“GRACE: PASSIVELY RECEIVED”
Saint Luke 8. 4-15
Sexagesima: 30 January Anno Domini 2005
Fr Watson
Today, if ye will hear His voice harden not your heart.
Christians don't enjoy being called, or seeing themselves compared to, sheep. Lambs are "wimpy;" not the kind of mascot one wants for a "manly" NFL franchise. That's the old sinful nature talking. Adam too thought it was "wimpy" to be just a gardener. He didn't like the passive way he was taken care of and legislated to. He wanted. And, He wanted to take, seize, control, be his "own man." When you look around, when you look into the mirror, you see that nothing has changed.
Today's theme is "Grace: Passively Received." That is Good News; but only so to regenerated hearts and re-born natures. You won't be called lambs or sheep today, you will be called dirt. By itself dirt, the ground, can't do a blessed thing. That is Scriptural reality. Jesus' parable is illustrating a "Kingdom Truth." Because of Adam's fall, the earth was no longer bountiful, fecund, and spontaneously overflowing with gifts for the eye, mouth and stomach. Now the land was cursed. Now the ground would be hard, packed, and full of stones and thistles. Now there would be work by Adam to just eke out an existence. But spiritually, all the work would have to be done by the Original Gardener, the Maker of Eden and all that now is. In Adam the seeds were sown for how things are, how they came about, and how they will now be.
In beginning, the things which did not exist, did not ask the Triune God to be created, they simply were. The dirt on the ground did not raise its rich, brown, "dirt arm" and meet God halfway, or at any point, to cooperate in its formation. No, God took the dirt into His own hands, watered it with the Word and Breathed the Holy Spirit into it, and made it man, "A-dam" in the Hebrew. "Grace," means love for one who doesn't deserve or merit love. The dirt didn't "deserve" to be made, or re-made, in the Lord's Image, but because of His love it was, Adam was. He was made child and heir; in full communion with his creator. No dirt becomes alive without God's Grace and without His Word of Life.
Jesus says that the "seed" is the Word of God. Yes He is. Jesus is the seed which Himself had to "die" and be planted deep into the earth of death. Jesus became dirt for you. He took upon Himself all of your badness, all of your selfishness, all of your anger, greed and lust. Christ took your dirt back to the very earth itself when He died on the Cross for you. Jesus is the seed which flowered forth on Easter Sunday, the first fruits of all that are re-bom in Him, in His seed, in and by His Word. How? The Word is sown; it is broadcast; it is proclaimed about by Him, by His Apostles, by His Church, by His under-shepherds, by all His brethren in their daily vocations.
You were "dirt-damned" before the Sower came to you. He broke up your hardened, clay, gumbo, sin-death-devil packed soil and cultivated it with the razor sharp blade of His Commandments; the sword which proceeds from His mouth and is so sharp as to divide bone and marrow. He came to your plowed-over inert earth and planted Himself, the Word, the Seed, watered it with the soaking of the Spirit in a thrice-fold downpour of adoption, creation, cleansing.
You are the "good ground" which the Lord has claimed for Himself. Why you are the good ground and not the wayside, rock, or thorny ground, is a question He has not given you to ask, answer, or even worry over. He is the Sower. You are the hundredfold-yielding crop. Your hearts have been made noble and good by His indwelling them. You are the fruit of His Seed, His Word, and His bodily presence. That is why you are called the "Body of Christ," the "Temples of the Holy Spirit," the "branches."
Grace: passively received. That is good news. That is the good news of little children snuggling up close to their Papa and Mama on the big comfy couch knowing they've been forgiven for all the bad they've done; knowing they are loved and part of the family not because they did anything, but because they are simply loved. He who has ears to hear, let Him hear.
Today, if ye will hear His voice harden not your heart.
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost