Sunday of the 7th Ecumenical Council
Scripture Reading: Luke 8:5–15
Some stories resonate so deeply with you that you can’t stop thinking about them. They resonate because you often see yourself in a particular character. It’s like looking into your own soul. And what do you find there? Does it disgust you? Scare you? Excite you?
For me, one such story is East of Eden, originally written by John Steinbeck. I’ve never read the novel, but I saw the miniseries, which is a hot item on Netflix right now. (Warning: this version is for mature audiences only.)
In this adaptation, the narrative revolves around the life of Adam Trask: how he butted heads with his father, with his brother, with his wife, with his own sons, with his neighbors, and, I imagine, with God.
Sometimes, he had the courage to stand up for himself and forge his own way. Most of the time, though, he backed down and slumped into depression, allowing life to pass him by.
Which raises a few questions: How much of life is determined for us, and how much of it is the road we choose? If our life *is* predetermined for us, is our happiness, or lack thereof, also predetermined? Or do we get to choose that as well?
For me, these are important questions.
I remember in middle school and high school feeling trapped. I didn’t have a choice where I lived, what school I attended, or even what I studied. Most of my time was scheduled for me. I had to arrive at school at a set time, attend predetermined classes, and, when I got home, eat a meal I may or may not have liked and complete homework that was assigned by the teacher.
I didn’t have any choice in any of this. My day was full, and I resented it.
In East of Eden, Adam’s father determined his life, which included enlisting Adam in the U.S. Cavalry. As I watched, those old feelings of being trapped bubbled up all over again.
As the show progressed, Adam’s resentment boiled over to the point that he refused his father’s offer to join him in politics in Washington. He eventually left the army to be a hobo for a few years before finding a wife and attempting to settle down. This also doesn’t turn out so well.
I watched as Adam’s resentment became a lifelong determination to be unhappy. He would never speak to his father again, and whatever relationship remained with his brother was tortured and sporadic at best.
But could Adam’s happiness have been prevented? Even with a controlling father predetermining Adam’s life, could Adam have been happy? Or did the fates already plan the tragedy that was Adam Trask’s life?
For me, the answer to these questions is found in today’s Gospel reading.
We heard Jesus tell us the Parable of the Sower. It begins with a farmer who went out to plant his field. As he sowed, seeds went everywhere. Some fell on the path, some fell on rock, some fell among the thorns, but some fell on good soil and grew, yielding a hundredfold.
On the surface, this looks like an argument for our lives being predetermined. Some seeds fell on the rock and died, and some fell on good soil and sprouted. It seems there’s no choice in life. Seeds fall where they may.
But, surprisingly, it’s not the actual parable that interests me today. It’s what Jesus does with the parable that caught my attention.
It seems the disciples have a hard time understanding what Jesus is telling them, so they ask him to explain it to them, and he does. But he also says this:
“To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.”
Here’s what I found so interesting about that statement.
Everyone hears the same parable. The same words are spoken to everyone. Yet different people hear those words differently.
In other words, hearing isn’t simply a passive experience. We participate in what we hear. We bring something to it. We can hear this parable as a silly story, or as a story about farming, or as a revelation about the Kingdom of God.
And what if we approached life this way?
It’s not simply what life does to us, or for us, that determines who we become. It is also what we do with what happens to us.
Now, this may sound like naïve optimism. And I don’t mean it that way. I’m not suggesting that suffering isn’t real, or that we can simply decide to be happy in the face of tragedy. We don’t get to choose everything that happens to us.
But we do have some choice about what we do with what happens to us.
And, theologically, I think that’s pretty sound.
In Orthodox Psychotherapy, Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos explains that it is our nous, our soul’s energy, that determines our spiritual health, and it does so by what it chooses to move toward. He writes:
“Our nous is between two things, virtue and vice, angel and demon, each of which works for its own ends. The nous joined with freedom ‘has both the authority and the power to follow or resist whichever it wishes.’ … It is characteristic of the nous that where something becomes its constant concern, there it expands, and as a result it turns desire and love in that direction. This can be either towards what is divine, intelligible and proper to its nature or towards the passions and things of the flesh. … With the freedom which it has, the nous moves according to its own desire and is changed according to the path followed and the place where it stays, and then it changes the soul either negatively or positively.” (p. 125)
In short, what Metropolitan Hierotheos is saying is that we have the power, deep within our souls, to react to the world around us in ways that are life-giving for us or detrimental to us.
In this light, the question becomes, What is happening to me? And, What am I doing with what is happening to me?
When something difficult happens, what story do I tell myself about it?
When someone hurts me, what do I choose to dwell upon?
When I find myself angry or disappointed, where does my attention go?
When life doesn’t turn out the way I wanted, what am I moving toward?
Because what we continually attend to begins to shape us.
Adam Trask spent much of his life looking backward at what had been done to him, at the life he believed had been stolen from him. And perhaps some of those grievances were justified. But eventually, what had happened to Adam became the lens through which Adam saw everything else.
The soil of his soul became hardened.
And perhaps that is the warning Jesus gives us in the Parable of the Sower.
The seed is the same. The sower is the same. The word of God is the same.
But the soil matters.
And unlike the soil in an ordinary field, the soil of our hearts is not entirely beyond our participation.
So perhaps this week, rather than simply telling ourselves to “be positive,” we might ask ourselves some better questions.
What is happening in my life right now that I cannot control?
What part of my response to it is actually within my control?
What am I giving my attention to? What has become the constant concern of my nous?
Where is that attention taking me? Toward resentment, fear, and despair … or toward God?
And finally:
What is one small choice I can make today that would move me in the direction I want my soul to go?
We may not get to choose where every seed falls.
We may not get to choose what happens to us.
We may not even get to choose the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
But we do get to participate in what happens next.
And every time we turn our attention toward God, every time we choose forgiveness instead of resentment, gratitude instead of bitterness, prayer instead of despair, love instead of fear, we are cultivating the soil of our own hearts.
The question of What kind of life have I been given? turns into: What kind of soil am I becoming?
May God give us the wisdom to see what we cannot change, the courage to change what we can, and the freedom to turn our nous toward him, so that the seed of his Word may take root in us and bear fruit … thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.
Amen.