Preached on August 7, 2022, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 12:32-40.
I would like to open with a reading from the book of Daniel, chapter 7, verse 13. “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.” Throughout the Gospels, Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man, which is a reference to this glorious vision of a Messiah coming on clouds of glory. This is usually what people imagine when they think about the second coming of Christ.
But now, here’s a condensed passage from Matthew 25. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. … He will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry… or a stranger…?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’”
Jesus is indeed coming to us. Day after day, He comes to us. Someday, perhaps we will see him coming on clouds of glory, but every day, he comes to us in the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner. As Luke says, like a thief in the night, the Son of Man is coming at an hour we do not expect. So our task is to be ready when Jesus shows up.
How can we be ready? Well, I’d like to use gardening as a metaphor. I hit on this image a few weeks ago, and the more I think about it, the more richness I see in it. So don’t be surprised if you hear me talking about gardening for many sermons to come. I’ll probably just scratch the surface of it today.
There are many kinds of gardens, just as we are all different. Our garden comprises two half-barrel containers and a few other pots—all container gardening, so that Rhonda can tend it. Her parents’ garden up in Illinois is something else entirely. They probably have a total of a quarter acre, with that good Illinois soil. Rows of tomatoes, peppers, peas, beans, corn, cantaloupe, watermelon, strawberries, asparagus, and probably other things I’m not remembering. Whatever garden image you can keep in your mind is fine for our purposes this morning, but I’m mostly thinking of something more like my in-laws’ garden with a lot of diversity in it. They also have an orchard that they’re trying to get going.
Gardens have different plants for different seasons. Most are annuals. My father-in-law starts tomato plants from seeds indoors in about February, which is way too early. They fruit at a certain time in mid-summer, and when they’re done producing, they die. Other annuals produce earlier or later in the year. Still other plants are perennials that take multiple years to produce, like asparagus and strawberries. Fruit trees are the extreme example. Depending on the tree, they can take several years to produce fruit reliably.
Spring is a time for putting plants in the ground. As I said, my father-in-law starts his tomato plants indoors and eventually transplants them to the garden. The biggest challenge every gardener faces is timing. Too soon and your plants will die in a late frost. Too late and they’ll scorch in the summer heat without producing. You can look at the historical trends and plan, but you also need to be aware of deviations. Whatever the root cause, climate change is a fact, and any farmer will tell you that they have made adjustments for the changes in the environment. What used to work just fine is no longer appropriate. Growing seasons have been shifting around, while weather extremes have become less predictable. You can think you’ve done everything right, and still fail because the weather does something unexpected.
In the same way, the spiritual climate has been shifting. Several centuries ago, daily life and the rhythms of Roman Catholic worship were deeply intertwined. These days, the spiritual and secular spheres are almost entirely separate. That forces each person to figure out how best to plant their garden by seeking spiritual and religious experiences and organizations. In turn, each church needs to continually re-invent how it will respond to the different forces acting on their parishioners’ lives. Things that were once taken for granted, like everyone having Sundays blocked off for worship, are simply untrue today. The climate is changing, but people still need the fruits of the Spirit, so God is still at work.
Timing: What is the right time to plant something new in your spiritual garden? Only you can decide. There are trends you can look at, but each person’s spiritual life is their own. For example, many people turn to God in times of crisis. That’s great, and totally appropriate. God comes near to the broken-hearted. When we are suffering, often, we are more open to God, more fertile soil. But in my case, I joined this church in 2008 and encountered a crisis in 2012. I needed those deep roots grown during the springtime of my spiritual life in order to weather the storms that came later on. As another example, I just started a new position on campus as department chair. This is probably NOT the time to also add a new spiritual practice to my life. Instead, it’s a time to continue the practices that are the most helpful in growing my relationship with God.
Which brings us to summertime in the garden. In the spring, the gardener prepares the soil and plants the plants. In the summer, the garden needs continual attention: weeding, watering, thinning, and pruning. If you grow things from seeds, it’s common practice to plant extra seeds as a hedge against poor germination, so it is essential to remove some plants to allow others to thrive. In the same way, some plants like blackberry bushes will naturally put too much energy into growing long branches and producing too many fruits, and so they need to be pruned in order for the fruits to be of sufficient quality. Weeding is essential as well to make sure the good plants have sufficient space and resources to grow.
