![]()
Rocks, Thorns, Earth: Stories of Soils and the Sower
Maple Grove UMC June 27, 2021 Rev. Patricia Wagner Mark 4: 1-20 Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.” Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” We've all been thinking about the building that collapsed in Miami. There were structural issues. Not only was the building deteriorating and unstable, so was the earth beneath. And the lives of all those people ended in rubble. I would like us to pause for a moment to hold in our hearts for those who lost their lives and all who loved them and who are searching for them. All who are left with questions. There is so much that we want to be sure of, that the ground beneath us won't give way. That our jobs, our families, our relationships are secure, that our faith is strong, able to withstand the storms and shifts of our lives. We want to be on solid, solid ground. But In this amazing parable of Jesus, the first of three about gardens that we will ponder over the next three weeks. The firmer the ground, the tougher the surface the harder it is for God to enter. Everyone who has tried to dig into Ohio soil especially in the summer, knows how solid our earth is here. It’s called clay. There are good things about it. It has a lot of nutrients, unlike loam, which has room for the roots to breathe. It is dense, and it dries to a rock. It’s hard for things to grow in rocks, Jesus said. It might be good as a foundation of a house, that firmness, that unyielding nature, but in people, it makes it hard to grow says, Jesus. We can imagine him looking around him at all those whom he is trying to teach and there are those who are so rock hard in their understanding, their religious and world view that, he says, there's no room for the living word of God, the reality of the divine to really take hold. Word can be sown in rocky soil and a flower can spring up, he says, but it won't really take root it won't change that interior landscape. We hear this story, and wonder: Has the divine word really taken root in me? In the time of drought, will it sustain me? In the time of trial, will I sense grace? When my time comes, perhaps as suddenly as these folks in Miami, have I learned enough? Then some of the seed falls into soil with thorns, thorny plants that can choke the word, says, Jesus. And we know that, pain can overwhelm any sense of God's goodness. There are folks in this congregation who just this week lost a family member who was struggling with health issues to death by his own hand. Back in April, we hosted a memorial service for an extraordinary young woman from a loving family who had gone to bible study and the next day ended her life. The thorns in her life just hurt too much. For her to hear a word of hope. Her pastor was despairing as well. What should I have done? What could I have said? We all know thorns! And we could say to that pastor, to the family that lost their dad last week, It’s not you. There are times in my life, too, when it’s been so thorny that hope has a hard time taking hold. We say this to Jesus, we know you are the face of God, that you believe in us. But we just can't seem to receive you. Churches can be thorny, we can make or people that choke the life out of the faith of folks, hurt them so deeply, they can't live there. Maybe you've experienced that. And we can be hard ground, the worn path, grown so impenetrable that we are no longer open to the word of God revealed. We were like about divorce about women called to ministry. Our United Methodist Church has had discriminatory language about LGBTQ persons since the 1970's. We have held onto ancient understandings that do not reflect the grace and mystery of Divine love made known in Jesus and the seed of understanding cannot make its way through. But I see those hard places in me, too. In the world around me when we are just a bit too smooth, too advanced to believe, to give way to something greater than ourselves. We are so aware of our hardness, our thorniness, our rocks. But somewhere too, is the loam. The good soil. It’s in you, it’s in me. Soil that is open, ready, receiving. Is it enough? Are we enough? Are we doing enough in the world to help that word take root? But, I don't think Jesus meant for this story to make us anxious. Let us remember, the first line: The Sower went out to Sow. The sower, that is Divine Love is sowing seeds of life, seeds of divine love and hope and mercy and understanding, everywhere In every place we are, in every sort of person in all sorts of soils. In lives where there is enough love to nourish and keep hearts open and in lives where there isn't in hard ground, and in lives full of thorns, the sower keeps sowing seeds moment by moment including this one. And somehow we are asked to do the same. Years ago, I attended a church leadership seminary and the leader said, that we should follow the McDonalds. McDonalds opened in places that had potential. We should do the same. Well, in my part of Dayton, the McDonalds had closed as had pretty much every other store. Was he saying that the word of God can only flourish where there is wealth enough to buy a big mac? That doesn't sound like God's business plan. The sower flings seeds everywhere, even here. But maybe that's what God's love looks like. I worked at Marion Correctional Institution for three years and I was amazed at how people could find ways to become better people there, how word could take root. But it could be hard to fathom. So many thorns, and rocks and hardness. I heard of a group of people touring a juvenile detention facility led floor by floor by a young judge who showed them everything, the holding cells, the classrooms. But then down the hallway where the young offenders lives, each steel door had a narrow slot, where you could see the eyes of the child behind them. And it was so bleak that one of the group just stopped in the hallway, and began to weep. And the judge paused, walked back and put her arms around the weeping one and said, I know, I understand. If we are ever to be judged, we want a judge like that. But think of Jesus' words. We all have a judge like that. We're all a mixed soil, we are rocky and thorny, we have tough places. But there is, in each of us, the possibility of growth. And what's called for is to learn to trust our lives to the Sower who is out there flinging grace day by day, moment by moment. To those with ears, says Jesus, let them hear that.
