Old Seeds

Did you catch the news story out of Jerusalem this week about seeds from ancient date trees? A doctor by the name of Sarah Sallon got interested in traditional herbal remedies when modern medicine couldn’t seem to cure her of an illness. In her research, she came across historical accounts of famous date plantations along the Dead Sea from 2,000 years ago. First-century writings by Josephus and Pliny describe the remarkable medicinal qualities of the dates, which got Dr. Sallon wondering about those long lost trees. As it turns out, archaeologists have collected seeds from the Qumran area that date back to the time of Jesus and the Dead Sea scrolls. I have no idea how one recovers tiny seeds from the rest of the dirt of an archaeological dig, but they did. Dr. Sallon asked if she could plant some of the seeds. They thought she was crazy, but gave her a few anyway. Incredibly, the first seed she planted sprouted. She and her team have now grown six young trees from the ancient seeds. With fingers crossed, and her voice filled with wonder, Dr. Sallon says the famous date trees might actually produce healing fruit again, which she takes as a sign of hope for the world. 

I had those dry old seeds and miraculous shoots on my mind as I read today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew. There’s no way around the fact that it’s a difficult text, and I wondered if anything healing can be found in those harsh, dry old teachings.  At first I was skeptical. But what if the teachings are like those ancient seeds from the time and place they share? Maybe if we could tend to them just right, they could grow into something useful. Maybe even something we need for our own healing. 

We encounter Jesus while he’s preaching, clearly portrayed in the tradition of Moses as a giver of Torah or the law. Only with a twist. “You have heard it said in ancient times,” Jesus begins, naming commandments, and then it’s like he puts them on steroids. There are four that he takes up. Of course murder is wrong, he says, but so is the anger you have inside. Of course there will be conflict, but remember that your goal is not to win, but to be reconciled. Of course adultery is prohibited, but even your thoughts can be harmful. Divorce may be permissible, but remember the intentions God has for our most intimate relationships. As for oath taking, make sure it’s not just lip service, because righteousness comes not only from our words but from our integrity. Keep the commandments, says Jesus, but they’re much more demanding than you thought. 

It would seem that the moral life just got a whole lot harder. Jesus seems to be saying that right from wrong in this world is measured not only by our actions but also by our intentions. Religious law is meant to reach that much deeper place in us where things like love and hate, desire and fear reside. It all counts, he says. All of it. 

There is a gift in this teaching, in this amplification of the moral law. To help understand this, I turned this week to another ancient text, from 1986. A church development expert named Speed Leas published a piece on the five progressive levels of conflict that can happen in a church or any organization. Obviously not at Christ Church, but the details are pretty interesting. 

In the first level of conflict, there is some problem to solve, and those involved want to fix the problem together. From there, things get stickier. In level 2, there is now disagreement, and the goal becomes self-protection and solving the problem without getting yourself hurt. The third level is defined by contest, and the objective is now to win. And if the conflict keeps escalating, you reach level 4: fight or flight. At this level, what matters most is being right, and you want to hurt or get rid of your opponents. Factions become inflexible, clear lines are drawn, language becomes ideological, truth is at stake, parties will not speak to each other, and those involved become self-righteous and cold. Level 5 follows. The objective is now to destroy the opposition. Attempts are made to do serious damage to the other’s reputation, position, or well-being. The parties need to be separated. It’s bad. And it’s also familiar. Just look at the political arena today and you can see levels 3, 4, and even 5 playing out every day.

Maybe especially in times like these, it feels as if there is something perennial about humans in community, that conflict is the status quo. But time and again Jesus said to do the hard work of de-escalation and reconciliation. Turn the other cheek. Blessed are the peacemakers. Forgive not seven times but seventy-seven times. And in today’s passage: be reconciled to your brother or sister. The goal is not to win, but to be reconciled. The law passed down to us is about minimal safe practices in community – tread carefully and be mindful not to hurt one another. But these ancient teachings are intended to do much more than that. They are meant to heal the inner workings of the heart through a much higher communal standard. 

Jesus never said that we wouldn’t have emotions like anger, but he did say that we are called to not be ruled by our anger. Do the hard work that it takes to be reconciled, he said. Shine the light of God’s law not only onto our actions but also our intentions. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me, we pray. It’s God’s vision for who we can be. It’s who the world needs us to be. Our own healing is directly linked to the healing the world around us needs. 

If you’re wondering how we get there, it’s clearly not a matter of simply deciding that we will live according to Jesus’ teachings. It happens through failure and conversion, over and over again. We lose the vision of how we ought to live, and rediscover it. We sin and we are forgiven, ever growing in our understanding of the grace we’ve been given and extending that grace to our neighbor, ever more broadly defined, even beyond humans to the rest of God’s creation. It is onto this spiritual path that we welcome little Henry this morning through baptism. As he grows, his heart will surely learn to love people and God and creation more and more. From time to time, however, he will also run into a bit of trouble in the moral life. It comes with the territory.

I’m not saying he will ever do this kind of thing, but I heard the other day that my six-year-old neighbor up the street recently got in trouble for throwing a ball at his older sister, which hit her in the face. The action probably resulted from a level 2 conflict, a disagreement of some kind. When asked about this, his immediate response was, “It wasn’t me, I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t planned.” I think we all know the swirling ball of emotions that prompted his response. He found himself squarely in the moral life. The commandments are meant to protect the older sister from getting hit. But on a deeper level, they are meant to heal the brother, too; to heal the impulse to strike out, and also to heal the complicated pain of having fallen short. Maybe the forgiveness of my little neighbor and his reconciliation to his sister prove that Jesus was onto something. He knew what ails the human heart, and showed us a way forward. Like those ancient date seeds, it turns out that some dusty old verses in scripture can be planted in us after all. They can grow into the medicine we need.