Wadhams United Church of Christ
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Sermon by Steve Smith          Order of Service

God Our Gardener   

April 20, 2008        John 15:1-5

         I wanted to spend a few weeks musing over the image of vines and branches that we find in John’s gospel, so in the interest of full disclosure, you need to know a few things. My mother has a gift for making plants and flowers grow and thrive, and while there have been a few brief periods in my life when I fleetingly thought I might have inherited this innate gift, the evidence I have culled over the years seems to point in an entirely different direction. Sure, the wildflower garden I recklessly planted one year on the fourth of July weekend did show me wildflowers well into October, but the cascading Wave Petunia planter I bought last spring was dead by the middle of August. This beautiful masterpiece couldn’t withstand the onslaught of an infestation of aphids.
         The fledgling tomato plants I buried while living in Argyle, NY and in Maryland grew into prosperous and fruitful bushes, while anything that I’ve tried planting in Rouses Point or here on our sunny porch has fared very poorly. I even spent some extra money last year to buy a tomato plant that was 2 ½ feet tall with little tomatoes on it, but it never gave me a single edible tomato. It’s still an unsolvable mystery to me as to why the Poinsettia I purchased at Christmas still has red leaves on it.  The only plausible explanation I can find is that it was so shocked at the rough neglect it has received that it is functioning in suspended animation, much like someone might go into a catatonic trance after a particularly traumatic episode.
         My mother, trusting soul that she is, thought that she had found the perfect solution for me last fall. Last spring she had come across a discarded house plant behind her shed that had somehow survived a brutal north country winter. This remarkable ivy, tossed aside after it had turned brown and sickly, had somehow been enlivened by frigid winds, an icy blanket, and relentless exposure to the hostile environment that we refer to as winter. She was amazed to find it growing again in the late phases of mud season, or as people down south like to call it, spring. “If it could withstand the horrors of winter,” she no doubt thought to herself, “then it should be alright with Steve.”
         After carefully nurturing it back to health, she gave me one of the most amazing ivy plants I’ve ever laid eyes on, with its luxuriant tendrils spilling and cascading this way and that way over the edges of a huge planter. I’ve rarely seen a richer and fuller looking plant. I’m still trying to figure out what happened to the poor thing. No matter what I did to it, those gorgeous branches dried up one by one, leaving pile after pile of dead leaves on our dining room floor, until there was nothing left of it. I even tried cutting the last few sprigs and putting them in water, but they would have none of it. Like I said, I’m telling you all of this in the interest of full disclosure, so that when I lapse into my earnest and convincing know-it-all preacher mode, you can remind yourself that I am clearly borrowing my material from people who have actually succeeded in making things grow and prosper.
         Ancient religions were often anchored in the vital forces of nature, as people observed the rising and setting of the sun, the change of the seasons, the role of rain and water in making things grow, and in the mystery of life blooming forth into crops to be sowed, tended, and nurtured. Since these forces played such a dominant role in their survival, they wanted to find ways to live in harmony with the powers upon whom they depended in order to survive. When droughts or floods negated their growing seasons and left them facing starvation, they reached the conclusion that they must have done something to offend these powerful and masterful beings who populated earth, land, sea, and sky. Thus they spent considerable time and energy in trying to appease them or establish some form of reconciliation with their image of the divine.
         These ancient religions, therefore, make reference to the gods and goddesses of the sun, the moon, and the mysterious forces that bring the rain or sunshine. They are also firmly rooted in the soil and the creatures who live so close to the earth. When we find agricultural references in our biblical readings, then, we have to remember that those images may have evoked a much older reference in some folks, one that is based on a religion motivated by fear. Commentators are quick to point out that the vine was an image employed by old testament prophets and poets as a metaphor or symbol for the people of Israel.
In many cases, these Old Testament references once again have a chastising tone to them, as the prophets confront the people with their hurtful, hateful behavior, and threaten them with judgment and condemnation unless they change their ways. While this concept of divine retribution coming in the form of calamitous tragedies here on earth may well have helped them to make sense of seemingly senseless suffering, it had the undesired side effect of leading people to believe that whenever anything bad befell them, it was the direct result of something bad they had done in their lives. It also portrayed God in hard, harsh, punitive tones, and made it impossible to conceive of God as anything more than an intolerant task master who had no patience whatsoever for humanity’s shortcomings and flaws.
