Carpe Logos!

"But the seed in the good earth—these are the good-hearts who seize the Word and hold on no matter what, sticking with it until there's a harvest.” Jesus, as found in Luke 8:15, The Message

“When we approach this text, we tend to present it as a one-moment response: “As you hear this message today, which soil are you?” But the question is more comprehensive: “As you look at your spiritual walk up to today, which soil are you?” The parable looks at a career of response, as is clear when one considers that the good soil brings up various levels of fruit. The assessment is built on moments, to be sure, but it requires a life of response to consider what one's soul looks like relative to a slowly developing crop. A plant does not sprout forth overnight, nor does the harvest of the heart.”

Darrell Bock, Luke: The NIV Application Commentary, p. 232

If you grew up in church or read the Gospels even once than you are familiar with what is traditionally referred to as The Parable of the Sower. It's mentioned in every Gospel (Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-20 and Luke 8:5-15) save John's and in Mark's version, Jesus explains that the key to understanding every other thing he says lays within this one; that if you don't get this parable you won't get anything else he says. All this to say that this story is the touchstone to comprehending the gospel of the kingdom.

But the focus of the story is really not on the sower nor on the seed. It's about the soils and so many refer to it in just this way now: The Parable of the Soils. The sower cast the seed on four different types of ground – the hard, baked earth, the rocky ground loosely covered with top-soil, the weed-infested field and the good earth. Only one plot is going to come to something. The rest, sadly, will come to nothing. In the first three fields, the seed will either become food for the birds or never develop the potential that lies within. But the field of the good earth yields a bumper crop and wise people, the parable assumes, want to be this kind of field.

Of course, we're speaking of matters of the heart. Some hearts are too hard, some too shallow and other too full of that which will suck the life right out of a person. But those with “good hearts” eat up the seed, giving it fertile ground to germinate within and, in time, see the harvest come forth in their lives. And there's the rub: a good harvest does not magically spring forth from the ground overnight. It has to be nurtured along with water, cultivation and oversight. People who want to be “good field” people, Jesus exhorts us, need to, in Peterson's artful translation, “seize the Word” - grab it, hold to it, devour it, persist in it despite set back and disappointment and occasional backsliding – “until there's a harvest.”

A very good read

The year I became a Christian, Eugene H. Peterson came out with a book entitled A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (IVP). I read it for the first time the fall I left for Bible college a few years later and in the opening chapter Peterson writes:

One aspect of world [i.e., what he refers to as the current “mood” that a particular generation has to contend with] that I have been able to identify as harmful to Christians is the assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been conditioned by thirty-second commercials. Our sense of reality has been flattened by thirty-page abridgments.

It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. (pp. 11-12)

What's astounding to me is that he wrote these words in 1980 – before the dawn of the internet, before cell phones, before “there's an app for that” became parlance in our vocabulary. If our need for speed was such then do we even have a grid for it now? I mean who among us want to go back to the glory days of dial-up? Exactly. If we were already prone to crave a microwaved package of Christian virtue in the late 20^th Century, our condition has only worsened some thirty years later. Thirty-page abridgments! Some people can't abide three-page ones!

But in thirty years, let alone two thousand years, the seed sown pretty much grows at the same rate it always has. We've souped up the genes, perhaps, and thrown a lot of chemicals on the ground to speed the rate of germination but corn still grows at the rate it always has grown (or so I presume). Where I live, I haven't yet heard of a two-crop corn season (although you can count on three crops of hay). No, any day now farmers will be out in their fields in force tilling the soil and planting the seed. The ground has been de-rocked and after the seed is sowed, some kind of weed suppressant will be laid down giving that little kernel it's greatest chance for germination and growth. But ultimately a corn crop around here comes about the same time it has always come time out of mind. Certainly, not by next week (or the week after that).

We all know of people who raised their hand at a service to receive Jesus or went forward to do the same but no longer consider themselves one of us. I know people I went to Bible school with who were intent on serving God – one who was featured prominently in our promotional material for a couple years running – who presumably now look at that time in their life as a phase they passed through until they grew out of it. They, too, no longer profess allegiance to Jesus and the kingdom. Either trouble revealed how shallow their roots actually were or so many other things over time crowded out the good seed “until nothing came of it” (Luke 8:14). It is, to me, incredibly sad.

“Carpe Diem” is one of my son Ed's favorite quotes. I have yet to see Dead Poets Society but I do love what Professor Keating says to his students: “Carpe diem - Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary”. Who couldn't say “Amen” to that? Jesus tells us that to make our lives extraordinary for the kingdom we must Carpe Logos - “Seize the Word”. It's not about memorization of Scripture or even the acquisition of knowledge of the same so much as taking to heart what the Word says and living it out over the long haul – or as Peterson (actually quoting of all people, Nietzche) puts it, “a long obedience in the same direction.” The fruit of the Spirit that all “good-hearted” disciples of Jesus want growing within – love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – don't spring from us overnight but subtly overtime as we persist in both personal and corporate fellowship with Him through the various seasons of our life. In the same way, producing the sour grapes and crab apples of the flesh – things like sexual immorality, hatred, jealousy, and selfish ambition – grow slowly yet steadily as we persist in neglecting the Holy Spirit's gentle pressure to turn from the same. In the end, we produce the kind of life we end up living out of the substance and quality of the soil of our heart - just like Jesus says we would. Persistence in anything – be it holy living or carnal behavior – leads to just this very thing.

So, with apologies to the folk who brought us Dead Poets Society, my battle-cry for this day is Carpe Logos – Seize the Word – boys, and make your lives extraordinary!