Growing Season

 At my home in Spokane I just received the supplies I needed

            to make two raised garden beds in the back yard,

and I am told that it is not too late in the season to plant the seeds I bought

            and get to see them grow and produce fresh veggies to eat

                        straight from the garden.

That has stimulated my meditations on today’s scriptures,

            the choice of which shows some shrewd wisdom

            timed with the natural cycle of the growing season.

 

First before looking at the readings for today,

            I want to call your attention to this Sunday’s collect:

“Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love,

That through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness

and minister justice with compassion…”

 

Massey Shepherd, who was

            the great liturgy authority of the last century in the Episcopal Church, 

            is the author of this collect,

and he incorporated within the collect 

                        references from Galatians and Ephesians,

            and linked together twin ideals of truth and justice

                                    with courage and compassion:

            truth with the boldness of courage

            and justice linked with compassion.

 

This, he declared, was the fullness of Christian duty and service.

            If you want a good, solid guidepost for living out your faith,

                        there it is.

 

We have prayed that collect each year on this Sunday for decades.

We ask for God’s help in being steadfast in both faith and love.

That’s good that we keep asking, 

            because it takes God’s help to keep on being steadfast.

And note that in this collect we learn that faith and love go together.

 

With that in mind, let’s now turn to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible

                                                            reading for today 

because then God’s help, God’s providence, God’s steadfast nurturing of us 

            is elucidated for us in the passage from the prophet Ezekiel.

An imagery from creation is given to us 

            in a small sprig from the tip of the new growth 

                                                            of a topmost twig of a tall cedar.

All the potential is there in this sprig.

            The entire DNA of a lofty cedar is present in that twig,

and God plants it in order that it may grow and fulfill its destiny 

                                                                                                to become a giant cedar.

            Ultimately the sapling will provide branches for the nests

                        of every winged creature.

Note that it is God who is in control of this growth

            and the Almighty Creator can make the tree flourish or bring it down,

                        make it green or dry it up.

 

The Apostle Paul must have realized all this.

In today’s reading from the second letter to the church in Corinth

            he states that we walk by faith and not by sight.

Things are not always as they appear.

            We can be deceived by appearances.

                        Something that appears so very small 

                        may actually contain something so very huge.

“…we walk by faith, not by sight…”

 

That great Apostle and missionary Paul wrote this 

            to the faith community in the Greek city of Corinth 2 millennia ago,

                        in a time of turbulence and uncertainty.

He was writing to people who knew the truth of these words,

            who experienced what it was like to enter the unknown

                        and place their faith in this new Savior,

            people who discovered the presence of this Savior 

                        in the Holy Spirit as an intimate encounter with the Divine

                                    in their innermost beings

                                    and in the midst of their fellowship with one another.

“…we walk by faith, not by sight…”

 

And that is why it is so important to be steadfast in faith and love,

            the two together help provide balance and give us perspective 

                        as we go about navigating a world that is so full of

                                    issues, problems, dangers, and contradictions

                        that loom so large that they can eclipse our seedling faith.

 

Paul continues,

            “For the love of Christ urges us on…”
It’s all there in the huge, loving act of salvation 

                                                through his death and Resurrection.

            That is what brings about a new creation in us.

Just like that sprig from the lofty cedar 

            that has within it all the DNA that makes it possible 

                        to become a new lofty cedar,

so in Christ there is a new creation, a new DNA, so to speak, Christ DNA,

            that makes it possible to actually live a new life.

 

Creation is giving us examples all over the place 

                                                in these scripture reading for today.            

The Gospel reading from Mark restates Ezekiel 

            with the example from the natural world, God’s creation.

You plant your garden with peas and green beans and carrots and cabbage,

                        you water the soil,

            but you can’t make the seeds sprout and grow.

They do that because they are faithful to the way God created them,

            fulfilling the blueprint of the DNA in the tiny seeds 

                        until they are full grown and fruitful,

                                                just as God intended.

 

Jesus said the Kingdom of God that he came to bring us into

            is like God’s Creation, natural, spontaneous, growing, abundant, 

                                    ever expanding.

If we could get that into our vision, that naturally occurring expansion,

            we would see that we are just like tiny mustard seeds,

                        tiny but with huge potential,

            potential beyond appearances, beyond what our eyes see.

 

Steadfast faith and love,

            keep us steadfast in your faith and love, we prayed.

 

That’s our big challenge, 

                        so that we are not just settling for stunted growth, 

            but have the audacity of faith to look beyond what we currently see.

 

The amazing grace that Ray keeps talking about

            is, continuing the gardening metaphor, God’s manure.

Yes, manure.

Jesus told another parable, one of so many about the Kingdom of God

                        in terms of the creation and spontaneous, abundant growth,

            a parable in which a fig tree was not thriving,

                        but it was given another chance.

And the instructions were to dig around it and work manure into the soil.

            Get that amazing grace worked into the soil of our lives.

 

We are not in this whole enterprise of being Church or living a Christian life

            on our own.

We are gifted all along the way

            in ways that sight cannot see, but faith can.

 

This last year has been so devastating to us in so many ways,

            but we are given new life in Christ, we are a new creation,

                        the DNA of the Kingdom of God is there,

but we need to walk by faith and not be distracted by what we see.

 

“…we walk by faith, not by sight…”

It is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 

and would sleep and rise night and day, 

and the seed would sprout and grow, 

he does not know how. 

The earth produces of itself, 

first the stalk, 

then the head, 

then the full grain in the head.

As sure and as certain as this natural, organic process 

                                                                                    of a seed sprouting and growing,

            so faith is planted by Holy Spirit in us where it sprouts and grows,

                                    and grows and grows 

                        with the same potential as a mustard seed.

 

This statement, “…we walk by faith, not by sight…”, becomes truth for us

            when we experience that Holy Presence in our loves,

                        moving us in that innermost part of our being

                                    that is so hard for us to put into words,

                        but which we know to be as real as anything.

“…we walk by faith, not by sight…”

This faith is putting our trust into that Holy Presence in the innermost being

            which has no tangible dimension to measure empirically.

This faith is a surrendering of the illusion we hold onto 

            about being in control of our lives.

This faith is a letting go, 

            like raising your hands on the roller coaster ride at the amusement park

            as you go over the top of that first big drop.

 

The Collect for today again:

 

“Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love,

That through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness

and minister justice with compassion…”

 

So let us allow the Love of Christ to urge us on

            Christ’s love for us, the new creation in us

that we may be equipped to proclaim truth courageously

                        in a world of distrust

            and to minister justice with compassion

                        in all the multitude of situations that cry out for it.