As Jesus began his discourse on the vine and the branches, therefore, the people listening to him were well-versed in the course of the story. If we’re the branches coming out of the vine, and we run wild, with our lives becoming a tangled, embittered mess, then God is going to come along with those big honking pruning shears, cut us off at the knees, and throw us into the eternal fire kept burning just for renegades like us. It would seem that the ancients weren’t the only ones versed in this version of the story; a significant number of devout modern Christians seem to take the same approach to these words.
But as I pondered this text, I reached a very different conclusion. If we follow the track of the old way of looking at God, then we would have to reach the conclusion that God’s main purpose in having a vineyard is to have enough branches to keep the fires going. In this telling of the story, we don’t need to worry about the fruit coming off the vine, because by the time God is done with the vineyard, it’s just going to be a smoking pile of dead branches, with all the plants cut off just above the roots. Frankly, I don’t think that’s what God is up to. In describing God as the gardener in this process, Jesus is inviting us to bring our thought processes to a different conclusion.
A gardener doesn’t carefully plant and raise a garden for the thrill of killing all the plants. While that may increasingly be the outcome of my misguided adventures with plants, I can promise you that I take no satisfaction whatsoever in a dead plant. Nor does God, because that is not God’s aim as a gardener. In a radical departure from the description of God as an angry judge who happens to be an obsessive pyromaniac, Jesus tells his listeners that God is a cultivator who is interested in bringing something beautiful and useful from the basic elements of our lives.
In its Greek formulation, the word for “gardener” is rooted in the language of the earth, the ground, the very soil beneath our feet. What does a gardener do, after all, but tend to that precious soil in such a manner that it produces something: vegetables, grains, fruits, flowers, or trees. A gardener takes the most basic of elements and creates something of value with those ingredients. People have always relied on gardeners to ply their trade, and thus bring something from the soil that will sustain life, enrich it, and even bring beauty in answer to harshness and ill treatment. Do you hear the radical change in definitions taking place? We are no longer fodder for a fire-loving sadist, but we have intrinsic worth and value to our Gardener God, no matter how base or foul we may become in our journey through life.
More than that, God’s great desire for us is that we should join in God’s cultivating venture to live in complete harmony with a God who wants to bring good things to our lives and from our lives. So while a number of scholars and commentators may want to look at these words and hear the ancient echoes of an angry God intent on retribution and punishment, I hear something altogether different. What if Jesus is describing his own spiritual journey in verse 2? What if Jesus is making an “I” statement in these words: He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. What if this spiritual discipline of pruning is one of the secrets of his fruitfulness for God?
Rather than spending my time judging other people and their spiritual pilgrimages, these words call me to tend to my own issues. They call me to maintain an ongoing inventory of how I’m using my time, my energy, and my resources. As I look at those priorities which dominate the hours and moments of my day, I need to keep asking the questions which help me to evaluate my life in light of God’s greater purposes for me. Does this use of my time help me to be or become all that wants for me? Does this line of thinking lead me toward God or away from God? Will this particular activity nourish the life of God within me, or will it dry up that holy life welling up within? Am I putting myself in an attitude or position where I can help others grow, or am I spending so much time ruminating over my neurotic pain that I have no time or energy left to tend to others who are hurting?
If I reach the conclusion that I’m hindering the flow of nutrients into any or all of the tendrils cascading over the edges of my days, then I need to practice the spiritual discipline of pruning that line of thinking, or changing my priorities, or focusing on an activity that replenishes me instead of depleting me. If it becomes clear that I am stifling the growth of God’s life within me, then I need to find a way to encourage that growth. If I find myself isolating because of the stuff going on inside of me, then I need to find ways to make myself available to others. If I spend so much time and energy tending to the needs of others that I never have time to renew or replenish myself, then I need to follow the example of Jesus and other spiritual leaders by occasionally taking myself out of the loop so that I can reconnect with God and God’s life-force within me.
