Pentecost 6

Pentecost 6 (Matthew 13:24-30;36-43) “The righteous will shine like the Sun.”

Righteousness is right relationship. Our Heavenly Father created us to live and move and have our being in the context of three sets of relationships. The Primary relationship is our friendship with Jesus.

God the Father created us by the power of God the Holy Spirit acting in the material universe to be the forever friend of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus offers this friendship to all people. The Holy Spirit offers to help us grow and transform in this friendship. God the Father designed into us an ability to accept this friendship. The design feature that facilitates friendship with God is choice.  Because God designed us for love he gifted us with choice. Love is not real unless it is chosen. Because we have the ability to make choices we also have the ability to change.

Moses records for us the broad outline of the original choice our species made to separate from God. Theologians call this choice: original sin. It was and continues to be the choice to reject God’s love in an effort to acquire God’s power and knowledge. The Prophets observed how this original choice enters into our species and governs the beliefs, expectations and actions of each generation. The prophets observed and experienced the consequences of this original choice in the details of daily life.

The first and most deadly consequence of Original Sin is the choice to ignore or subvert one of the basic features God designed into this universe of matter, energy, time and space. That feature is the Sabbath Day.  The Prophets heard all of the excuses. I have a business to run. I have social obligations. In the First Century many Jews adopted the Greek obsession with sports and placed sporting events first in their choices. The prophets recorded their observations that most people most of the time simply ignore the Sabbath Day. Others adopted a minimalist approach that allowed them to claim an outward appearance of righteousness by giving God an hour of their time before they moved on to what they believed was more important.

The second deadly consequence of Original Sin is poverty. God designed abundance into the universe. Man creates scarcity. Moses gave certain laws to hold scarcity in check and ensure that none of God’s children would suffer poverty or starvation. The prophets recorded their observations that people simply ignored those laws. They substituted the call to bring abundance to all people through acts of kindness and compassion with an assertion that poverty is God’s punishment for the weak, the lazy and the sinful.

The Law God gave to Moses and the prophets asked the people to follow is the impersonal aspect of God in the world. The Law is perfect as God is perfect. The Law is immutable as God is immutable, The Law shows us the best way to be human in the context of the three sets of relationships God designed for us to enjoy.  St. Paul tells us that no one other than Jesus has ever been able to keep the Law. St. James goes so far as to write that the Law is a seamless whole. Even if you could keep 99% of the Law, failure in only one point means failure in all. No one other than Jesus can be righteous according to the standard of the law.

So how did Jesus keep the Law? He never separated from God. He remained in union with the Father through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the second Adam who resets human nature according to the original pattern God designed into our species,

As the Law is the impersonal aspect of God in the universe so Jesus is the personal presence of God in the universe. In this parable Jesus comments on another aspect of our Heavenly Father’s Plan of salvation. Last week the parable spoke of universal unconditional grace as the seed. The universal unconditional grace offers a choice.  This week’s parable speaks of the result of that choice.

Those who make a choice to receive the universal unconditional grace of God are grafted into Christ. They are the children of grace who are being remade according to the pattern of grace. Jesus is the personal aspect of that pattern. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit into the depth of our souls to restore divine love as the animating principle of our lives and the motivating force in our lives.

The three outward and visible signs of whether we are responding to grace and how we are responding to grace are the three loves Jesus taught, lived and demonstrated. The three loves comprise the summary of the Law we hear at the beginning of the Liturgy. They are: love God first through worship. Love other people by acts of compassion and kindness. Love our selves by making the choice to change and transform our minds, heart and wills in divine love according the pattern and the principle of the Law.

We can do this in two ways. We can attempt to do this from the place of separation. If we make that choice we focus exclusively on the minimal. We give as little as possible to gain the maximum reward. By so doing, we miss the blessing. We are bringing forth counterfeit righteousness much as the seeds in the parable initially look like the grain producing wheat but grow into weeds.

Or, we can follow the inward and spiritual path of friendship with Jesus. As we follow this path we grow to understand that the giver of salvation is in fact the gift. Jesus transforms our desires as we cultivate our friendship. We no longer think in terms of scarcity,. We no longer ask: what is the least I must to do to gain the most God has to offer? The result of that path is abundance so filling our minds, hearts and wills that we become instruments of abundance and well springs of grace for other people.

The result of such a path is glory. Jesus says those who make a real choice to live and move and have our being according to the new life and the new way of living He offers will shine with the brilliance of the Sun. The saints observe that this light derives from the co-eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Jesus concludes his parable with the word: listen. Make a wise choice. Choose the path of universal unconditional grace. Choose Jesus.