August 15, 2010

• Growing in God's garden

  Isaiah 5:1-7

  Hebrews 11:29-12:2

  Luke 12:49-56

   

  We are God’s garden!  God has lovingly prepared where we have been planted.  God prepared the soil, filling it with the nutrients we need, God has sent the water, and the sunshine we need to grow.  God gardens like Ruth Stout gardened.  If you have never heard of Ruth Stout, you should take time to learn about her.  Ruth didn’t believe in tilling the soil, or planting in tidy segregated rows, or pouring chemicals on the soil to make things grow.  She just scattered her seeds on the ground the way seeds are planted in nature.  It might be more accurate to say Ruth Stout gardened the way God gardens.  Eternal Joy MCC is one of God’s garden patches.  God has provided for this garden patch.  You have a building to worship in, you have so many people within the denomination who have and are caring for you, you have leaders and volunteers who give generously of their time and talents, and you have each other to come together and worship and serve God and care for each other.  God has planted only the best here and has taken such good care of this garden so God has great expectations for what Eternal Joy MCC will produce.  God expects the sweet produce of justice, mercy, caring, and love to grow here in Eternal Joy MCC garden.

   

  I think we all find it difficult at times to live and grow in God’s garden.  Some of us would prefer more structure in the garden.  We aren’t pleased with the others growing around us in the garden.  My mother used to sing a ditty to me, “I’m just a petunia in an onion patch.”  Some of us feel that way.  We wonder and we complain that the others around us in the garden aren’t like us.  Sometimes the onions make us cry, sometimes we get poked by the thorns of a rose.  Maybe we feel the melon plant is crowding us or stealing our sunshine.  The sunflower is such a show off and stealing all of the attention.  We see something new sprouting in the garden and we are very concerned that it may be a weed and we should pluck it out before it can grow and spread.  We may even spend a lot of energy trying to make sure there isn’t any cross pollination going on in the garden.  We are concerned about the foolishness of the pansies or we concern ourselves whether other plants are abusing the nitrates in the soil.  It would be so much easier in the garden if we had just been planted in neat rows with others of our kind.

   

  Our Gardener isn’t concerned about tidy rows and uniformity in the garden.  Our Gardner knows that variety keeps the soil healthy, God knows that in the diversity of the garden even greater things can grow.  Cross pollination can result in new and exciting produce.  God doesn’t want just a garden of healthy vegetables, or sweet fruits.  God wants the garden to have a few nuts, and beautiful flowers that don’t do anything but add color and fragrance to the garden.  God knows the garden needs carrots, potatoes, and other tubers who aren’t showy at all but produce great things out of the view of others.  Our gardener wants us to discover what we have been planted to do and then do it to the best of out ability.

   

  Being part of God’s garden requires that we grow where we are planted and produce what God has put in us.  Sometimes we are called to produce even when we don’t see the outcome of our production in our planting season.  Lots of things grown in God’s garden are not used until long after God has harvested them.  Sometimes our task is to produce the seeds that will be used in future gardens, sometime we are the compost in which other plantings in God’s garden will grow.  We live in God’s garden in faith, faith that the Gardner has a plan and will work it out through us.

   

  The Gardner plants us expecting to produce crops of justice, mercy, and love.  The Gardner has the right to expect these crops because we have been planted in the soil of God’s love, we have been nurtured in God’s Wisdom, we have been watered with God’s justice flowing over us, and we have received the light of God’s Word.  We have been given all we need to produce good fruit.  It is very important that each one of us consider whether we are producing the fruits God desires from this garden.  Are we producing justice?  Do we treat each other the way we would be treated?  Do we reserve judgment until we have heard all sides of a situation?  Do we rely on solid witness or do we let rumor and gossip affect what we believe about another?  Do we look at another’s soul and not their appearance?  Are you producing the sweet fruit of justice or the sour fruit of selfish injustice?

   

  Mercy is another fruit God seeks from the garden.  Do we offer the same mercy to others we seek from God?  We all rely on God’s mercy but are often stingy with dispensing mercy.  How often we pray, “Forgive me my sins as I forgive those who sin against me.”  Would you be comfortable if God forgave you with the same measure you are willing to forgive others?  Mercy is a quality that does much for the one who gives forgiveness than the one who receives it.  Carrying around anger and hurt just eats away at us; it consumes our energy and exhausts us while the one we are angry with sometimes doesn’t even know and, if they do know, may not care.  Mercy doesn’t mean allowing ourselves to be misused, it does mean letting go of the expectation the other will pay the debt we feel they owe us.  This may be why some pray, “Forgive me my debts while I forgive my debtors.”  Are producing sweet mercy or bitter unforgiving grudges?

   

  The fruit of love means we see each other the way God sees them.  God is love, perfect and unconditional love.  Loving another means we don’t focus on all the unimportant exterior stuff and we see their soul and know it is part of God just as our soul is.  I have read that our love of God is no greater than our love for the person we love the least.  Ouch!  God has said we will be known by our love for each other.  Loving each other doesn’t mean our garden will always be in harmony.  I believe God accepts that we will not like everything else in the garden but God does expect we will love everything else in creation.  Our love will motivate us to seek good for even those things we don’t like.  Are you producing the sweet fruit of love or the bitter fruit of hate or indifference?

   

  These are not easy things God expects of God’s garden.  There is bound to be tension in this garden.  Jesus said he did not come to smooth everything over and make it nice.  We will have disagreements.  We will not approve of everything others here do.  We will oppose some of the decisions made by the leaders of the church.  The goal of this garden is not harmony and uniformity.  The goal of this garden is to learn how we can disagree in healthy ways.  How we can live together in the garden where we have been planted and allow others to live here and be different from us, so we can produce sweet fruit.  The alternative as I read today’s lesson from Isaiah is that God will come and dismantle our garden.   Amen.

  • 12:29 pm
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