God loves a garden. Have you ever thought
about that? God is a great gardener -- God started the world as a
garden, you see. God made this garden planet as the most
beautiful and varied garden that heaven could imagine – actually,
it’s a series of gardens. God created these gardens with
innumerable species of plants and animals: with lush tropical
forests composed of layers and layers of plants and trees, hanging
vines and large flowering orchids, sun-bright birds, forest dark
lizards and camouflaged snakes. God created rock gardens of rose
and silver granites, where tiny delicate flowers push up their yellow,
white or purple petals. God created gardens of spiny cactus and
bushy blue-berried cedars growing out of sandy brown soils, gardens
that in the spring suddenly burst into surprising carpets of color
punctuated with wild purple and yellow cactus. God created
gardens of beauty and complexity that we are only now beginning to
appreciate and understand, as we are watching them disappear from our
planet.
Maybe that’s why Jesus quite often compares the kingdom of God to
earthy things like gardens, and to the product of gardens and fields,
like bread. But a garden seems so fragile, so calm and fleeting
– how can that be like God’s kingdom? We expect the
reign of God to be expressed in more dramatic images, images that are
indeed in the Bible: God’s reign is like the burning fire
of a forge that refines ore into gold; or God’s reign is like a
battle of the forces of good over the forces of evil. But one of
the first images of God, found already in the first chapters of
Genesis, is that of God the great Gardener, God walking in the garden
in the evening, enjoying the beauty of this creation.
And gardens are the cradles of life; they pulse with the energy and
vigor of growing things. They offer variety, balance, beauty that
can be seen and smelled and touched. They offer food for both the
body and the soul. Perhaps that is why the spiritual life is so
often compared to a garden. And so today I invite us to meditate
together on how growing in faith is not only a journey, it is
cultivating a garden. Furthermore, the garden that is cultivated
is not only our personal faith, but it is the life of faith of the
whole community of faith, of the church.
The first thing that we learn about the spiritual life from gardening
and the Great Gardener is patience. Jesus’ story about the
fig tree reminds us about this. A man has been watching his fig
tree fail to bear fruit for three years. He is ready to cut it
down. But the gardener gives him the message of patience:
“Give it another year,” he counsels. Do you
hear the voice of God the gardener here? Think of the patience
with which God cultivates faith in our souls! Here, have another
year, says God.
In one of my favorite children’s movies, the children have
planted some seeds in a little plot by their house. The smallest
child, age 4 or 5, goes out and squats on the ground, staring at the
brown earth for hours, waiting for a sprout to come up. “Do
you think they will grow?” she asks her older sister anxiously,
day after day. When the little green shoots begin to appear,
popping thin little heads up out of the earth, the girls dance and
shout for joy. “The seeds are growing, they’re
growing!” they run and tell their parents.
Such is the joy in the universe as our faith grows. But it takes
a lot of patience: God has fathomless patience with us based in
God’s never-ending love and nurture for us – God has gone
to every conceivable length to reach out to us, consistently and
patiently. Therefore, sisters and brothers in Christ, we must be
patient also, patient with ourselves and with each other. If you
have fallen short in your trust in God, be patient with yourself.
If you have had an attack of doubt and yet you are still here, in
worship, be patient with yourself. If you have not acted as a
true Christian should, be patient with yourself. Let the
Great Gardener keep on tending your faith, and your faith will grow
strong.
And if others you know, who are also plants in this garden called
“church,” are not growing as fast or as straight as you
wish they would, be patient with them. If they fall short in
their trust or in their acts of faith, be patient with them. And
remember to rejoice when you see the green shoots of faith in yourself
and in others; remember to dance and sing and praise God, just like
little children, just like the angels in heaven.
The second lesson that emerges from our meditation on gardens is that
the life of faith needs fertilization. In the parable of the fig
tree, the gardener implores the impatient owner, “Let me dig
around it and put manure on it.” This always reminds me of
how I used to tend my beloved rose bushes in California, carefully
weeding and digging around them, using organic products like soapy
water to kill the aphids on the leaves, and pouring acidic coffee
grounds around the base to cut the alkaline soil. I was rewarded
with beautiful blossoms all year round.
So it is with our faith. It needs fertilizer made up of several
ingredients: worship in community, prayer, Bible study,
fellowship, service. These are the classic ingredients of the
Christian life, and need to be used liberally to nurture the green
shoot of faith. Notice how almost all of these activities involve
other people: we worship together, pray together, study the Bible
together, fellowship together and serve others, together. For the
active ingredient in the fertilizer is the Holy Spirit, God’s
Spirit, that is promised us when “two or three are gathered in my
name,” as Jesus said. The Christian life is not one that
can be lived alone. To say, “I am a Christian, I just
don’t go to church,” simply does not compute, for by
definition we are created to be together, one Body, one Garden.