0 Comments
![]()
Stories of Love and Transformation in Exile
Maple Grove UMC June 20, 2021 Rev. Patricia Wagner Scripture: Isaiah 58: 6-12 11 The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. 12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets to Live In "Sometimes it takes a rainy day just to let you know everything's gonna be alright." Those words by Chris Williamson came to mind this week during our rain showers. It was grace made wet; the heavens taking care of the earth. It seems we're struggling a bit to respond in kind. The woman who has cut my hair for 18 years, half her life, told me she was leaving her job. People are too mean right now, she said. Not her regulars, but the new folks. They are angry, impossible to please. The salon owner told me that 3 others in that salon resigned in the last month; same reason. I then went to the grocery store and asked the cashier and the man bagging my groceries, How have people been treating you? People were really nice during the pandemic, but now, the lines are long sometimes, they didn't mind before, but now they are frustrated and mad at us. Donnie, one of the Divine Hands Cleaning team that are handling some of our cleaning now, he cleaned this sanctuary last Monday. Well, Donnie was at the gas station on Thursday and someone just started shooting and hit him in the foot now he's got a cast on it, and can't work. Maple Grove should start a kindness movement. Tell our friends, wear buttons, but that's really an old movement, and heard about it in Isaiah, Chapter 58. It’s third Isaiah, the people are now home from exile and they are back in synagogue practicing their rituals, like prayer and fasting. But on the day of fasting, you are oppressing your workers and serve your own interest. You pray then end up quarreling and fighting. What's up with that? Didn't you learn anything in exile about what is important? During our exile, there was so much that we couldn't and still can't take for granted: Our health, a hospital bed, cleaning supplies, food stocks, treatment, human touch and company, faces. Our elders, our first responders and front-line workers, schools and teachers, our church, our congregation. And now that we are returning from a sort of exile to our city as we knew it, perhaps we are struggling too to remember how it felt to be thankful for each day's provision. For one more day of not being sick. Perhaps it’s easy to be impatient, to be careless with others, to use whatever we power we have to our advantage. Isaiah says that the Lord wants one sort of sacrifice from us: to loosen the chains of injustice, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, to break every yoke. To share our food with the hungry, provide the poor wanderer with shelter, to clothe the naked and not turn away from our own kin. And if we do... If we do... that sounds rather conditional, doesn't it? I thought rain falls on the just and unjust. Yes, says Isaiah, but yet if we follow the commandment, take in the poor, treat those without power with respect, care for the orphaned, the kids in foster care etc. If we come out of exile and respond to God's grace with grace and mercy and righteousness, then, says Isaiah, 11 The Lord will guide you always; satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. And You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets to Live In. What a wondrous pledge and I think you know somehow in our bones that it’s true. That if we live as we've been shown that God will find a way to meet our need and strengthen our frame. And that, if we are tuned in to the source, we will be well-watered gardens, like springs whose waters never fail. And because of this we will be known as those who repair the ruins, who restore the streets we live on. When Michelle Murphy and Pam Temple moved into this part of Clintonville, they found themselves across the street from this guy, Milt Campbell, a member of Maple Grove. Milt had who learned in his long life from his startup days in the farm in Oklahoma to his last days in this city, to be a gardener, not only of roses and hostas, but of neighbors. He restored not only their garden but the streets he dwelled in. Video We thank God for Milt, for neighborliness. My father was a watered garden. I hope you have had a father, grandfather, uncle, friend, mentor, teacher, neighbor, who learned from life and helped you learn from yours to become yourself a spring. ![]()
The Gardener God
