Foreknowledge, predestination, and
human will
Today,
is the 4th sermon in the sermon series, “8 Questions from the pews,”
we will tackle the question, “Matthew 13:10-15—Is this an example of
pre-destination? It seems rather harsh and final, that whatever little they do
have will be taken away.”
My short answer is, “No. Matthew 13:10-15 is
not about pre-destination. It’s about why Jesus speaks in parables.”
But
that wouldn’t be a very satisfying answer.
After
all, there are larger questions lurking behind this question—questions about
pre-destination and the harshness and finality of some of our sacred scripture.
To
think about these questions we’ll touch on the section of Matthew’s Gospel we
read today, but more concretely we’ll consider Pharaoh’s hardened heart.
So,
we’ll be looking at pre-destination and
the harshness of scripture.
Prayer
When
we consider pre-destination we tend to balk and then climb into one of two
camps—the puppet camp or the free will camp.
In
the first, we consider Pharaoh, and take the author of Exodus at his most literal. That the hardening of
Pharaoh’s heart, was a puppet show. God takes Pharaoh’s heart, his will, and
forces it in a certain direction.
You’ve
heard the phrase, “Jesus take the wheel,” this would be a little different, “Oh
my, God has hijacked the vehicle!”
The
LORD walks Pharaoh through a thought process and across a stage like a
marionettist would his puppet.
If
we go too far down this road we start to call everything fate. We become
nothing more than debris on an ocean current. We lose a sense of agency and
efficacy.
God
becomes a character of Greek myth—the Fates. Three old Crones creating the
lives of mortals on a mystical loom. As the thread thickens, so does our heart,
when the thread snaps, our life is done.
At
least, in this view of things, there is someone else to blame.
In
the second camp, the free will folk, we turn into a young child, stamping our
feet and always saying, “I can do it my
own self.”
We
take the tact of the Philistines in the book of Samuel, and interpret Pharaoh’s
hard heartedness as something he has chosen.
We believe we have that power of choice.
We
respond to John Donne’s famous line, “no man is an island,” with “Na-ah, I’m an island!”
We
ignore any outside influence upon our lives. How our society shapes us, how our
family forms us. We ignore that our self only exists in relationship with other
people.
Ultimately,
we ignore that we are “part of the main,” because this radical individuality gives us a sense of power,
and control in a fickle world.
But,
as Lutherans, we affirm that our will is bound, “we are bound to sin and can
not free ourselves.”
We
profess that we’ve sold out.
We
say this often, but what does this mean? What does this look like?
We’re
saying that of course Pharaoh didn’t
relent.
He
couldn’t,
not because he was a puppet pulled around by
the LORD, but because he was a human
being.
When
confronted by a power greater than himself, something that threatened his
narcissistic sense of control,
He
dived into himself.
He
defended his non-existent free will, shaped by forces he neither understood nor
could control.
The
LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart simply by being the Law for Pharaoh there
—by giving limits to a man who
considered himself god,
by pointing out to him “you are
mortal, I am God,”
Pharaoh’s heart grew recalcitrant,
because, outside of the Gospel message,
this is almost inevitably the human response to being shown where we stack up
in the universe
—seeing the world as it is, without
also seeing God as God is, inevitably leads to a hardened heart.
As
for the question about harshness and finality, we can think of it this way: is
this judgment on Pharaoh too harsh or too final? It is not.
Pharaoh’s
heart is hard, as are our own. We
just aren’t often reminded of this fact.
Likewise,
is it hard to say, as it says in Matthew:
“if you don’t meditate on the
parables of Jesus, the message will be lost on you/
but if you listen to his message it
will blossom….
?
No, it is not too hard… because this
is how Parables work, if you work on them, they work on you.
As
I say every chance I get, you chew on Parables until Parables chew on you. You
read them until they start to read you.
Is
that harsh?
Yes,
yet it’s simply something like a law of the universe… a spiritual law sort of
like physical laws… it is harsh only…
Only
if gravity is harsh.
Only
if Chemistry is harsh.
Only
if cause and effect is harsh.
Yes,
these things are harsh, and yes these things are final—immutable things.
But
I thank God every day that Jesus’ love steps beyond the harsh cause/effect relationship of our world.
I
thank God that the way the world works, the way our hard hearts respond to an
honest assessment of our place in the universe,
the way our unlistening ears ignore
the best and deepest truths…
I
thank God,
that the final word is not by these
things
—the final word is His.
And
it is not harsh, but instead a word of comfort,
a word that plucks us out of our alternating throws of fatalism and false
independence.
He
takes our hearts of stone and makes them hearts of flesh.
He
takes our ears and unstops them so that we might here the final word—the gentle
comfort of the Word Made Flesh.
Thank
you God, that in your greatness you free us from our bondage.
Thank
you God, that in your greatness you unite us to yourself and to one another as
sister and brother.
Faced
with this freedom and this fellowship, My heart… my soul…can not help but sing
How Great thou art.
Let us sing together, How Great Thou
Art.