So if we begin with the ground assertion that we have intrinsic worth and value to God, and that we are worth far more to God than being fodder for the fire, then we are going to come out in a very different place when we apply these words to our lives. If the very ground we stand on is the soil of God’s love for us, and if we let our souls anchor themselves to this dynamic life force that wants to well up within us, then we become more than passive observers of life, we become the very garden that God is trying to grow with the basic elements of our lives. These words call us to become participants in the productive enterprise of life on earth.
They call us to turn away from everything that wants to hold us back from the rich and luxuriant love of God becoming a reality in our lives, and thus spilling over the edges of our existence to bring beauty and sustenance to those around us. They call us to discard as useless anything in our thinking, our attitudes, or our behavior patterns that isn’t fruitful or useful to God in this enterprise. Whether we’ve got the gift for making things grow or not, we don’t have to spend countless hours second-guessing ourselves or lamenting the fate of our plants, because God is the gardener, and God knows what we need.

         The deep snow pack from this winter’s unusually heavy snowfall is finally melting down and running off into streams, rivers, and lakes. If you combine it with a wet spring and occasional downpours, you’ve got an ideal recipe for floods. Glimpses of a TV screen yesterday showed me what I had already intuited: there were flood warnings and watches in effect for the vast majority of the viewing area. Some people, of course, like to get ahead of the curve and begin their problems before everyone else. That way they get more attention before the spotlight shifts in another direction.
         Such was the case with my brother last week. Nobody in the area was talking about flooding, but he wasn’t satisfied to leave well enough alone. My parents were on their way back from Florida, and dad had informed me that the plan was to meet in Glens Falls for lunch out on Sunday, and then they were going to continue on home to Rouses Point. By Sunday afternoon, though, the plans had shifted a little bit. My brother was making noises about having had to stay up all night for three nights in a row, just because he had some water in the basement. “Water in the basement?” I wanted to say. “Everybody up here has water in the basement, for crying out loud. We’re still eating out, right?”
         When we arrived for the family gathering, it looked like my brother was getting ready to have a garage sale. His wide open garage was packed out with furniture old and new, stacks of boxes, piles of clothing, and an odd assortment of stuff that you might find when someone is trying to get rid of their old stuff to make room for the new stuff. His sleep deprivation, however, seemed to be getting in the way of his appreciation for my clever and witty remarks about helping myself to his stuff while he was too tired to chase me. Meanwhile, there was a persistent and annoying thrumming sound that reminded me of a vacuum cleaner on overdrive.
         It seems he and the rest of my family had been running themselves ragged to stay ahead of the flood waters engulfing the lower level of their beautiful home. They had finally been forced to move antique dressers, chairs, tables, and bed to higher ground, and the whining sound wasn’t my brother, but the shop-vacs they had been running continuously all weekend long. Their beautiful and carefully decorated guest quarters on the lowest level had been reduced to a shambles. The carpet had to be pulled up and piled together in a soggy mass in the middle of the room; the spongy pad beneath had absorbed heroic amounts of water, and had been pulled free from the places where the water was oozing and bubbling in.
         Through sheer determination and dogged effort, they had managed to contain the flood, which showed no signs whatsoever of abating. Even more surprising, all of it had been done without the benefit of my superior wisdom in all matters, great or small. Once again, though, their sleep deprivation made them unresponsive or even hostile to my remarks when I thoughtfully suggested that things might have gone much smoother if only they had consulted me sooner. The last report I heard was that they had hired someone to bring in a backhoe, dig a deep hole with a trench just outside the house, and submerge a sump pump outside the house to try to keep some of the water from getting into the basement. I’m pretty sure they were just joking when they suggested I come down, so they could lower me into the hole to do some bailing.
         While it might be the dramatic and traumatic images of floodwaters surging over roads, or inundating houses, or stranding people on the wrong side of the river that gets the media’s attention, it’s often the oozing, bubbling stuff slowly flooding our basements that disrupts our schedules and deprives us of sleep. In my brother’s case, this was literally true. For those of us with dry basements or no cellars at all, it’s also true at a symbolic or figurative level. I find that a great deal of my energy is taken up with mentally rehearsing catastrophic events or disturbing interchanges that never take place.
