Pentecost VII 2020

Albin Egger-Lienz -- Sower and Devil

• Isaiah 44:6-8 and Psalm 86:11-17  • 
• Romans 8:12-25  • 
• Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

​Over these few weeks, the lectionary focusses on three parables in which Jesus uses the image of seed and sowing. The first of these, which provided the Gospel for last week, alerts us to the spiritual dangers of indifference, passing enthusiasm and worldly projects. His use of the image this week is rather different. It anticipates the ‘good seed’ of the Gospel confronting not merely human weakness, but the malevolence of ‘an enemy’.  

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​When Jesus explains the parable to his disciples, the enemy turns out to be the Devil. To modern ears, any reference to the Devil (or Satan) sounds like one of those superstitious ideas science has taught us to abandon, a concept that only religious fanatics would use nowadays.  Yet our news media are filled with actions and events that regularly seem to show forces of evil taking possession of human hearts and minds, and driving them to levels of blindness, wickedness and cruelty far beyond ordinary selfishness or indifference. This troubling phenomenon is not confined to individuals, the  child molesters, drug traffickers or mass murderers who capture the headlines. The most problematic instances are social and cultural, those times and places when ordinary citizens, caring about friends and family, concerned with educating their children, maintaining the pattern of everyday life as best they can, also accept, sustain and staff truly evil systems of religious persecution, racial discrimination, or mass incarceration. Nazi Germany is, of course, the paradigm instance of this. Paradoxically, the evil of it all relied on normality.  Unhappily, there are many other contexts closer in time, when ignorance and fear have swept through whole populations of decent people with, after a time, catastrophic results. Here, we might say, we find the decent and the devilish living side by side, and that is precisely the phenomenon that Jesus' parable depicts.

Felicien Rops -- Satan Sowing Tares

His reference to the Devil reveals that Jesus thinks that what is good and true and beautiful is always under threat, and must be defended against evil forces that are not alien, but lie close at hand. Whether we use the language of Satan or not, it is a fact of human experience that the world in which we find ourselves does have evil ‘tares’ growing alongside divinely planted ‘wheat’. An important part of the parable, though, is that the two are inextricably intertwined, and will remain so until God brings the harvest in. This alerts us to another danger. One of Satan’s favored strategies lies in exploiting our inclination to leap to judgment and to sort out the world for ourselves, placing our faith in political and social institutions -- strengthening the powers of police and judiciary, for instance, relying on new technology, or employing military might – and justifying this faith in ourselves by appealing to ‘science’.
   From a religious point of view, the greatest error human beings can make, individually or collectively, is to think that they can be the means of their own salvation. Anyone who thinks this, explicitly or implicitly, has turned away from God. The inclination to do so at times of crisis is understandable, of course, but the wreckage brought about by these humanistic experiments, be they the dreams of fascist, communist or democratic regimes, is evident for all to see. Paul, in this week’s Epistle is also addressing a world that is waiting "to be set free from its bondage". But he tells the Romans that Christians must "hope for what we do not see”, and consequently “wait for it with patience”. Waiting of this kind is the real test of faith in God.

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