I like to garden. Where I grew up, on the Red Rock Loop Road, we had irrigation. That means that water was diverted into a man made ditch, the Red Rock Ditch as it is known, about a mile upstream from our house on Oak Creek. The ditch carried water paralleling the creek for a few miles allowing residents and landowners to irrigate the land generously in order to produce and grow in abundance. Our neighborhood was, therefore, a lush green riparian habitat blossoming and defying the dryness of the desert all around it. But we had no vegetable garden at our house! Once upon a time we did. Once upon a time the whole middle lot of Disney Lane was cultivated by neighbors and yielded bumper crops of okra, corn, tomato, and more. I thought it a sin that that massive garden was gone and we grew no vegetables. So I petitioned the local land owners, mom and dad, to sublet a section of the front yard for a vegetable garden. “Go ahead,” they said. It probably seemed a better idea than having me mountain bike or burn campfires out in the wilderness.
So I marked off a rectangle in the bermuda grass sod. With a pick, shovel, and hoe I decimated the grass raking it up and filtering it out of the soil meticulously. The soft red earth was easily furrowed into rows, and yes, the plenteous cool irrigation creek water filled the troughs between each furrow nicely saturating the earth. But before I planted seeds I allowed myself the luxury of sensuously stepping my bare feet into the mud, feeling it ooze between my toes. Yes, I was a teenager but for a brief window of time in the early summer I played in the mud. I was unprepared, then, when the new pastor to our church drove up to our house in his pastor car. He was coming to see my dad, a builder, to talk about plans for the pastor’s new house. He walked up to me with a button down shirt, khakis pants, and patented leather shoes. I wore a raggedy old t-shirt and shorts; up to my calves in mud. I felt rather silly. The pastor smiled and said, “Hello. Making a vegetable garden I see.” I agreed, not really knowing what to say, having been caught playing in the mud. He smiled and then turned to meet with my father.
The following day I planted the seeds and some tomato starters along with soil conditioner. Memories of the bumper crops that once grew in the middle of the cul de sac flooded my mind as I stared at the tiny sprouts willing them to grow. Day after day passed and the summer flew by. Soon it would be time to go back to school. Autumn was coming, and the little plants barely grew. I sat cross legged on the ground at each corner of the garden praying and meditating sending psychic energy to will the plants to grow and they did not. There was no fungus or pest that kept them from growing. There was enough water, but not too much. They just didn’t grow. At church, Pastor Quello asked me how the garden was going. I shook my head and said, “Not well.” Clearly I was better at playing in the mud, than actually getting seeds to grow.
Jesus shares the word of God freely
Jesus talked about the disappointment of plants not growing too. He told a story of a gardener planting seeds in the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew chapter thirteen. In the parable the sower throws seeds indiscriminately and wastefully. He throws them on a road, in the weeds, on rocks, oh and yes a few of them fall on good soil. Not surprisingly most of the seeds are eaten by birds, or die quickly after putting out tender sprouts. Jesus says the seeds represent the Word of God. Jesus is the gardener spreading God’s word. We are earth. The plants are faith. The harvest are works of righteousness and justice. Most people barely register the word of God, it never quite takes root, and nothing much happens. Much seed is wasted. Thankfully a select few receive it, and they yield great harvests.
So what is the point of the story? Jesus, the sower, pays no mind as to which soil is worthy of seed or God’s word, and which isn’t. Jesus is indiscriminate and practically wasteful in the way she tosses out seed as if he has an endless supply. The rocks get seeds, the weeds, the road, the unrighteous, the busy, the morally suspect, all receive an equal portion of God’s word and love. That’s what you call grace: God’s unmerited love poured out for you whether you deserve it or not. Like grits on a breakfast plate in the south, you just get it, whether you asked for it or not. And you never know where the word of God will grow and yield a harvest of salvation. Isaiah said it like this:
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:10-11
God’s word is more powerful than you can ever understand. It will surprise you where it grows.
Have faith in God’s Word
So why wouldn’t my little garden grow? I felt embarrassed that all of my hard work hadn’t amounted to much as neighbors, the pastor, and my parents all asked how it was going. Here I was trying to be healthy and live off the land, and my best efforts were fruitless. Finally I asked for help from my parents. We went outside and looked it over. What could it be? My father pointed to the east side of the garden patch where the morning sun came from. He asked me what was there. “The apple tree, and the plum tree,” I said. My mom pointed to the south of the garden and asked what was planted there. “The apricot tree and the peach tree,” I said. Beyond them were the cottonwood and sycamore trees towering high above our house. I then looked to the west of the garden, and what did I see? Weeping willow, mondell pine, and the almond tree. So why didn’t the plants grow? They were in shadow for all but maybe a precious few minutes when the sun was at its zenith.
The soil I had prepared and worked so hard to cultivate was basically useless for a vegetable garden, because it was almost entirely covered in shade! But then my eyes were opened and I saw in a new way that the trees that caused all this shade, they were loaded with fruit! They yielded plums, apples, apricots, peaches, and almonds, some yielding 100 fold, others 200 fold, and still others 600 fold in fresh fruit! Why mope around feeling bad about a failed vegetable garden, when that patch of dirt is surrounded by a burgeoning orchard? Grab a bucket and start harvesting fruit! Why would you worry about trying to earn your own salvation, when God gives it to you freely? You are saved by grace through faith, and not by your works! Have faith! Look at the abundance of God’s blessings all around you! Consider the labor of your ancestors, who strove so sacrificially that you might have life. Consider the labor of farmers and farm workers who toil so sacrificially that you might eat. Consider the miracle of land, water, and sun that life can even exist at all on this third rock from the sun. It’s precious. It’s holy. It’s God’s grace. Believe. Trust. Have faith. God’s grace will see you through. Amen.
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