June 13, 2021 Maple Grove UMC Rev. Patricia Wagner Psalm 8: 3-6 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? 5 You have made them[ a little lower than the angels[c] and crowned them[d] with glory and honor. 6 You made them stewards over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: Genesis 2: 4-9, 15-19 In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6 but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground,[b] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living being. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there God put the human whom God had formed. 9 Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 15 The Lord God took the human and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the human, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. 18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the human should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” 19 Then out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the human to see what he would call them; and whatever the human called every living creature, that was its name. Beautiful World from "The Apple Tree" Stlll it's possible a day may come, When momentarily the world wears thin; I fI weary of the world outside me, I can always take a good look in. For along with ev'ry cloud and cobweb. I'm emphatic'ly a member of This diversified, curious, fascinating bountiful, Beautiful world When I say, “Old Testament God" what comes to mind? Judge? Warrior, King? But in this primal story, about the beginning of everything we hear these words: God planted a garden in the East. God is a gardener. Jesus didn't call God, King and himself a Prince. He said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” (John 15:1) You know what that means, who a gardener is, what they do. You know this even if the extent of your gardening is limited to a seed that you once put in a cup of dirt back when you were 5. A gardener's work is to helps things live. The Gardener is a planter, and protector and pruner and provider. And the Gardener of creations is one whose deepest concerns is life's flourishing…is your life’s, flourishing. Not to judge or rule or fight with you or for you. Not a distant, creator but a gardener: intimately engaged. in the soil of life. Ours, yours, mine. But why? The psalmist pondered this, too: When I survey this vast world, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars and all that you have established, what are mortals that you are mindful of us, human beings in our despair or joy or resentment or smallness of heart who are we that you care for us as a loving gardener? Why is that the one who brought forth the stars and the meadow the swan and the black bear, the mango trees and the bumblebees also brought forth us, brought forth me, and you? Genesis 2 says something about that, too. After the unfathomable beginnings of the first chapter, when everything is made in turn, day and night, heaven and earth, plant and creature and human, all named Good. Then we come to this second chapter of Genesis, this second creation story where a human being is raised up from the earth, formed, from the very soil we walk upon to till and keep the garden of God. That is it, according to Genesis 2, that's our simple, utterly astounding purpose. What would it mean to claim this role, that we are made in the image of God, the Gardener, and that is our great purpose, our deepest concern, our reason for existing in this diversified, curious, fascinating bountiful, beautiful, world, is to till and keep. To support the flourishing of life. What if that was the goal by which we measure everything, every decision we make, what food we eat, what we buy, how we treat loved ones and strangers, how we live as a nation, as a church? Its hard work: this tilling, keeping, tending, nourishing. It can be overwhelming, even caring, tending to one person. Life is complicated and hurting is hard. How shall we help life flourish? I think of Dayquan, who has spent the last three years in the county jail. How has he survived in that barren place? He has not seen the blue sky nor walked the green earth in 3 years; but he has been loved by his sister and his grandmother and because of that love he has cultivated friendships with his guards, and he has gone deep into himself and learned humility, he says. Somehow God is at work in him and through those tending him, that, even in captivity, he might live. And those of us who are facing decline in life, sorrowful situation, health problems that cannot be reversed. And here we learn another lesson that the God's garden is greater than that which we see, that there is a flourishing that that is deeper than death. There was a powerful witness to that this week. A woman from Zanesville, Ohio stepped onto the stage of a talent show. She is 30, thin, waif-like, with ragged pants, the glittering judges sat before her. And she told them of the cancer in her spine and lungs and liver and her 2% chance of living. And she sang a song she wrote, a confession,” I'm a little lost, we're all a little lost,” she said, “but it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright.” We can feel a little lost in life, and wonder: How shall we flourish, how shall our children? How shall the world when we care so little about one another. When we are busy being little warriors and kings and judges of one another. We lose our sense of being planted in God’s garden. We lose our sense of place, and