Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith
April 26 , 2009
The Wild-Eyed Gardener
Luke 24:36-49
I had a war going on inside of me yesterday. The welcome sunshine, the bright blue beautiful sky, and the warm temperatures were conspiring against me. The middle-aged couch potato who moved in with me sometime last winter was arguing strenuously in favor of a padded lounge chair parked near the water. The industrious gardener whose jeans are always dirty was mapping out his ambitious plans for a new flower bed in the front yard. The eloquent sermonizer in me, or as my wife refers to him, “that loud-mouthed preacher,” was trying valiantly to rein the other two in.
It was a contest worthy of “Smackdown,” or whatever they call that pro wrestling program. First I had to chase the couch potato around the yard until he got tired, but that didn’t take very long, because he is, after all, a couch potato. It was really kind of pathetic, what with all the wailing and sobbing I was doing, or hearing, I should say. He almost had me on the sympathy factor until it dawned on me that we don’t have a padded lounge chair, and sitting on a kitchen chair near a bug-infested stream wouldn’t really be all that relaxing.
The gardener was quite a bit more problematic, mostly because he had purchased a new spade the other day. Every time I tried to put a move on him, he would swing the business end of the spade toward my head. After a few near misses, I decided that diplomacy might be better than a Smackdown. Mostly, I was afraid that I would be the one to get smacked down, so we had our people talk with each other (I had a doozy of a headache after that, I can tell you) to see if we could work out a compromise. As soon as we established that he could work on the flower bed and I could preach about it, things started to settle down a little bit, even if the couch potato did get a little carried away with the sniveling and whining all afternoon.
One of the gardener’s problems is that he always underestimates how long one of his little projects is going to take. I could be mistaken, but I think he does his calculations based on the availability of a backhoe, a bulldozer, and a seasoned crew of manual laborers. When it’s just him laboring away with a spade and a garden trowel, though, it’s almost comical to watch him. He worked at a feverish pitch for a while, but the gravel pit they used as a base for our lawn slowed him way down. For all the colorful language he was using when his spade would announce contact with another rock, you would have thought he was describing the beautiful colors of the flowers he was dreaming about.
He meticulously removed a 15 inch strip of lawn abutting the sidewalk to serve as his flower bed, huffing and puffing with the effort of wedging his shovel between the grass roots and the dirty gravel beneath. Dirt was flying everywhere, of course, along with little stones and bits and pieces of his temper. What made his efforts even more laughable was that he was trying to cut a straight line with a rounded shovel! I almost blew iced tea out of my nose while laughing at him from my shady perch on the porch. Don’t tell him I said so, but he’s always had a problem with straight lines anyway, so I knew I was in for a show.
After he pulled up the sections of sod, he went to great lengths to gather the bigger rocks and pebbles from the dirt, and moved them to the drip line underneath the eaves of the house and porch. Then, because he didn’t have a wheelbarrow, he used an old dish pan to haul the sod clumps into the back yard and pitch those over the edge into the woods. After a few trips, he got a little smarter and on his return trips he began hauling back some old bricks he wanted to use for a border. Because he spent a little too much time hanging around with the couch potato this winter, though, it wasn’t especially long before he wore himself right out, the poor guy. That left me the with the afternoon and evening to spin something out of his efforts.
So what do the antics of my alter egos have to do with the resurrection story? As I was wielding my spade and picking rocks, I was trying to figure that out. What came to me is that my efforts were a metaphor for what Jesus had to do with his followers. They had grown accustomed to looking at their world from a particular vantage point, and if Jesus wanted to make any inroads into their lives and their culture, he had to find a way to change their thought patterns and their habitual interpretations of the events in their lives.
The first part of that process was to remove the old thought patterns, just like I had to dig up the old section of sod abutting the sidewalk. I was struck by the stringy root systems that wrapped themselves around rocks and pebbles. It was even more noticeable with the dandelions: I saw roots that were the length of carrots, and it was sometimes a challenge to dig those out. In the same way, we’ve all grown accustomed to looking at our world from a particular vantage point, and some of those thoughts can keep us rooted in habits and internal messages that aren’t necessarily helpful for us.
For instance, I spent any number of years with a defeatist attitude that was nearly devastated any time I experienced a setback or disappointment. Whenever anything untoward happened to me, I immediately used it as more evidence to validate my worldview that I was destined to experience bad luck my entire life. Those same setbacks fueled my pessimism, and I would tell myself that the rest of the day, week or month was going to be just as bad. So if I got off to a rocky start in the day, my internal message was that the rest of the day was going to be rocky as well. I spent years pointing my spiritual spade at those kinds of thoughts to root them out. The ones that run deepest still have a way of barging uninvited into my days, and I’ve had to replace the old thought with a new one: this too shall pass.
In addition to digging up and rooting out the old thought patterns and the weedy ways his followers had grown up with, Jesus had to lay a new foundation for the fruitful work he had in mind for his devotees. Much like laying a bed for a new flower garden, it was a labor-intensive process that required a great deal of patience and persistence. Even as I picked stones and used them to help manage the water flow, Jesus would carefully pick the issues he wanted to impress upon his disciples and then use creative ways to help redirect their thinking. Stories, of course, were his main teaching tool, and he used stories that captivated their imaginations. Those stories are still captivating our imaginations and shaping the course of our thoughts and habits.
