Sermon for 9/25/22: Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity

CLICK HERE for the sermon audio.

CLICK HERE for the sermon video.

Sowing and Reaping
Galatians 5:25-6:10

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

Seed companies carry on extensive research, take great care, and spend a sizeable amount of money, all to produce the best possible seed. And then you pay a handsome price to purchase the right kind of seed, because you know that sowing inferior seed produces an inferior crop. All other things being equal, the quality of the seed determines the quality of the harvest. You know a lot more about this than I do, of course, but this isn’t brain surgery; it just makes sense.

By contrast, how foolish we can be in spiritual things! We imagine that we can sow one thing, but harvest another. We mistakenly imagine that we can live according to the works of the flesh and yet still harvest eternal life. Those who make these works of the flesh their way of life—those who live without repentance, satisfying their Old Adam—they will have no place in the kingdom of God.

If we sow to the flesh, St. Paul says, we shall reap only corruption. In this reading, the apostle is simply furthering the discussion from last Sunday’s Epistle, where he described the battle that goes on in the Christian between flesh and spirit. Either we are guided by the flesh and live only for the gratification of the flesh, or we are guided by the Holy Spirit and live with a desire to be faithful to the Lord and His Word. We are either fleshly-minded or spiritually-minded. A divided service of the Lord is impossible. Jesus Himself warned us of this. We heard it in today’s Gospel. “No one can serve two masters....Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness...” We are either servants of God or servants of sin. Like everything else, this, too, becomes a matter of the First Commandment. Who or what do you worship? Who or what is your God?

The result of all spiritual error is corruption, an inner spiritual decay that leads to eternal spiritual death if it is not dealt with through repentance and forgiveness. It is from the flesh, and from those works of the flesh, that a vain and mistaken opinion of self is born. It is from the flesh and those works of the flesh that all spiritual error and falsehood come. This province of Galatia, where these Christians lived and where Paul had worked, had been overwhelmed by false teachers who were really interested only in themselves and their personal well-being. And those works of the flesh inevitably stifle any and all faithful acts of unselfish love, the real desire to care for one’s neighbor.

But if we sow to the Spirit, Paul says, we shall reap everlasting life, and that is because sowing to the Spirit means relying on the grace and mercy of God for everything and on ourselves for nothing. The Spirit, of course, guides us by means of the Word of God. In that Word He leads us to see our sin, to see that we are desperately and incurably sinful. But through that same Word, the Spirit also leads us to repent of our sin and to see that we become righteous before God only by faith in the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.

The Spirit, then, through that same Word of God, produces in us the fruit of faith and love. And that love is gently poured out on the brother or sister in Christ who has been burdened and broken by their sin. It is lovingly extended to those brothers and sisters in Christ who are crushed with the burdens of life, whose spirits are weighed down and breaking under the pressures of simply living and dealing with the troubles of living. And, indeed, as Paul says here, “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

In these ways, sowing to the Spirit results in life everlasting, though it is not that we save ourselves by faithfully using these spiritual fruits, of course. This, too, is the free gift of God’s grace, in no way earned by what we do. But it is that we use these gifts of God to live life in Christ now, life whose eternal dimensions are already making themselves known to us. And that is one of the great blessings of the Sacrament of the Altar, for here in the receiving of the Savior’s holy body and blood, we are given a foretaste of the heavenly banquet to come, in the presence of Jesus Himself, before the everlasting throne of our heavenly Father.

Living and walking in the Spirit in our daily lives prepares us for eternal life. And so it is that, as we sow, so shall we reap. But what are we sowing? Is it to the flesh or to the Spirit? God grant us His Holy Spirit, that our sowing would indeed reap eternal life. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always.  Amen.