March
30, 2000
Lenten
Noonday Preaching Series
Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
Let
us pray.
"Oh
God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come; our
shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home."
Speak
to us that we might live and not die. Speak to us so
that today may make sense to us.
Speak
to us of things relevant
to us and yet larger than us. Speak for your servants
here.
And
the people of God together will say, Amen.
Let's
consider together a couple of Scriptures. You may not have your
Bibles, but I will read the passages for you. Three passages
in particular have captured my imagination over this Lenten season,
and I thought that I would share them with you.
One
is found in the Old Testament Book of Genesis, the second chapter,
the eighth verse, and it says very simply, "And God planted
a garden in the east of Eden."
The
other two passages are found in the New Testament. The first
in John 12, verse 24: "I
tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground
and dies, it remains only a seed. But if it dies, it produces
many seeds." The
final passage, another Gospel lesson, this from Luke 13, verses
six through nine:
Then
Jesus told this parable: A
man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went
to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said
to the man who took care of the vineyard, "For three
years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this
fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down. Why should
it use up the soil?" "Sir," the man replied, "leave
it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and
fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine. If not,
then cut it down."
I
want us to think on these words this noonday moment--the
soul is a garden. The soul is a garden, "and God planted a garden
in the east of Eden". "I tell you the truth, unless
a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only
a seed. But if it dies, it produces much fruit."
Every
year about this time, the dawning of spring, every year I regret
not keeping the promise I made to myself back in the fall.
Every
fall, every September, I promise myself that this will be the
fall that I will take up gardening. I promise myself every
fall this will be my fall.
And
every spring I regret not keeping that
promise. Every year around this time, at the hint of spring
in the air, I regret that I did not follow through on my promise.
I
regret that I did not plant back in the fall the garden that
I long for in the spring. Because
there comes a time, there’s
a season in your life, when the soul starves for color
after the long, dry, brown winter. The soul is starving for color. But
in order to enjoy the sights and pleasures of pink, red, white
tulips, of irises, of carnations, of hostas, begonias, coreopsis,
roses, daffodils, daisies, I should have spent hours last fall
with my trowel and bulb planter.
Digging
a foot into the earth, turning the soil back, adding nutrients
and fertilizer release,
and planting bulbs and seeds and clusters and rows.
But
I didn’t.
Instead, I was too busy, too distracted, too absorbed with
other things on my mind. And now the spring has come, and
I am left
to drive around admiring other people’s gardens, filled
with my own regret. Still
I’ve learned that some of the most important lessons
can be learned through the simple act of gardening.
I
don’t
garden in my yard, but I have plenty of potted plants, not to
mention the fact that I’m scared of snakes (that may be
the reason why I have not gardened in the yard), but there are
lessons to be learned from gardening. Some
of the most important lessons of life can be learned through
the simple act of gardening-- tending plant life, observing the
life cycles of plants and of foliage.
Could
that be the reason why of all the abodes God could have
chosen for the first couple
to live in, God chose a garden in which to put Adam and Eve?
It
is no accident that the Bible opens with the story of a
man, a woman and a garden, "and God planted a garden east of
Eden." To
think that the Scripture describes that the first chapter of
human existence began in a garden, what could God have been thinking
about? What was God trying to tell us? What did God have in mind?
God
could have constructed a house, a mansion, a tent. God
could have fashioned a city, a semiurban landscape for
this couple,
but human existence began, according to the storytellers, with
a garden.
Not
so much a paradise, not so much a utopia, not so much
a perfect place--perhaps even more of a desert--but
a garden.
A fitting place in which the soul might learn some things.
Gardening teaches us some things. It's
as though God was saying to us, and the ancient storytellers
were saying to us, that everything you need to know about life--about
the mysteries of life, about the secret to life--can be learned
in a garden, if you pay attention.
For
those of us hostage to the urban landscape, who
pay little attention to the seasons,
who rely upon the weather channel or weather.com to forecast
the weather for us, who live out our days under a canopy of
smog and walk around on a floor of cement.
Those
of us who proceed
from one appointment to the next oblivious to our environment,
oblivious to the turning of seasons, oblivious to the colors
of plants--for us the church’s
recognition of the 40 days of Lent becomes a reminder that
we cannot experience
the Easter
tide of resurrection and renewal until we first go through
a period of disequilibrium, of dying, of shedding, of letting
go
of winter.
You
cannot experience spring until you have first experienced
winter. You cannot experience Easter, Resurrection
Sunday, until you first experience Lent.
Gardening
has a lot to teach us. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us there
is a season for everything, and a time for every activity under
the heaven: a season to be born and a season to die, a life and
a death, death and rebirth.