         If my worry mode could make noise, it would no doubt sound like that persistent, annoying throbbing sound like a vacuum cleaner on overdrive. I sometimes feel like I’m running myself ragged, all the while dogged with this fearful notion that it’s all going to be for naught in the end, and that all I will have to show for my frantic efforts is a weary body and a bitter attitude. Sometimes, of course, the troubles are not imaginary, but painfully real. Finances stretched to the breaking point, a lingering illness or a physical challenge that promises to change the way we structure our days, a loved one suffering or facing tough times, all of these things have a way of making a shambles of our carefully plotted plans.
         Before we know it, the creeping floodwaters have left our thoughts in a soggy pile in the middle of the floor, and while our faith may absorb heroic amounts of water, it can sometimes be pulled away to reveal the cracks and holes in a foundation we’ve always found secure. My brother and family had pulled the pad away to get at the trouble spots, and once identified, could focus the energy of three shop-vacs on the pesky puddles. Together, the three machines maintained an electric symphony of high-pitched drones. Then they had to be emptied every few hours, which is what had kept my brother and then the rest of my family running back and forth for hours on end.
         They came up with a partial and temporary solution by attaching a hose to the back of one of the vacs, and pumping the water out into the street. Eventually, the fix will take more time and effort, not to mention money. So it is when hardships and cresting floods reveal the cracks and holes in a foundation of faith that has always stood us in good stead before. It’s the rising water that calls our attention to the fact that something needs fixing. And it’s usually only when we’re in over our heads that we get to thinking that maybe we need some help, if not some divine intervention.
         The people being addressed by the prophet Isaiah had been in over their heads both literally and figuratively. Their sacred history had told them of the plight of their ancestors, who could only break free of Egypt’s oppression by finding a way through the Red Sea. They would only be able to enter the Promised Land by crossing over the river Jordan, and that at the peak of flood season. More recently, they had been brutally uprooted from that Land of Promise and forced to forge a great river on their way into bondage in another foreign land. Mind you, the ancient Israelites had no word in their vocabulary for a bridge, simply because such structures did not exist. The only way to get past a river was to go through it.
         The prophet began these hopeful words not with a quantifier but with a promise. In other words, you won’t find any equivocation saying, “If you should ever happen to find yourself in a situation where you’re in over your head…” Rather, opening is clear and definitive: “When (or whenever) you pass through the deep waters…” You’ll notice that God is not promising an easy life or the carefree existence that television preachers seem to be fond of promising to the unsuspecting masses. No, this is a very real faith that has been tried and tested in the tumult and tragedy of a rough and brutal world.
         The prophet is not offering us a magical thought process whereby we can wave our wand and make life fit the script we have devised for ourselves, and God is not offering to remake the world or the events around us more to our liking. Instead, God is promising to be God and offers the reassurance that no matter what happens to us, God will be right there with us in the midst of whatever is happening. As I mentioned earlier, it’s precisely in these flooding seasons of trial and difficulty that the cracks and holes in the foundation become painfully apparent.
         These are the seasons when people find it most difficult to believe, and I have been among them when my life was flooded with pain or disappointment. All we have to do is stand on the bridge down below us to see and feel and sense the immense power of the floodwaters bursting over the dam. Still shots captured by camera and video clips beamed at our televisions give us a truncated view of the destruction and devastation such unbridled power can create. At a far more profound level, unbridled brutality and flooding rage can also wreak havoc on entire nations and people groups. A carefully constructed faith can be swept away in a moment under these kinds of circumstances, as our preconceived ideas about God end up as so much flotsam miles downstream.
How tragic it is when people of faith unleash their unholy hatred on a group that disagrees with them. History is rampant with bloody examples of such inhumanity. In the swirling vortex of incorporated evil or legitimized cruelty, ultimate values like love and justice are overtaken by a mob mentality and replaced with a mockery of everything that true spirituality is supposed to foster and nurture. Love is replaced by fear, and justice by tyranny. In the deepest, darkest moments of such agony, it looks and feels like God has abandoned us. In the deepest, darkest throes of Jesus’ ordeal on the cross, Jesus uttered the bleak words that many good people of faith have agonized over: My God, why have you abandoned me?