So let’s talk about us, here at ACP: you and I need the
active ingredient in the fertilizer, you and I need the Holy Spirit
guiding us in this time of transition. It’s good that some
of us are gathering for Lenten study groups. It’s good that some
of us gather to sing in the choir, to serve the Friday mission lunches,
some of us gather to teach our children about the love of Jesus and to
help them give so others can live. It is good that we are
gathered here together to worship God -- for the Holy Spirit is here,
teaching us and guiding us. And we need more: in this time
in which we are searching for an interim senior pastor, an associate
pastor, and a new senior pastor, we need to multiply our prayer
gatherings and our studies. We need more of us to gather across
theological and cultural lines and be nourished together by God’s
Word and God’s Spirit. This is a time of waiting which
requires patience and spiritual fertilizer as we look for what God has
planted in our garden. So do not worry, do not be anxious; this
is a rich, growing time, a time in which we are to wait patiently and
trust God the Great Gardener.
Another lesson from gardening is that great plants come from small
seeds. In God’s kingdom, small is beautiful – God
works through tiny seeds and small amounts of yeast. We humans
tend to assign a higher value to things that are big: large
monuments, large numbers, large projects. God is so vast and
mysterious that we think that God’s work on earth is through big
events and important people. Yet God chose to live on earth in a
small village as one humble carpenter’s son, followed only by a
small number of disciples. God transforms us through the
persistent, stubborn power of the small: as Jesus told us so many
times, God uses the mustard seed, the spoonful of yeast, you, and
me. And with the persistence and force of grass breaking through
a concrete sidewalk, God works through you and me with great power to
break through walls of evil.
It reminds me of the Japanese story of the stonemason, who, chipping
away at the mountain rock in the hot sun, wiped his brow and cried out,
“O God, make me powerful like the sun!” God heard his
prayer and he became the sun. With great satisfaction he shone
down on people with such force that they had to remove their coats and
wipe their brows. “Look how powerful I am,” he
chortled to himself. But then clouds came along and blocked the
sun, and the rain fell, and everyone was forced to take cover.
“Ah, I see that the rain is more powerful than the sun! I
wish I were the rain!” he said. And so it was. And he
caused floods with all their chaos and damage, until he noticed that
the large mountain rocks were not affected at all. And so he
asked to become a mountain, large and unmovable. And so it was,
until the day that he felt a pain in his side, and saw that a little
stonemason was chipping away at the mountain rock, creating small
blocks for human use. And he realized that truly the most powerful of
all was what he had been, a humble stonemason.
So it is with our work, my friends. It may seem small and
unimportant, but in the long run, God uses it to transform the world.
So what does God’s garden that is the church look
like? Like the physical world in which we live, it is
extremely varied. In God’s garden we are the plants, the
bearers of flowers and fruit. Each one of us blossoms and
produces our own unique flower and fruit. And like good gardens,
we are planted together to help each other flourish more fully.
One of the professors in the seminary where my husband and I studied
had a garden like that. In the dry climate of southern
California, he had cultivated a garden that was layered in such a way
that he was not required to use very much water. Certain plants
were placed so as to shelter other plants. Some plants
contributed nutrients to the soil that other plants needed. The
plants in his garden flowered at different times of the year in
balanced harmony. And even in times of drought, the garden could
survive on small amounts of water that were sprayed in a mist,
accumulating on leaves of taller bushes and sending the gathered drops
onto the thirstier plants below. Meanwhile, the current of air
generated by this spray cooled the inside of the house, and he was able
to avoid using mechanical air conditioning.
We are like that in God’s garden. You and I need to be
flowering and bearing fruit in ways that help each other to grow.
The Bible has many suggestions about what these flowers and fruit look
like: joy and peace, humility and forgiveness, faith, hope and love, to
name some of them. And so I challenge you to nurture these shoots
of the Christian life in yourself. During this time of waiting,
during this season of Lent, as we go to the cross with Christ, I ask
you as your pastor especially to nurture the shoots of humble
repentance and forgiveness, and of trust and love -- humble repentance
and forgiveness, and of trust and love. These are what this
garden, this church, needs now.
In my Bible study class last week, one of our members remarked that
Lent is a time of pruning. That is the final lesson for today
from God’s Garden: in order for the plants bearing
repentance and forgiveness to bloom, we will need to prune: to
cut away anger and hurt pride, to trim away condemnation of ourselves
or others, to snip off hurt feelings, and to paint balm of the love of
Jesus on our cuts and wounds. Then we can fertilize more fully
with prayer to help repentance and forgiveness to flourish. Then
we will see stronger green shoots of trust and love, toward God and
toward each other.
We, you and I together, are beautiful plants in God’s
Garden. God is at work here: pruning, fertilizing,
watering, replanting, and watching patiently. What kind of a plant is
God shaping you into? Let’s join God in this work within our
souls and within the church garden.
Remember: gardens are the cradles of life; they pulse with the
energy and vigor of growing things. They offer variety, balance,
beauty that can be seen and smelled and touched. They offer food
for both the body and the soul. That’s what the Christian life,
the Christian life together, is all about.
May we be God’s garden of peace to all who enter here. Amen.
