8-28-15 - Grace in the Garden

This August, we are doing a worship series at my church on Summer Pastimes and how they speak to us of the life of faith. So each Friday I will turn from the lectionary to the gospel I’ve selected for worship that week.

I am not a gardener. I’m a would-be gardener, and I know a lot of real gardeners. And I reap the benefit from those who designed the garden in my yard, especially the peonies which tell me that spring has arrived. A well-designed flower garden - plantings balanced in color, height, time of blooming – is a gift to the community around it, as well as to the one who planted and tends it.

Vegetable gardens are another gift that offer both beauty and bounty to their communities. They require work to prepare the soil, and knowledge of when to plant what, and the sower never knows exactly which seeds will grow, or how great or small its yield will be. (Except zucchini, I guess – those always seem to be in abundance).

This week we explore the summer pastime of gardening as a way of thinking about our faith lives. What parallels do you draw as you consider gardening and gardens? We might think of God as the one who designs, plants and tends – and never knows for sure what will yield, as God has given this garden free will.

What opens up when we think of our lives as gardens? What’s growing and thriving, and what’s stunted? Who planted what? Are there weeds we’d like to pull out? Growth we should prune back? New plants we’d like to put in?

And what if we think of ourselves as gardeners tending God’s garden, not our own? The second creation story, starting in Genesis 2:4, suggests that humankind was created in part to serve as gardeners, to tend and nurture the beautiful creation God had wrought. How much freedom do we have to add to God’s design? Is it up to us to weed out evil? In the parable of the weeds and the wheat, Jesus suggests it is not.

I hope this weekend you can sit and contemplate a beautiful garden, your own or someone else’s. Ask Jesus how he’s calling you to plant, water, weed and prune. He should know; the first person he encountered after he rose from the dead, thought he was a gardener. She wasn't all wrong...