Seeds: Nature or Nurture

 A sermon preached on Facebook Live Broadcast

Sirach 26:10 Headstrong Daughter

Pentecost VI - Proper 10 A

I’m going to get to the Gospel – that’s a promise – but I have to spend some time with Isaac and Rebekah and their twin boys Esau and Jacob.   

So, in case you aren't a scripture nerd like me, let me put this family into context. 

Isaac, of course, was the son of Abraham and Sarah. We learn a few interesting details about Isaac which support my theory that he was struggling from PTSD after his father almost sacrificed him to the voices he heard in his head – an “angel of the Lord” he said – which told him to kill his son. 

Turns out, Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah. That’s a significant piece of information, I think. It also turns out that family patterns of behavior repeat themselves. 

First of all, we learn that Rebekah has difficulty conceiving – just like her mother-in-law, Sarah, who didn’t conceive Isaac until, we are told, she was in her 80^th year. 

Which raises the question if the issue of fertility is not with the women but with, say, low sperm count. I mean, Isaac was 60 when Rebekah conceived. Low sperm count is a definite possibility.

Nah, couldn’t be that, right? Couldn't possibly be the man's fault, right?

And, just as Ishmael had his birthright stolen by his younger brother Isaac, so it is, also, between the twins, Esau and Jacob. 

I’ll get to that in a minute but, oh, my! Doesn’t it seem that the family flair for the dramatic appears to have been passed down from mother to son?! 

We learn that when Rebekah is pregnant with the twins, she is made very uncomfortable by the constant movement in her womb. Any woman who has been pregnant can tell you just how uncomfortable that can be – and, more so with twins. 

With just a touch of dramatic flair, she complains, “If it is to be this way, why do I live?” 

I mean no disrespect to one of our ancestors, but it did cause me to giggle, especially when I realized that this flair for the dramatic had been passed down to her son Esau, but with terrible results.

Esau had been working out in the fields and returned home absolutely famished. His brother Jacob had made a potage – a stew – which must have smelled very good to his hungry-man brother Esau. 

Jacob is clever, however, and seeks to use his brother’s hunger to his advantage. He demands that his brother give him his birthright as the firstborn son. 

Esau, clearly the inheritor of his mother’s dramatic flair, says, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” 

Don’t you just LOVE it? He sold his birthright for a bowl of potage because of hunger that could have been satiated in other ways? I mean, seriously? Cue Rebekah, “If it is to be this way, why do I live?”

Thus, another family pattern is seen. Just as Ishmael had his birthright as firstborn son stolen from him and given to Isaac, so has Esau had his birthright stolen from him and given to his twin Jacob. 

What a family, eh? Their story may have been at least part of what was in the back of Paul’s mind when he wrote to the church in Rome about the difference between living “in the flesh” as opposed to “in the spirit”.   

He says that those of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus, “ . . .walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” At least, that’s the hope. 

Or, perhaps Paul had heard of Jesus telling the apostles the parable of the seeds. Jesus tells this story as an illustration of the message he wants to give about how seeds planted in different soil and in different ways bear fruit – or, no fruit at all. 

I’m sure that Jesus used that story because it was a topic very familiar to the ears of his listeners. If Jesus were here today, he'd probably talk about parents working from home overseeing their kids in remote learning. He might mention a ballplayer who has to make a decision whether to play ball this year or stay home for the safety of his family. 

He might put things in terms of whether or not to wear a mask and keep social distancing. He would certainly help people understand these stories with frames of references they can relate to. 

His parable takes an interesting turn when you apply the story of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah and their twins, Esau and Jacob. 

Families often talk about the one who is the  “black sheep” or the “bad seed”.  It certainly raises the issue of “nature vs. nurture”. In other words, are we who we are because we’re “born that way” or because of the way we were brought up, the “soil” which nurtured us? 

It reminds me of the book titled, “The Other Wes Moore”. It’s the story of two unrelated young men, born a few blocks apart in Baltimore, MD. Both boys were named Wes Moore. Both boys were brought up by their mothers. Both boys longed for their absent fathers. One Wes Moore grew up to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author; the other is serving a life sentence for first-degree felony murder. 

The book is an attempt by the author to try to understand what made the difference. It makes for fascinating reading. I’m thinking of reading it again in preparation for reading Mary Trump’s controversial book, “Too Much and Never Enough.” 

Is it nature – something in the seed? Or, is it nurture – the soil in which we are planted? Or, might it be a combination of both? 

It’s a question that has made many psychotherapists and psychologists and psychiatrists very wealthy. Indeed, I joked with my last therapist that, by the time our work ended, I had probably paid for the new deck she had built in her back yard. 

Paul’s response, I think, comes closest to where I have landed on the subject. He writes,  

“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.”

As one of my therapists used to say, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” 

Because of Jesus, progeny or geography does not bind us. Although, I admit it: There are times when I open my mouth and my mother’s words and voice come out. I have learned to laugh at myself and not be bound by it.

The same applies to patters of behavior in family systems like churches. I’m convinced that churches known as “clergy killer congregations” or those who have troubled patterns are not always churches with mean people. Rather, I have found that they are church families dealing with undiagnosed, unattended pain and grief.

We do not have to accept our lineage as a life-sentence to imprisonment in a particular way of life. We can make choices to redeem previous bad choices, even if the people we hurt the most refuse to forgive us for the sins of the past. Or, in some cases, the people we hurt are now dead and we can’t seek forgiveness from them in the flesh, as it were. We cling to the promise of perfection in eternity.

As Maya Angelou once said, “When we know better, we do better.”

The stories of our spiritual ancestors, as we read them in the Bible, show a steady progression of the evolution of people who do not accept the circumstance of their lives – the soil in which they were planted – to write the story of the rest of their lives. 

Over and over again, we see people who make bad choices, accept responsibility for them and allow themselves and their lives to be transformed by the Spirit. 

Turns out, we can, in fact, bloom where we are planted.

The same can happen for you and for me. It’s never too late to transplant yourself out of bad soil and into good spiritual soil, to make a decision to make different choices and not be a slave to either progeny or geography. Contrary to Paul, I don’t think it’s either flesh or spirit. I think we can live in the flesh WITH a new spirit. 

I know. It's a lot to consider. So, I will leave you with these words of Jesus,  

“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.”

Amen.