Sunday of the Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council
Oops!
Who here loves to be manipulated? Anyone?
As I imagined, no one here chose to be manipulated. Yet, if you can believe it, we are manipulated … every … single … day. And, what’s more, we do actually choose it.
Don’t believe me? Just reach into your pant’s pocket or your purse and pull out your phone. How much time do you spend on it? How much time to you spend on the internet, on social media, or playing downloaded games?
You may think you’re in control, but all those apps have owners who spend a lot of money on them. They hire engineers to design them to be addictive. They even employ psychologists to find ways to manipulate you. They trick us into choosing to spend more time being distracted on their app.
You see, the more time you spend on their apps, the more money they make through advertising—that’s why those apps are free to use. In fact, the biggest money makers in our economy right now are online distractions: porn, gaming, drugs, and social media. And, none of them care about you.
But, if we’re honest with ourselves, we actually enjoy being manipulated. Why? Because many of us are looking for a distraction from our daily lives. We’re want to an escape from the grind of our everyday life: jobs, children, spouses, obligations, bills … the list goes on. We want to get away from it all.
Ugh!
The reality, however, is that our world of distraction is actually destructive—demonic even.
On a practical level, it’s destructive because it keeps us from doing what needs to be done: writing that sermon, paying the bills, going grocery shopping, working on that house project, completing that report you told your boss you’d finish soon.
It also keeps us isolated. How often do we say that we’ll get together with old friends, only to spend our time ignoring them while we scroll by ourselves. How often do we disappoint our kids while wasting our time?
This isolationism that we create while being distracted fragments us from reality. It disconnects us from things that matter, including God. In fact, this is what the fall is all about: becoming disconnected and fragmented.
When Adam and Eve chose to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they were choosing to distance themselves from God. They were choosing to be distracted by evil—by death—instead of clinging to Life itself. They were choosing a fantasy world much like we choose when we enter the digital world for hours on end.
Just as Adam and Eve were manipulated at the beginning of time, we’re being manipulated by our own technology. If we’re not careful, we’ll squander the wealth of our own soul.
Aha!
This distraction, this fragmentation of our own souls, isn’t just something that happened once and is now happening again. It’s been a constant threat to our humanity. So, it shouldn’t surprise us that St. Paul warned us about it this morning. He wrote,
Christians need to “… be careful to apply themselves to good deeds … avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels over the law, for they are unprofitable and futile.”
If St. Paul knew about phone apps, he might have added them to the list too: Avoid dumb games that isolate you for they are unprofitable!
St. Paul knew that the fall was about division, and so he was careful to warn us about things that cause division.
Ironically, if someone, or something, is causing division, we need to separate from them or it. St. Paul continues,
“As for a man who is factious, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned.”
By cutting out that which distracts us, we move a step closer to union with God and wholeness.
Whee!
Today, the Gospel lesson is the story of the sower, which we’ve heard many times before. But, I want to look at its wisdom from a different perspective. Instead of the traditional interpretations, what if we understood it to be about where we invest ourselves?
So, imagine that the seed is our time, our skills, what we have to offer the world as spiritual beings. If we do this, the parable becomes a question about the stewardship of our own souls. Are we investing what we have in a way that finds us growing closer to God, or growing further away?
Bad investments might be throwing seeds on the path, or on the rock, or among thorn bushes. Translated into a modern lifestyle, this is investing in those things that distract us, those things that hold us back from living our lives fully for God. It’s investing in our phones instead of our family sitting across from us at the diner table.
Good investments, then, are planting seeds in good soil. It’s using our time wisely. Investing in God, so to speak by coming to services, attending Bible study, reading a book by a saint. It’s spending quality time with family, and finding ways to help those less fortunate.
By planting our seeds in the good soil, we are finding ways to build relationships with others and with God. We are overcoming our distractions in order to be more attentive and focused. We are overcoming humanity’s division with God.
It is, as Jesus said today, “… as for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.”
Yeah!
Today’s world is chaotic. It’s easy to be manipulated into giving our time over to those things that keep us isolated and separated from those we love, including God.
Because of this, we have to be more diligent, more attentive about where we invest our time, where we plant our seeds. St. Basil says there’s four ways to become more attentive:
- Cultivate stewardship over your mind.
- Be aware of the mind and soul’s priority over the body.
- Be aware of the beauty of God over sensual pleasure.
- And, reject mental fantasies over the present reality.
Notice that all four of this start with awareness. Being aware of what you’re doing, and, instead, choosing to do something else.
Perhaps a great way to start is to make a list of all those things that distract us from God. Then create a plan. When I find that I want to pick up my phone, instead I’m going to commit to standing in my prayer corner first and reading the daily readings.
It doesn’t take much to get us moving from distraction to attentiveness. All we need to do is plant a few small seeds to see a lot of spiritual growth.
Amen.