The Seventh Sunday of Pentecost
Ya Dig? Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. God’s apostle Paul speaks a serious warning in today’s Epistle. We should each listen carefully and take the warning to heart: Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. With these Words, God is comparing each and every Christian—young and old alike—to a farmer or a gardener. This comparison is especially good for the Christian season of Pentecost (and as you know, today is the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost). It is important to remember that Pentecost does not concern itself with how you might “*wash your sins away*” (Acts 22:16), how you might “*inherit eternal life*” (Luke 10:25), or how you might “*save yourselves from this wicked generation*” (Acts 2:40) in which we now live. Pentecost does not concern itself with your salvation because the Lord your God fully and completely attended to these matters for you during Lent and Easter. · Temptations no longer hold mastery over you because your Lord Jesus has already endured all temptation for your sake. That was the First Sunday in Lent. · Sins no longer stick to you or blemish you because the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, washed all your sins away on Good Friday. · You now have an absolutely sure and certain future—a future of resurrection and life—solely because of Easter Sunday. Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed!) Alleluia! All of these gifts are now yours, fully and completely. No power in heaven or on earth is strong enough to take these gifts away from you. That is the stuff of Lent and Easter. The Season of Pentecost now raises one question for every Christian to ponder, and the question is this: What shall you and I each do with the precious gifts that God has given? Today’s Epistle helps us with that question by giving us a figure of speech, comparing each of us to a farmer or a gardener. “*Whatever someone sows*,” says the Lord, “*that will he also reap*.” Then God expands the figure of speech in order to explain what sort of sowing—that is, what sort of seed-planting—each of us now has the power to do: For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. According to these Words, each Christian now owns two different fields, so to speak, and two different kinds of seed, as it were, each for its own field: 1. The first field and the first seed are called “*the flesh*.” The field of the flesh is that corrupted, fallen and sin-infested nature that continues to live inside each of us. By all means, Christ Jesus has come and shined His light within us, illuminating us for eternal life! Nevertheless, the darkness still remains. As you know from your own experiences, none of us has escaped our sinful nature; all of us still carry the same temptations and desires as the unbelieving world. Be warned: “*the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption*.” In the verses before today’s Epistle, God declared that the [fruit and flower] of the flesh are evident [and easy to see]: sexual immorality … strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries … drunkenness … and things like these. Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:17-22). The Lord our God WANTS us to inherit His kingdom! He wants us to enjoy His forgiveness and life, His salvation and peace, all of it earned for us through the sacrifice of His Son. Therefore God warns us today, “*the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption*.” With these Words, God is essentially saying to us, “Keep the seed of the flesh in the bag! Allow the field of the flesh to go to weed! Do not plant anything there! When you chase after the desires and impulses of your fallen nature, no good thing shall result. For example, Christians “*sow to their own flesh*” when they · indulge their impulses toward anger and allow themselves their fits of rage. The seeds of jealousy and rage will only produce the crop of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is a bitter fruit that dishonors God and alienates the neighbor. · climb into bed with people whom they have not yet married (or when they fantasize about doing so, Matthew 5:27-30). The seeds of sexual immorality—especially when they are repeatedly sown—soon produce the easy crop of self-justification, where we fool ourselves into thinking that such sins are victimless crimes that do not matter. · act entitled, as if God and neighbor owe them everything and they owe nothing in return. The seeds of entitlement will only produce another corrupted crop of American narcissists, as if any of us need more of those. Rotten pumpkins and wormy tomatoes are the only harvest that will come from planting such selfish and godless seeds as these. Who among us would ever plant a bunch of watermelon seeds in the hope that sweetcorn would pop up? Where is the farmer who would set a row of onions because he wants a harvest of beets? So, too: If we sow to the indulgence of our sinful flesh, why would we even dare to think that we should harvest and enjoy the gifts of the Spirit? This is the warning that God is speaking to us in today’s Epistle: If you want beets, plant beets; if you want sweetcorn, plant sweetcorn. · We should NOT expect to reap a harvest of peace if we plant the seeds of drunkenness and envy in the field of flesh. · We should NOT hope that kindness and goodness will grow in those places where we have sown wrath and discontent. · We should NOT think our faith will flourish when we spent our time and our resources nourishing and fertilizing the desires of our fallen, sinful flesh. No. Pumpkin seeds produce pumpkins and turnip seeds produce turnips. So, too, “*the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption*.” God will not be mocked. 2. Todays’ Epistle wants us to know that every Christian has not one, but two different fields in which we are now able to plant and harvest. The unbelieving world has only one field, one seed, and one crop, which is corruption. Through His mercy and grace in Christ, God the Father has given us His Spirit—the Spirit which came to us in Baptism. By that Spirit you and I now been given a new field and a new seed which has the power to produce a new (and far better) crop. Today’s Epistle calls this new field and new seed “*the Spirit*.” Here is the unchanging promise of God: “*the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life*.” What are the fruit and the flower that miraculously appear when we “*sow to the Spirit*”? In the verses before today’s Epistle, God declared, “*the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law*” (Galatians 5:22-23). Where there is no law, there is no sin; where there is no sin, there is no condemnation. God has given to each Christian—including you and me—His miraculous gift of faith. Faith alone has opened up this new field to us, where we may now “*sow to the Spirit*” and “*reap eternal life*.” God’s gift of faith in Christ Jesus does more than merely promise us a future in heaven; God’s gift of faith promises certain benefits here and now. When God says to us, “*sow to the Spirit*,” He is telling us that the Spirit’s gifts of love and patience and self-control are not merely good-sounding ideas. These are the things our God wants each of us to embrace and to practice. Stated a better way, the fruits of the Spirit are the sorts of things that God wants us to ALLOW Him to produce in our lives. Now that God the Holy Spirit has filled our seed-bag with every sort of good seed, we Christians can now “*sow to the Spirit.*” We Christians “*sow to the Sprit*” when we · grasp ahold of the peace and joy that God has given—no matter how small those seeds might seem—and when we trust that God’s seeds of peace and joy will produce fruit according to its kind. · when we turn away from our sense of greed, showing open-handed mercy and generosity toward our neighbor. · plant the seeds of patience—bearing with each other more than it seems like we ought—and then waiting for the harvest of patience to grow. In all of this, “*let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap*.” Even the best and highest quality seeds need time to grow. If you grow weary while you wait, turn your eyes toward Jesus! He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it! Jesus has already given us His forgiveness of sins, He has already conquered death and hell eternally for our sake, and He has already reserved and labeled for each us a place in eternal life. All that remains for us is to wait. While we wait, we might as well pass the time with a little gardening. Pentecost is a good time of year for growth.
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