God, the Divine Landscaper 11-13-11

FIRST READING— James 1: 19b-27
In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don't act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.
But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.
Anyone who sets himself up as "religious" by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God our Creator, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

SECOND READING—Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23
At about that same time Jesus left the house and sat on the beach. In no time at all a crowd gathered along the shoreline, forcing him to get into a boat. Using the boat as a pulpit, he addressed his congregation, telling stories.
"What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road, and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn't put down roots, so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled by the weeds. Some fell on good earth, and produced a harvest beyond his wildest dreams. "Are you listening to this? Really listening?"
"Study this story of the farmer planting seed. When anyone hears news of the kingdom and doesn't take it in, it just remains on the surface, and so the Evil One comes along and plucks it right out of that person's heart. This is the seed the farmer scatters on the road.
"The seed cast in the gravel—this is the person who hears and instantly responds with enthusiasm. But there is no soil of character, and so when the emotions wear off and some difficulty arrives, there is nothing to show for it.
"The seed cast in the weeds is the person who hears the kingdom news, but weeds of worry and illusions about getting more and wanting everything under the sun strangle what was heard, and nothing comes of it.
"The seed cast on good earth is the person who hears and takes in the News, and then produces a harvest beyond his wildest dreams."
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God, the Divine Landscaper 11-13-11
God, Giver of all blessings, Giver of Life, grant that we might open ourselves to the possibility of knowing your perfect peace. Lead us in Your ways of knowledge; send us wisdom from your very heart. Bless us as we speak and as we hear. In Jesus’ Name, Amen
We got back yesterday evening from a wonderful time away, rested and ready—ready for the wonderful seasons that lie ahead of us and all that is to come in the life of this amazing church. In some of my reflecting time, I did some thinking about the sermon series that we take up this morning. I had almost overlooked one very important aspect of this study. Initially, I believed that the most important outcome of this particular sermon series would be the likelihood of greater understanding and cooperation as we work together in this still young church to build a community where we really mean all those nice words that we say. As I was working on this sermon, the one where we talk about the final piece of the diversynergy pie described as Growth-oriented, I realized that the unexpected benefit for myself and I hope for many of you, is that I am discovering new ways to express my faith. The more I know about the way I currently practice and demonstrate my faith coupled with the more I learn about other faith approaches, the more I realize that I am ready to try some of those other pieces of the pie—a rather nice surprise. I hope that by the end of this study we will all both understand our basic approaches to faith and experience new faith styles about which we would like to know more. With today’s slice, we will have completed our pie populated with those who work from an action perspective, those who lead us in vision and purpose, those who challenge us in creativity, and those who, by their example, urge us to dig deeper in growth.
My initial take on the final slice—the growth perspective lead me to basically dismiss it as only interested in growth in numbers, programs and money—the more I studied, the more I realized how truly wrong I was. Those whose faith style is centered in growth have much to teach us. Not just numbers and statistics for these folks, they are also focused on spiritual growth, personal and communal. So to these multifaceted faithful folks, we look for inspiration about all kinds of spiritual and community growth.
We often think of growth as an upward and outward thing—bigger, broader, better. Spiritual growth however, grows deeper. Wanting to know and understand all that she can, the growth-oriented person digs deeper into scripture, theology, and seeks to learn from as many different perspectives as possible. Our first reading written by the apostle James gives us a wonderful metaphor for allowing God to work in our lives.
James writes: “In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.” A salvation garden of our lives tended by no other than God—the divine gardener. And then, in a wonderful call to put what we have learned in the salvation gardens of our lives, James points out that when we even “catch a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life” we will begin to act. Our deepest spiritual growth—when we have been landscaped by no other than the Word—moves us seamlessly into the sphere of action. As we understand the connection, James predicts that we will find “delight and affirmation in the action. “ And from such a connection as this comes “real religion”—those practices which are pleasing to God—include a physical response to spiritual truths. James calls us to simple work—we are to reach out to the homeless and loveless and guard against the corruption of a world—that which does not know of this divine landscaping plan.
I invite all of us, whether we are experienced in spiritual growth or not, to try a simple experiment this morning. Envision the garden where God is working with you. Are the gates open or closed? Are the paths cleared and marked for easy travel or do you have to pick your way through the brambles of distraction? Are the plants lovingly pruned and protected from predators or do you have to search through the underbrush for each flower and plant in turn. Do some trees majestically reach toward the sky? Are there saplings as well as trees just now beginning to bear fruit and blossom? God, the divine landscaper, invites us to enter this garden often and to partake of the spiritual growth and deepening, that results when we yield the landscaping to the Divine Gardener at work in us.
Lest we lose ourselves in some vision of an inner garden of ease and complacency, Jesus comes along in our passage for today and calls us to accept as ours the responsibility for the preparation of the ground—the readiness we bring to God’s divine purpose.
We catch up with Jesus on the beach. There are so many people pressing against him that he gets into a boat to place a little distance between himself and the noisy crowd. Using the boat as a floating pulpit, he preaches to those who would hear, often by using stories to illustrate his deeper teachings. And so, along with the crowd on the beach, we listen as he asks, "What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road, and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn't put down roots, so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled by the weeds. Some fell on good earth, and produced a harvest beyond his wildest dreams.”
Jesus says to them and I say to you, “Are you listening to this? Really listening?" Have you figured out what your responsibility is in this creating a salvation garden about which James speaks? Jesus, in his parable, makes it clear for us. “When anyone hears news of the kingdom and doesn't take it in, it just remains on the surface, and so the Evil One comes along and plucks it right out of that person's heart. This is the seed the farmer scatters on the road. The seed cast in the gravel—this is the person who hears and instantly responds with enthusiasm. But there is no soil of character, and so when the emotions wear off and some difficulty arrives, there is nothing to show for it. The seed cast in the weeds is the person who hears the kingdom news, but weeds of worry and illusions about getting more and wanting everything under the sun strangle what was heard, and nothing comes of it”
Alas, that’s a lot of stuff getting in the way of planting, sprouting, and growing. Thankfully, there is one more kind of earth—the good earth and Jesus explains, "The seed cast on good earth is the person who hears and takes in the News, and then produces a harvest beyond his wildest dreams." What seems clear as we study both of these passages, is that Jesus is telling us that we choose the kind of soil where the farmer (known to us as God) will plant the seeds—and begin the process of divine landscaping. If our interior garden is made of less than ready and able soil, we can make that change. We can eliminate the brambles of distraction and the rocks of guilt and shame. We can open the gates and invite the Divine Gardener to have Creation’s divine way with us. We can give ourselves over to re-creation in desire and will. If we do not, by nature, long to grow deeper into knowledge and faith in God, we can choose to do so anyway.
Is this not true for all faith styles? While it is good for us to know and understand each other’s leanings in faith styles, we can also encourage each other’s longings and learnings in becoming all that God intends for us to be.
Next week we will take one last look, at least for now at diversynergy—that principle that says: together we are more than we could ever hope to be as merely the sum of us as individuals. Together we will rise to the challenge to be about ministry by all for all. We will touch once again, the longing to belong to a righteous community—one that is planted in the good soil of receptivity and reaction. We will act, plan, dream, create and learn as a community—God’s community firmly rooted in the belief that there is so much to come that like the seed cast on good earth—we will be the people who hear and take in the good news of God’s radical acceptance and we will produce a “harvest beyond our wildest dreams”. Amen and amen.