God’s Gardeners Bringing Beauty, Bearing Fruit
Isaiah 35:1-10, Matthew 11:2-11
The story of Christmas is filled with shadows and light. It has the highest and brightest of moments with the presence of angels singing out good news and the reality of the human condition as an oppressive government herds people here to be sure not to miss any taxes and there and other political leaders plot to eliminate threats to their power – even to the point of killing innocent children.
How like our world today is the world into which Jesus is born.
In December’s newsletter, I spoke of the idealized Christmas image popularized - perhaps by Dicken’s ‘Christmas Carol’ – I’m not really sure. Before the advertising images of jolly old St. Nick in front of racks full of new clothes and toys, there was the picture postcard idea of a Christmas Eve with a gentle light snow falling on a cluster of houses around a steepled church where lights shine through stained glass windows. It was a time when cards were sent back and forth …by what we would call ‘snail mail’. You’ve seen these – if only in antique shops. Now we collect ‘villages’ complete with skating ponds and old lampposts to decorate ‘for Christmas’. For many of us, the images call to mind a time years past, when we were small and the activity and lights filled us with wonder. Thinking about it, even the fact that it was dark early added excitement to Christmas.
Today’s advertisements try harder and harder to recapture that memory – with more glitz and bling – but still somehow trying to tap into the wonder of Christmas which has its essence in the intangibles of good friendships and family ties that cross generations, a sense of surprise and something ‘beyond’.
Yet, in spite of the beauty and wonder this season so often brings, it is idealized. The reality of our lives contain a lot more grit and a troubling amount of pressure. As much as we yearn for that ‘picture-postcard Christmas’ we know that on the back streets and in the alleys of Bethlehem …and Bristol, there is pain, hunger, violence.
On the one hand, we need these images that remind us of what we can be, of what the world might be… We need the promise of hope for peace, good-will, and joy in our world.
On the other hand, we need to remember the true wonder of this season is that Jesus came into a world for the purpose of confronting the trouble, confounding the prevailing wisdom of the day, meeting those in need and calling all of us to the will of God.
Let’s look at the text in Matthew 11, in light of Christmas.
John is experiencing something of the grit of life. He is in prison. Now John, better than most people, had an understanding of the hope that was coming. He was the forerunner, the one to announce and prepare the way for the Messiah. But it is hard to see light when you are in a dungeon. It is hard to remember God is moving and working when you are under the heel of a tyrant. Even the miraculous fades with the passage of time in dreary darkness. So John, contacting one of his disciples, tells him to go to Jesus and ask, “Are you the One who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Notice, he is not doubting God’s promise of deliverance…of a Messiah bringing God’s presence into the world. But in his present moment, in the middle of darkness he experiences doubt.
In the spring of 1980, I put my first garden in at the parsonage. Fletcher Brown came down to turn over the sod the previous fall. Vilas Masterson had a roto-tiller and came in mid-May to get things ready, soon after the frost was out of the soil. Planting a garden was something I did growing up. There was a procedure to it: seeds at the proper depth, soil prepared – there was timing too: as you considered the weather and possible cold snaps. Inevitably there was a period during which I wondered…. if I did it okay. You wait for the green shoots to appear and if they are a bit late, well…you know you must have done something wrong. It didn’t help that first year to have gusts of cold wind and then snow flurries coming down just after I had planted my corn.
Doubt at the very time hope and promise fills the air. John was in this place. He had prepared the way. In the hearts of people who had listened to him there was planted seeds of promise and the light of hope. He had uprooted the weeds of false faith, he had cleared the stones of personal pride and planted the seeds of Israel ’s long awaited Messiah.
But he was in prison. He couldn’t see the green shoots of faith, the garden of good news growth.
Are you the one, Jesus?
Are Isaiah’s words about the wilderness and dry land rejoicing and blossoming in beauty to be fulfilled?
Will waters of life break forth in the desert of people’s need?
Will the burning sands of hurt and pain become places of thirst-quenching springs?
Are you the one, Jesus?
And Jesus responds:
“Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised…. the poor have good news brought to them.”
My friends, in this season of Advent, as we consider the work God calls us to do, it is for the church of Jesus Christ to be God’s Gardeners…. It is for us to bring beauty into the world, and bear the fruits of God’s Spirit where hunger and need are greatest.
What does that look like?
Consider the words of James: “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and late rains. You must also be patient. Strengthen your hearts….
Do not grumble against one another…show endurance and patience in your work…”
As any farmer can tell you, it’s not just putting seeds in the ground; there is nurture, watchful care, and patient daily toil. You don’t get blossoms in dry and dusty soil without some effort!
Actually, the desert is a good image for death and destruction. One reason the Egyptians are said to have worshipped the sun as a god was because of the proximity of vast desert in their lands. Besides a bit of green and good soil next to the Nile River , the rest of the land all around them was desert. To be caught in the desert without what was needed was to die. Isaiah understood the dangerous and harsh environment of such a place and contrasts it with what God will offer through the Christ.
John is called to prepare for the Lord’s coming. In the dry and dusty souls of people he has nurtured hope. He has done this by the time we see him in Herod’s dungeon….by the time John sends his disciple to ask Jesus a question.
Advent is our time to prepare for the coming of our Lord…. It is not simply acknowledging that Christ came as a baby and so a preparation for ‘Christmas’, but these weeks are to be spent looking forward to his coming.
The world of humankind can seem a very harsh and cold place sometimes. We don’t need to look far to see how badly we can hurt or bring darkness – even destruction to the lives of others. We are responsible for our individual actions and the actions of the groups we belong to – whether the church, our community, our social organizations or our nation.
Perhaps the very act of acknowledging our failures allows the tears of repentance to water the dry soil of broken relationships, nurturing the seeds of God’s will in our lives and in our connections with others.
Perhaps even our small and sometimes ineffective efforts may open a channel of blessing to another life as God’s own Spirit flows through.
Mary, in the prayer many call ‘the Magnificat’ seems to capture this hope.
Luke gives us Mary’s words:
“My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior….for the mighty one has done great things for me and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things…”
Maybe, just maybe, as we nostalgically look back at those idealized images of Christmas past, we will be challenged to be part of God’s work of bringing a new reality to those who seek hope, joy and peace and love.
If I were to put it in a prayer it might go like this:
“Oh Lord, may our hearts and minds be so open to your will and your work that our very lives might become streams of blessing …flowing outward into the deserts of human hurt and human need.
Phillip Brooks was one of the most well known and respected preachers of the 19 th century. He was active in the movement to free slaves and even worked to get them the right to vote. Brooks certainly understood the darker side of humanity and yet he realized the potential of Christ’s church to bring light and hope to the world. His own presence and initiative brought awareness to many of God’s better way.
But with all this work he did, he is remembered more for the song he wrote while on Sabbatical in the Holy Land . Traveling toward the place of Jesus birth at night he penned the words to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. We will sing this in a moment. But a fifth verse goes like this:
Where children pure and happy pray to the blessèd Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild;
Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.
May we so live. Amen.