved. The dilemma of choice faced by every farmer in the spring is a picture of the dilemma we all face in life. We live in a culture dominated by choice, we must make a deliberate choice about everything from our toothpaste to the quality of gasoline we pump into our vehicles, and every choice we make has a consequence (at least according to the advertisements that bombard our brains):either we will be satisfied and happy or we will be filled with sadness and pain regretting our choice. As someone has said our consumption “Decreases rather than increases levels of satisfaction among consumers, as it introduces levels of anxiety over whether we are making the best choice, or, having made it, whether we could have got a better deal elsewhere.”[1]
One may even say that our culture of consumption has made individual choice our ruling tyrant; a tyrant who demands we sift through multiple options to find the most gratifying deal. Thus, when we hear Jesus’ parable of the Sower, our tyrant choice bristles for the farmer only scatters one type of seed. The farmer in Jesus parable does not have a smorgasbord of seeds the soil can choose from, he has one seed. Jesus explains that this one seed is the word of God, the scriptures and we might say this one seed is also the Word of God, Jesus. Furthermore, this seed cannot be genetically modified, it cannot be altered, it is the same yesterday, today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) It is also the seed God has given to his church to scatter in the fields of this world.
However, this lack of choice makes the church unfashionably out-of-date. Our culture demands choice, our culture demands that the church cater to their shifting, shapeless demands as one person put it, “The church should reflect what we want. The church should not dictate to us that you can get married, or you can’t get married. …We are consumers of the church.”[2] Therefore, we as the church have a problem, how does the one and only seed we have to offer become attractive to those addicted to choice and consumption. Some suggest we attempt to window dress this seed, painting the outside in the exotic trappings of modern culture? Others suggest we attempt to alter, either physically or spiritually, the DNA of the seed? Still others suggest we just not pay any attention at all to culture? None of those solutions are satisfying, nor are they biblical. Someone answer this question in these words, “Should the church give people what they what, or make people want what it gives?”[3] The author continues, “We [as the church] have largely forgotten that we are here not just to grow big, to influence politics, or to be an agent for social change. We are here to enable people and communities to be restored into the image of God. And if we begin to learn what that means, there can be agenda more relevant, attractive and compelling in the world.”[4]
The seed God has given the church, the word of God and Jesus Christ, is the only seed capable of restoring people back into God’s image and the fruit this seed produces, love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance, is considered desirable and attractive in the eyes of consumers. If this seed is planted in our life, if that seed germinates and produces desirable fruit, the roving eyes of consumers will notice and pay attention. In some odd way, it is a reversal of the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve where tempted by a desirable fruit to choose life without God, a life of sin and rebellion. We are now to tempt (if that is an appropriate word) consumers to choose life with God, a life of holiness and rightness, by bearing desirable fruit. This answer might sound too postmodern or hokey to be true, but it is a biblical answer. Consider John the Baptist’s warning to the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matthew 3:8, “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” Consider Jesus’ words in John 15, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me, you can do nothing. …This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. …I choose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last. (John 15:5, 8, 16) Or Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good deeds [your fruit] and praise your Father in heaven.” If the words of John the Baptist and Jesus were not enough, consider St. Paul’s words in Colossians 16, “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.” Or St. Paul’s words in Philippians 1, “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God. Thus, I believe that there is a good biblical warrant to say that in our culture of consumerism, a culture driven by the tyrant of choice, the fruit of one true seed of the gospel will be desirable, not when the church dresses it up in the fancy, esoteric clothing of culture, not when the church alters the seed of the gospel, but when the gospel seed germinates in the lives of Christians producing a bountiful harvest of desirable fruit.
How, therefore, do we produce fruit? In one sense, we do not produce fruit, the Holy Spirit produces it.[5] Listen to Jesus words in John 15, “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” A seed contains everything within itself to bear fruit, the soil gives the seed a place to germinate, grow, and produce its fruit. Our lives are like soil, places were the seed of the gospel is planted, germinates, grows, and produces fruit. Thus, just as soil only produces fruit when the seed remains in the soil, so our lives only produce fruit when we remain in Jesus Christ.[6] How do we remain in Jesus? Through faith. Through love, love for our neighbors, love for fellow Christians and love for God, as Jesus said, By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. Through prayer, through spiritual discipline, which St. Paul says is analogous to physical discipline in I Corinthians 9. (verses 25-27) And when we see and believe that Jesus satisfies our deepest needs and desires. Our drive to consume, the fuel propelling our culture of consumption has, at its core the deep and valid human need for security and significance. There is only one seed capable of producing the fruit of security and significance, Jesus Christ, through whom we find divine security and eternal significance and in whom we find unconditional love. A love that sees and know everything about us, even those ugly dastardly dark corners of our heart and still loves us and accepts us. A love so strong that nothing we do can either increase or decrease its strength. In Jesus we find love that is deep and profound, a love proven on the cross. In Jesus we find eternal significance and through him we are given the Holy Spirit who enables us to live holy and righteous lives, lives that minister to others and lives that the seed takes root and produces bountiful, beautiful and desirable fruit. When our needs are met through Christ, when those deep and valid needs are fulfilled through his love and forgiveness, our choice will be simple. We will want to remain in the One who is more than able to satisfy all our needs and we will desire to remain with the One to whom all praise, honor, worship and glory belong both now and forever.
[1] Graham Tomlin, pg 10.
[2] Ibid, pg 6.
[3] Ibid, pg 9,
[4] Ibid. pg 7.
[5] There is a wonderful Trinitarian work involved. The Father sows the seed, the Son is the seed, the Spirit brings forth fruit from the seed!
[6] Jesus repeats “remain” eleven times in John 15!