If all goes well, you’ll be able to harvest from your garden throughout the summer. This is about the time of year when I ask, Why are we doing this? Gardening is a lot of work. If I want a tomato, I can go to Walmart any day of the year and buy one. Well, Rhonda is a tomato snob. She won’t eat those Walmart tomatoes. Hothouse tomatoes, hybrids designed for size and appearance and ability to ship around the country, rather than quality and taste. She wants garden tomatoes for their taste and firmness. I’ll admit that the tomatoes she is able to grow, even in containers on our driveway, are superior to the tomatoes I get at Walmart.
I think that’s part of the answer to why we are here. Yes, you can read books about God, you can pray at home, and so forth, but it is in our encounters with each other that we achieve deeper, more meaningful, mutually-reinforcing relationships with God and with each other. When we put our faith into practice, whether in worship or in service, we are toughening it up and deepening it, and ultimately producing better spiritual fruit. Of course, we have to resist the urge to turn our church into a greenhouse instead of a garden. It is tempting to focus on caring for each other and to not worry about what’s going on in the world. It is tempting to treat this space as a refuge that is disconnected with the rest of our lives. It is essential that we bring our whole selves to God, and also that we incorporate God in our whole selves—our work, our families, our community relationships, and so forth. We shouldn’t only focus on God when it’s convenient for us or treat God as someone we only turn to in times of need. Instead, we should be continually tending our garden in our personal summertimes to produce fruit that will sustain us through our long, dark winters.
Because we know that winter will come. When we were visiting my in-laws recently, they had more tomatoes than they could eat in a month. Why? Well, someday, they won’t be able to go to the garden and pick a tomato. Instead, they’ll have to pull a jar off the shelf. They turn the tomatoes into salsa and pasta sauce and tomato juice and chili sauce and other things that they can use throughout the cold, dead winter. They are able to live off the produce of the summer throughout the winter, just as I was able to lean on God during my crisis because I had built my relationship with Them during a summertime period in my life.
So, what season are we in, as individuals and as a congregation? Well, we know that whatever season we are in, another one is coming. When winter comes, the tomato and cucumber and bell pepper plants die, but the well-prepared gardener doesn’t. The gardener knows that winter will come and prepares for it, but also knows that spring will come. Winter is not a time to mourn the loss of the garden, but a time to anticipate the new growth that will come with the spring. It’s a time to lean on the produce of the summer while preparing what new things you will do in the spring.
Let’s return to Luke’s Gospel. Jesus said, “Blessed are those…whom the master finds alert when he comes. … You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Most days, Jesus comes to us not on clouds of glory, but as one of the least among us. He comes to us in the poor, the sick, the neglected, the outcast. Does he find us ready? Ask yourself: Have I learned what I need to learn, so that when I encounter someone in need, I have the spiritual depth to help them? Have I harvested some spiritual fruits from my garden so that I am ready for whatever comes my way?
I know I talk about The Mission a lot, and I’m sorry to keep retreading the same path, but the plight of the homeless is very much front-of-mind in this community right now, and that’s also the place in my life where I encounter those in need. Part of the challenge of homelessness is that the actual problems people have are not the problems we might think they have. We might think they’re lazy or drug addicts or mentally ill or something like that. The truth is that most people who are homeless find themselves in a bad situation with no safety net. They lose their job, or can’t find a job that pays enough to cover rent and utilities, or get divorced, or need to flee from an unhealthy or abusive home, or have a medical emergency. Consider this: the main treatment that Rhonda takes for her primary-progressive MS has a list price of over $68,000 annually. I couldn’t possibly pay that without insurance. Cancer treatments often cost that much or more, sometimes MUCH more.
My point is that people become homeless for a number of reasons. I have educated myself, and continue to educate myself, on both the practical issues and spiritual issues at play so that I can be compassionate and supportive when I encounter someone who is homeless. In a similar way, each year, there are articles about the lived experiences of incoming college freshmen to help faculty and staff relate to them. I have never personally experienced racism or sexism, but there are books and articles that I’ve read to help me see the world through the eyes of Blacks and Asians and women of all races. Those are things that I do to tend my spiritual garden. Producing good fruit requires more than just prayer and study and worship. It requires preparing yourself to receive Jesus however he comes to you—whatever age, or ability, or race, or language, or gender. Jesus will come. Will he find you ready?
If he does, we are promised that he will serve us at his heavenly banquet. Let us each strive to be prepared to meet Jesus, not just on the Last Day when we receive the promise of Easter, but on each day as we see God in the people we encounter. And let us turn now to the Lord’s Table to receive a foretaste of that heavenly banquet, the product of human hands that connects us with the divine food and drink of Jesus’s body and blood. Amen.
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