Year A Proper 10 2023 Things Done and Things Left Undone

 Year A Proper 10, 16 July 2023

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Things Done and Things Left Undone”

Collect: O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Romans 8:1-11

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law-- indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”

“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

We do not often speak of sins in the Episcopal Church, not in my experience. We believe in sin, but we emphasize Grace, the unwarranted and wonderful forgiveness of our sins, but we are sinners thankfully in the hands of a loving and gracious God, no matter what Jonathan Edwards said.

We have often heard of the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. Those are bad, but we do not recognize categories or degrees of sin, but we recognize that sin is what keeps us from God. According to the Catechism in the back of your Prayer Book, here is the definition. “Sin is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” (BCP, p. 848) In my research for today, I even learned a new word I do not remember encountering before: Hamartiology, a branch of Christian theology which is the study of sin. That sounds like an intriguing job, but a dangerous one, studying sin. Don’t aspire to be a hamartiologist.

So if we are sinners in the hands of a gracious God, that love and graciousness does not drive me to sin so that “grace may abound” as St. Paul put it, but I do not sin because it is a stumbling block between the God I love and me whom God loves. I know it is there, and it drives me out of shame or guilt to keep away from the one who loves me to death, even death on a cross.

And friends we sin in oh so many ways. Through intentional choices, choosing to go away from God’s ways in our thoughts, words, and deeds. In our service this morning we started with a prayer saying as much. 

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known,

and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our

hearts…

And in a moment, in our Confession:

Most merciful God,

we confess that we have sinned against you

in thought, word, and deed…

We sin in our minds, in our speech, and in our actions. There are things we choose to do. But even more, there are things that we choose not to do that we know we should have chosen. In our confession we put that this way:

by what we have done,

and by what we have left undone.

These Sins of Commission, those things we do, and those Sins of Omission, those things that we do not do but could have and should have, are the biggies. They are the ones, if we think about it, are the sins that keep us up at night. From the spots on Lady MacBeth’s hands to the clean hands that should have been sullied in God’s work, Sins of Commission and Omission both take their toll.

And not only that, we have even included our greatest commandment, “Love God with all that you are, and your neighbor as much as yourself.”

We have not loved you with our whole heart;

we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

So many ways to sin. What hope do we have? 

On our own? None.

But then we have the passage for our New Testament reading which closes with this:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

We have this hope our spirits and our bodies both are made whole in Jesus.

In our Collect this morning, we lifted these sins up this way:

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them…

I appreciate, and it is so very Episcopalian, to focus on doing the right thing and asking for the grace to do it rather than focus on the sin.

It is like telling you not to think of a pink elephant. As soon as I do, your mind probably pictured what I said not to picture. It is how we are wired. And know that.

It is better and good to emphasize that which we want. When I was a lifeguard we were taught not to yell, “Don’t Run!” We were told to loudly say, “Walk!” or “We walk at the pool.” People are far more likely to do what they should when they are reminded of what is expected, or right, or good.

When Stephanie and I were in graduate school, one of the key techniques they emphasized in working with groups was to follow Appreciative Inquiry. When brought in to work with any group, ask the group in as many ways as needed, “What is working here? What is good?”

And then you have the group focus on spend their energies on doing what it is that they do well, and fill their days with that. And guess what!?! As soon as one does, or the group does, then there is no time or room for the bad.

If you are busy rowing, it is hard to rock the boat. I have often found that those who are addicted to drama soon find that people no longer willing to put up with it.

But life is not always what we do well, or even things we want to do. We have to “pay the bills” as one of my bosses used to say, and if there is something you do, or have to do, that is not a favorite or takes a lot of energy to accomplish, DO THAT FIRST! Make it a priority!

It is sometimes called, “Eat the frog first!”, or some equally disgusting metaphor. If you have to eat a frog, start with that and the rest of the day HAS to be better. Sometimes the right thing is hard to do, or something our smaller selves goes kicking or screaming into doing. That’s your frog. You will do it, you know you should and deep down want to but the petty child in all of us grumbles, that’s your frog. Just eat it, and get it over with. Often the emotional energy we put out to avoid doing whatever it is, is worse than the actual thing. This is how the frogs do not turn into “things left undone.”

Kasey and I while making things happen around here that there are some folks and and many situations that we call EGR. Extra Grace Required. EGR situations are our frogs that we start with. On this side of heaven there will always be EGRs that we have to deal with. 

Friends, we all want to be those seedlings which are planted in good soil that grow up big and strong, and have yields of 30, 60, or 100-fold. To have that kind of growth, we need to get rid of the stones, get rid of the weeds, furrow the soil and make it rich and as nutrient-filled as we can.

What we are talking about today is tilling our soil so that we can be ready for God. We get rid of the things which prevent the roots from going down deep. We do our part so when the Savior sows the seed we are in the best state to receive it.

We all can hear. Will we be ready to hear when the Savior calls? Amen