But let’s see if we can’t be more specific when we look at the techniques that Jesus used to retrain his followers. One of his techniques was to show up unannounced and unexpected in a variety of settings, leaving his unsettled students unnerved and spooked. What this tells me is that God will seldom come at our beck and call in some spectacular display of power and glory. There is nothing we can do to orchestrate God’s appearing. What I have found is that God comes in unexpected ways, and at surprising times, that often have a way of leaving me feeling unsettled and unnerved.
It’s interesting to me that God uses the times when we are most vulnerable to remind us of God’s nearness. So when we are feeling unnerved, unsettled, uncertain, incapable, insignificant, or inept, these are the times when God is actually closer than we can know, trying to lead us toward a new way of understanding these moment. God is hard at work within us when God seems farthest away to lay a new garden bed for the fruitful and beautiful things that God wants to do in our lives. God visits us in our startling moments of shock and disbelief to do something new in our lives.
Whenever Jesus showed up unexpectedly in the resurrection accounts, he would find a way of introducing a teachable moment that would reinforce something he had tried to instill in them earlier: This is what I told you while I was still with you – everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. And as a communicator, educator, and counselor, here’s the part that intrigues me: Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. Have you ever wondered how he did that? There have been any number of people I wished I could do this with, and they’re usually the ones who are so closed-minded that not even a jackhammer could make a dent in their thoughts. I’ve never actually used a jackhammer on any of them, but I’ve been tempted.
A brief word study of the Greek term we translate as “open” turned up some interesting thoughts. If you look at how Luke uses the word in this chapter, it becomes clear that the people who encountered Jesus needed help in order to recognize Jesus and to understand what he was trying to tell them. This is one of the maladies of our modern minds: we don’t want anyone’s help, thank you very much. I can’t believe the number of people I encounter who don’t participate in any form of religion because they don’t want anyone telling them how to live their lives.
According to this way of interpreting these words, transformation can begin when we admit to ourselves and to God that we don’t have it all figured out and that we need help in comprehending what God is doing. The presence of God with us can become more apparent when we realize that we need help in order to figure out when it happens. If we can be honest with ourselves, most of us would have to admit that we have a hard time asking for help in these ways. I know I do. I find it difficult to sit and listen to another preacher, because I spend my time wrestling with this notion that I don’t need their help in order to understand the scriptures.
Isn’t that the Protestant way? Isn’t that why our spiritual ancestors parted ways with the priests, the bishops, and the popes, because we believed that the Holy Spirit could inspire us to understand the words of Jesus without their help? But in our declaration of spiritual independence, have we developed an attitude that is inherently resistant to God’s guiding intervention in our lives? Have we become so familiar with the scriptures that we have come to believe that there is nothing new there to surprise us, inspire us, or challenge us? When we ponder the old stories and wonder if God still speaks through them, have we reached the point where we don’t even pause any more to ask God for help in understanding them?
I know that I still huff and puff and sweat to dig myself out of that root-bound way of thinking. I know that I’m still chasing my couch potato around the yard, and that there are days when he has more stamina than I do. I know that I’m still doing battle with a spade-wielding, wild-eyed gardener whose dreams are almost always bigger than reality. While it might be helpful to have a jackhammer to break up some of my hardened thoughts; while it might be useful to have a backhoe or a bulldozer to rearrange my habitual thinking; all I have are the simple tools of a spade and a garden trowel to join with God, the master Gardener, in making my life more fruitful and beautiful. And in the hands of a master Gardener, it’s enough to get the job done.
Order of Service
April 26, 2009
Welcome, Announcements & Prayer Requests
A Candle for Peace NC #575
Call to Worship
Leader: Miraculous God, come to us now, even as Jesus came to those first disciples on the shore of Galilee.
People: Speak your peace to our hearts. Touch us with your Holy Spirit.
Leader: Risen Christ, open our ears, that we may hear your word.
People: Open our minds, that we may understand your word.
Leader: Risen Christ, speak to our hearts, that our lives may be transformed by your love.
People: Reveal yourself to us this day, so that we may live as your disciples in the world.
Hymn NC #241
Responsive Prayer
Leader: Holy and beloved God, we are amazed by the miracles of forgiveness and new life you offer to us.
People: When our amazement turns to disbelief, renew us with your joy.
Leader: When our fear turns to rejection, lead us into your presence.
People: When our faith begins to falter, remind us of your promise to Thomas, that those who have not seen and yet come to believe, are blessed.
Leader: When our stumbling leads us to sin, forgive us by your grace, and put us back on the right path.
People: We thank you, Lord, that you have given us the great privilege of being called your children. We thank you for the promise and hope of life everlasting.
Leader: Help us to share this hope and love with one another. May we come to know the reality of Christ’s presence in our lives and in the world around us.
People: We lay our very lives at your feet, O God, praying that you will use us to witness to your love and to embody the gospel in our lives.
Leader: May our common identity as your children be a witness to the power of your love to make us a new creation as a community.
People: Help us to reflect the light of Jesus, that others might see and give praises to you.
Pastoral Prayer, Lord’s Prayer
Hymn NC #245
Psalm 4, Luke 24:36-49, Acts
Sermon The Wild-Eyed Gardener
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #248
Benediction
Leader: Even now, the Risen Christ is among us, bestowing upon us God’s love and grace and forgiveness.
People: Lord, may the light of your face shine upon us.
Leader: May the beauty of Christ’s love shine through us.
People: May the power of God’s Spirit flow within us.
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