The Seed-Planting Business

Saint Paul makes it clear that we Christians have different roles at different times, yet our various roles are all part of a great drama that God is writing. We don’t know the whole thing; we only sense a few small parts at any particular time; but we can trust that God is working out his purposes.

A lot of what we do is plant seeds. For instance: I’m in a conversation with someone who is in the middle of a difficult situation, and I have no idea what to say. What I do say feels awfully inadequate to me. Then maybe several months later that person reminds me of what I said (which I have forgotten!) and tells me how important it was. And my feeling is just, Wow, God, you used my clueless thought for good.

God seems also to use our frustrations to his purpose. I told someone—feeling I needed to end the conversation and move on to my “important” work—that she needed just to live with it, that the problem would go away, that it would resolve itself. Then I felt guilt that I had been so abrupt and thus a few days later I called back, only to find out: the problem did resolve itself. Furthermore, I was being given credit, not for being abrupt and unfeeling, but sensitive and wise! I was interpreted as saying, “Trust God and he will take care of it.” Of course, it would have been better if I had not gotten frustrated. But God works in mysterious ways, as the old hymn puts it.

Teachers get to plant a lot of seeds and often we do so unwittingly. I think of some introductory theology courses that, over the years, I’ve taught in various colleges;  courses of the sort that freshmen have to take. I try to teach them responsibly, opening up the text without forcing my peculiar views, hoping that the texts themselves (say, Augustine’s Confessions) will gain their attention and wonder. But it’s hard; they have to be there, it’s early in the day, and while they might have had a confirmation class long ago, the reality is that they have no burning interest in theology. Years pass, and then I get an email from someone. He says he was in my freshman theology class and is now a student at seminary, and he thanks me for directing him to ordained ministry. What did I do? I had no idea that anything I was saying was taking root in any student’s soul. 

It happens to preachers too. You’ll say something, and you find out later that there was someone in the congregation who was going through a personal crisis, and she didn’t think she had any hope, and there was a word she heard . . . and then her life changed. You had no idea.

It isn’t only to theologians or preachers that this happens. I know lots of teachers in public schools—teachers of teach math, say, or history or science. And there is always something extra there, something human, something a computer program could not give. Teachers are human beings who open their minds and souls to their students. They are, indeed, planting seeds. And for the most part they never know the result. As Saint Paul says, some plant and others get to enjoy the harvest. 

But for all: God gives the growth. Dear reader, in the ordinary moments of your life, you too are in the seed-planting business. You may be planting seeds with no knowledge that you’re doing it. It can be as slight as a comment over a cup of coffee, a comment that to you wasn’t much but it lodged itself in the other person’s soul. And my, how good it is on occasion to get that email that tells you, you planted a seed. And you get to be amazed at the growth God has given! That’s the result of a long process, but yours was an important early moment in it, and if you hadn’t been there and done that, who can say what might have failed to happen? 

Take courage, dear reader, and let us together carry on in this seed-planting business.

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Out & About: Good Books & Good Talk. At St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, the second session of our fall discussion of Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov will be Sun. Oct. 11, at 5 p.m., to discuss Part Two.

Concerning “Augustine Dying” (last week’s post), a good old friend wrote to remind me of Preces Privatae by Lancelot Andrewes, which John Henry Newman translated from Andrewes’s Greek. They conclude: “A Christian close, without sin, without shame, and, should it please thee, without pain, and a good answer at the dreadful and fearful judgment-seat of Jesus Christ our Lord, vouchsafe O Lord.” What a great petition for us to pray every day!—to end our life without sin or shame and also, God granting it, without pain, but with “a good answer” at the final judgment.

Augustine Dying

On August 28 we commemorate Augustine of Hippo, who died on that day in 430—some 1,596 years ago. It is customary for Christians to remember those who have gone before us in the faith not on their earthly birthday but on the date of death, a moment that piety sometimes christens their “birthday” into the afterlife.

Twenty years before Augustine’s death, the city of Rome had been sacked by Alaric, the powerful pagan from the north. An African, Augustine was bishop of the “bustling” Hippo Regius on the Mediterranean coast; his city survived Rome for another twenty years. The Visigoths’ conquering of Rome motivated Augustine to write a great work, The City of God Against the Pagans, a task that occupied him from 413 to 426. As Augustine lay dying in 430, however, the Vandals had reached the gates of Hippo.

It is not clear whether Augustine had that news, but if he did, it is clear he did not think much of it. Augustine—like many people in pre-medicalized times—knew when he was dying. He knew and he prepared in a way that was meant to be instructive; he had reason to expect that how he died would be recorded and told to those who came after him.

In the event it was Possidius, bishop of Calama, who did so. In The Life of Augustine, Possidius wrote that Augustine “often told us in intimate conversation that the reception of baptism did not absolve Christians, and especially priests, however estimable, from the duty of doing fitting and adequate penance before departing from this life. And he acted on this himself in his last and fatal illness. For he ordered those psalms of David which are specially penitential to be copied out and, when he was very weak, used to lie in bed facing the wall where the sheets of paper were put up, gazing at them and reading them, and copiously and continuously weeping as he read.”

The scholar Isabel Moreira goes on to tell us that, “in the last ten days of his life, Augustine asked that no one disturb him except at the time when food was brought or the physician called, seeking to avoid outward distraction.” He gave himself up completely to prayer. He knew many other Christians before him who had done just that.

Once he died, everything was very simple. Possidius: “after a service was offered to God for the peaceful repose of his body, he was buried.” This is beautiful in its simplicity, I think; there was a sense that everything had been done that could be done, and now we turn him over to God.

Things are much more complicated now! Someone of Augustine’s importance would have a huge funeral and so forth. But Augustine got ready to die by focusing on, and weeping for, his sins. Through his life he had taught that no one can earn God’s favor, and he died commending himself to God’s mercy.

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Out & About. I am to preach St. Augustine’s Oak Cliff (Dallas) at 10:15am on Sun., Aug. 30.

Good Books & Good Talk: The first of four sessions on Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is also this Sun., Aug. 30—at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas from 5 to 6:30pm. We will discuss (only) Part One, which is Books I–III. Directions: From the parking garage at St. Matthew’s (which is in the Cathedral Arts apartment building just south of the cathedral), walk outside. The cathedral will be on your left; straight ahead will be the cathedral green; and Garrett Hall will be to your right. Go to the glass entrance in the middle of Garrett Hall; someone will be there from about 4:45 to let you in. We meet on the second floor.

Regarding Augustine, I have quoted above from Isabel Moreira’s fascinating essay, “Purgatory in the Writings of Augustine and Bede,” which is in Root and Buckley, editors, Heaven, Hell, . . . and Purgatory?, published by Cascade in 2015. Other authors in that volume are David Yeago, Jerry Walls, Ralph Wood, Paul Griffiths, and yours truly, who really does not belong in that otherwise exalted firmament.

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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