thus, our deepest purpose, and so, our hope and our joy. But its alright, says the Gardener God we find in Genesis and within our hearts: My deepest purpose is your flourishing and I am not leaving you, not in this life, this garden and not in the next. So, join me, says the Lord or heaven and earth, in tilling and keeping, join God, says Julian of Norwich: “be a gardener, dig a ditch, toil and sweat, turn the earth upside down and seek the deepness.” And if you get discouraged, remember, as Todd sang today: Still it's possible a day may come, When momentarily the world wears thin; If I weary of the world outside me, I can always take a good look in. For along with ev'ry cloud and cobweb. I'm emphatic'ly a member of This diversified, curious, fascinating bountiful, Beautiful world Amen ![]()
Our Mother's Gardens:
Becoming Who We Are June 6, 2021 Maple Grove UMC Rev. Patricia Wagner Genesis 1: 1-2, 11-12, 29-30, In the beginning when God created[a] the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God[b] swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. I only really started gardening during COVID. Before the shops closed up in March, I bought silk flowers and once the earth warmed got my hands in it. I found myself longing to go home from work and get to work in my garden. I wasn't good at it, but the worse things became in the world, the more solace I took there. I'd never understood that, before, even though I was born into a horticultural family and I am only realizing now, how replete our scriptures are with gardens. From the beginning through the prophet's promise of gardens when the people return from exile to Jesus' parables about the trees and seeds and of course, he prays in the garden, gets arrested there, buried in another, then, risen, is mistaken for the gardener. Scripture ends with the Book of Revelation the promised garden of our own resurrections… We will dwell in these gardens each in their turn, this summer. But let’s start with our own stories. Some of you grew up on farms. All of us are a just few or more generations removed from them. We may have owned the land, or perhaps worked it, some of our ancestors were enslaved to it. My mother's father, Chauncey came from generations of farmers, and started off as one. One day he said, he was out in the field and he saw a cloud up in the sky that formed 2 big letters: “P. C. “ Preach Christ, he thought, and headed to seminary. Later, when parish life was hard he'd realized that he was probably being told to Plant Corn. They weren’t paid much, and everywhere, he and grandma put in a garden. The lettuce was lush, the corn was way over my head, and there were strawberries and blackberries, tomatoes and cucumbers, peas and beans, and melons that grew right out of the compost pile. It was non-stop weeding, and the produce filled their larder and was sent home with us, canned by Grandma for the winter. My mother didn't plant for food, but for beauty. I marveled at how she could get a few marigolds to become a sea of gold. Geraniums and peonies thrived. Like grandpa, mother was steady, she knew what was required for each thing to become what it was meant to be to bring forth the beauty within. In a sense, I have lived my lifetime in others’ gardens. But while I have grandpa's spade and my mom's tools, I lack their skill. I want to become like them, good stewards of God's earth and people. But, and perhaps you are realizing it too, hopefully at an earlier age than I, that we have to trust our own learning, and growing. Trust the work that God, our steward, has begun in us. To trust the earth, cared for, will be bountiful. To trust the word of Jesus Christ, well shared and honestly confessed will take root from generation to generation. To trust God’s goodness to be revealed in my life, in yours. To take in those words of Joseph Campbell, the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are A nurse, named Jennifer Worth, who worked as a midwife in England in the 1950s a series was created from her books called Call the Midwife. She found herself planted in an unfamiliar place and she didn't think she could cope. But she learned: That is to trust in oneself. Some might call it confidence, others name it faith. It makes us brave, it’s the thing that frees us, to embrace life itself. To embrace life itself, to bloom and grow, to live and to fade in this gorgeous garden. I know it can be hard. This year has been hard, confining, and the ground can be rocky or so full of clay the fields can seem unyielding, our gardens unwieldy with too much work. But still, life is coming forth. Your life is unfolding beyond the confines. And if we trust this life in us, the life perhaps evident in our mother’s gardens, we will make mistakes in our gardens, and we will learn, how to steward the families into which we are born, the communities where we've been planted and those with whom we share this earth that we might all bloom and grow together. Amen |