Gardening
teaches us growth and renewal, patience and seasons,
sowing and waiting, beauty and the impermanence
of beauty, dying and rising again.
Gardening
has a lot to teach us. It teaches you to pay attention to the
seasons, the weather, the atmosphere, your environment, nature.
You learn that seasons are not stages, they are not linear, nor
are they necessarily chartable. They do not begin and end at
predictable times.
Even
though we say March 21st is the beginning of spring,
actually spring does not necessarily begin March
21st.
It begins when you start sensing a change in the atmosphere.
That may not be till April 1st, or that may occur as early
as March 15th.
Likewise
with your soul, likewise with your life.
Your life goes through seasons, seasons that cannot be charted,
seasons that are not necessarily linear. You have to pay
attention to realize and to be attuned to when
you’re moving into
a new season.
Seasons
are cyclical. You return to them again and again, and so you
ask yourself, haven’t I been through this already? I’ve
been here before. I did this before. I suffered like this before.
Seasons
are cyclical. You do not go through them and never
go through them again. Fall is not one time. Winter
is not one time.
Seasons are cyclical. We move in and out of them a thousand
times as our spirits grow and stretch.
We
know that a new one is upon us by noticing the changes in the
texture of what is going on inside of us.
It’s a new season
in your life. Songs that used to make you cry no longer move
you; songs that never used to move you, now make you cry.
You’re
in a new season. The light feels different on your skin, you
know that spring is about to dawn. When it is darker longer,
you know it’s winter.
I
was reading this morning in Newsweek about the new dilemmas facing
the aging baby-boomer generation--those of us born between the
years of 1946 and 1964--especially the new issues facing us as
we move into our forties and fifties.
We
are the generation that leaves no emotion unexplored.
We leave no obsession unexplored.
One of the wonderful things about being in this age group,
we explore everything. We write about everything.
We want to talk
about everything.
Now
we are finding
ourselves the aging generation of the boomers,
experiencing new dilemmas in a new season of
our lives: the empty-nest syndrome, the death of our own
parents, our own deteriorating bodies.
Seven
or eight years ago when I was last here, I was not wearing glasses.
This year I forgot my glasses.
The
grass withers. The flower fades. Surely all flesh
is grass. I have no business being up
here without my glasses.
Ah,
the baby-boomer generation, we’re
going to live forever. We’ll be able to see forever. We’ll
be able to do things forever.
It’s not that we’re getting
older, it’s just that there are more stairs in our house
than there were last week. It is not that we’re getting
older, it’s that the newspapers are making the print much
smaller.
Ah,
the aging baby-boomer generation. There is a new season. A season
of reevaluating your values, reevaluating your life decisions,
reevaluating even the choices that we made 15, 20 years ago when
we were girls and boys and just starting out in relationships
and marriages and children.
Now
we find ourselves at 50, 55, 40, 45 living in relationships,
living on jobs, living lives
that no longer suit who we are as older and wiser human beings.
One
of my students who is contemplating what she is going to do as
she gets ready to graduate, said to me just the day before yesterday, "I
spent the first 15, 20 years of my life as a lawyer, but lately
I’ve been rethinking that decision. I’m embarrassed
to say that I’m all grown up, and I still don’t know
what I want to be when I grow up."
One
of the most important things I have learned from gardening magazines
is that regardless of which bulb I choose, inside every bulb
is everything it needs to become what it was created to be. The
daffodil bulb has everything it needs to become a daffodil. The
tulip has the specific nutrients and seedlings within it that
it needs to become a tulip and not a daffodil.
Likewise
within the seeds of plants and vegetables and fruits, their destiny
has already been imprinted in their seeds and in their bulbs.
Likewise
with each one of us, everything you need to become who you
really are supposed to be is already in you.
Your
destiny has already been imprinted in your soul. All you’re looking
for is the right place to be planted; the right amount of light,
the right amount of water.
But
who you are supposed to be, who God created you to be, what you
are supposed to be doing is already
in you. It's not out there. It’s like that daffodil bulb.
It’s already in you, and your purpose in life is to find
out your purpose in life.
If
you're planted in the north but you need more light, maybe you’ve
got to be uprooted and planted in the south. As it is with the
daffodil bulbs, so it is with our souls. Our inner destiny has
already been implanted in our souls.
That
destiny, that calling, that purpose, is contained in us just
as the daffodil is contained
in the daffodil bulb.
Each
of us possesses a life force within us, an energy, a spirit,
that seeks to bring the seed of ourselves
to fruition. It pulses inside of us, trying to complete who
we are uniquely created to be.