In identifying himself completely and totally as a victim of incorporated evil and legitimized cruelty, Jesus laid claim to heaven’s answer to humanity’s anguished cry: “It’s easy to say you will be with us when you are so far away, O God, safe from harm and alarm in the glories of heaven. How can you possibly know what it is like?” Now God can respond: I do know what it is like. Don’t be afraid. I am right there with you. In submitting himself to brutality, Jesus was lowered into the swirling flood waters of senseless bloodshed with the mocking voices of his detractors ringing in his ears: Go ahead, Savior! Start bailing! Save yourself!
His followers knew the bitter pain of having their leader snatched from them and made an example of. Alone, left to their own devices to try to make sense of it all, I believe they would have faltered and eventually failed. But because they continued to meet as a fledgling flock, forging community in the worst of times, they would soon climb the far shore as survivors, people far stronger than the shell-shocked group who had staggered into the chilling waters of a vanquished movement. So when life drags us into the chilling waters of financial failure, a faltering marriage, a suffering loved one, a shortened life expectancy, or a crippling disease, we are reminded that we need each other and we need God.
When there is no bridge in sight and the concept doesn’t seem to exist in God’s mind; when our worry mode is in overdrive over real or imagined catastrophes, or difficult and challenging relationships, or problems over which we have no control, we are painfully reminded that we need each other and we need God. But if we isolate ourselves to try to make sense of it all, if we rely entirely and only upon our own devices to make it through the chilling waters of crisis or disruption, we will run ourselves ragged and end up weary and embittered. But together, we can cobble together a way to make it through. Together, we can focus on the pesky puddles or the swamping tides and find a way through it. Together, even with the high-pitched drone of aching muscles and weary bodies, we can be the very love of God made real in the midst of the flooding seasons.

Order of Service     April 20 , 2008          Back to Sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)

Welcome, Announcements, Joys and Concerns
A Candle for Peace NC #591 (vs. 1)
Call to Worship  
Leader: Eternal and gracious God, source of all goodness, we gather in your house to worship you, and to praise your holy name.
People: Living in a world where there is darkness and confusion, we are drawn to your light and the dawn of your glory.
Leader: Open our hearts, inspire our minds, and infuse our souls with your presence.
People: Receive our prayers and thanksgivings as expressions of our faith and love.
Leader: We come to you, O Lord, as people who desire to learn and serve like Jesus.
ALL: We are ready to receive your blessing and direction today.
Hymn NC #21                                                               God Reigns
Responsive Prayer
Leader: O God of all creation, continue to be for us the solid root which nourishes and nurtures our souls.
People: Gardener of our lives, make us fruitful in our ventures. Grow our faith into a healthy vine.
Leader: Teach us anew that the root of life is love for you and for neighbor.
People: We pray for the community in which we live and work and learn. Bless those who give of themselves to hold elected offices;  who volunteer to work with our children, with our elderly; those who run our library, our fire department, our rescue squad, and so many of those services which help to make this a great community in which to live.
Leader: Give us grace to be good neighbors and good citizens of our communities.  Offer us, O God, at least one clear opportunity to serve someone in need, solely out of our love for you.
People: We offer prayers for our nation and the world. May all who hold offices or positions of authority be led to wise decisions and right actions for the welfare and peace of the world.
Leader: We offer prayers of compassion for our families and friends. We pray for all who are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity.
People: Let them feel your presence beside them. Remind them, and us, that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of Jesus Christ  our Lord.
Pastoral Prayer, Lords Prayer
Hymn NC #44                                                     Beautiful Jesus
Psalm 80:8-19, Isaiah 5:1-7, John 15:1-5
Sermon                                                              God Our Gardener
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #461                                                      Let Us Hope
Benediction
Leader: Go from here, walking in the light of God’s truth and love.
People: We go as Christ’s children into the world, hoping for goodness and believing in miracles.

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