It
was already there when you were a child. There was a reason you
had a predisposition to math and adding and counting, a reason
you were verbal and quick-tongued. There was a reason why you
were always wandering off alone and exploring things and looking
and hiding and getting up under things. Ah, your destiny was
already trying to find its way out.
There’s
a reason why some of your heads were always in the clouds and
you never could answer a question with the truth, but you were
always creating stories to tell instead of telling the truth.
There's
a reason that one child is fascinated with drawing and another
one is a natural dancer. Still another child can’t
keep his or her head out of books, and still another one is like
my baby brother, a natural comedian. The bulb just waits to be
planted in the proper soil.
I’m
often accosted by students who want to know, "Dr. Weems,
do you think I should go on for a Ph.D.?" And I always say, "That
depends." "On what?" they ask. "Well, it
depends upon whether you love footnotes. If you love footnotes,
then you’re on to your destiny, because for a scholar, it’s
not the book, it’s the footnotes. For the scholar, it’s
not the front of the book, it’s the back of the book."
Others
ask, "Do you think I should become a writer?" "It
depends," I answer. "It depends on what?" "It
depends upon whether you love sentences. You’ve got to just
read sentences and fall in love with sentences." (It helps
to have grown up as a baby boomer when we use to diagram sentences.
You all remember, there was a line down and there was a subject
and a verb over here, and then the direct object over there,
and then another line down for the prepositional phrase. I am
dating myself.) "If you love sentences, perhaps you’re
born to be a writer."
"Suppose
I’m supposed to be a minister. How will I know?" "Can
you live with the possibility that no one will believe a word
you say? Uh-huh, now you’re on to your destiny."
I
asked a painter once how he came to be a painter. He said, "I
love the smell of paint."
I
asked a gardener how she came to be a gardener. "I love the smell of wet dirt."
I
asked an interior designer how she came to be a designer.
She said, "I love the color black."
When
the work’s
complexities fire your imagination and its contradictions fascinate
you, then you know you’re on to your purpose.
I’m
certainly one of the many, many boomers who is smack in the middle
of my own midlife disequilibrium. I have been there before, but
this one is different. I will return to disequilibrium, but this
particular one is special. It is a time of changing, a time of
going through changes. It is a time of going through "the
change." Do I have a witness in here?
Doug
asked me, "Renita, would you like to wear one of our vestments?" I
said, "No, no, baby, I’m at that age where I need something
that breathes. I don’t know when I’m going to break
out, any minute now. Those vestments are for men, what I'm wearing
is for women."
It
is a time of going through changes and reevaluating, and it keeps
my husband disoriented because he can’t figure out what
I’m going to be from one day to the next.
I
don’t know
if I want to be a professor anymore, and I think I want to do
this, and then I really like decorating, and then I start a newsletter
for women. He says, "Oh, would you just give me a hint,
just a hint. I just need a hint."
It
is a time of losing and gaining, something dying while other
things are beginning to come to life, letting go of some things
and reclaiming some other things.
For
men during this midlife--because they do go through "the change," amen; it’s not
called the same thing, but, oh, it’s the same thing-- for
men during this time, it is a time of surrendering self, surrendering
ego, surrendering ambitions.
For
women it is a time of coming into one’s self, reinventing one’s self. A time of
letting go, a time of dying, a time of accepting, a time of releasing,
a time of surrendering. And yet it is a time of possibilities.
Jesus
said it this way: "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the
ground and dies."
You've
got to be prepared to die, to let go, to release, to accept some
things in order to come into this
new season of possibilities.
Lent
is a time when we find ourselves in a temporary season of being
suspended somewhere between
life and death, suspended somewhere between the two mysteries
of death
and rebirth. It's a time of reflection, a time of reevaluation,
a time of reordering, and a time of reclaiming.
It
is a season, Lent and midlife, a season of a thousand deaths,
and yet it is a season of a thousand and one rebirths, new life.
If
anyone be in Christ, behold that one is a new creation. All things
are passed away, behold things are brand new.
Finally,
how do I know if this is God and not just me? How
do I know that I’m going through the change that God wants
me to go through and that this is not just my own flesh, my own
pent-up anger,
my own old, old stuff that I have not resolved?
How
do I know that I’m metamorphasizing into something brand new? How
do I know I’m on the verge of newness and springtime in
my life? How do I know if I’m not just retaliating?
Well,
I don’t know. I’m still trying to live this out, but
gardening forces you to pay attention, to be patient.
Sometimes
you don’t know until you go through it. Sometimes you don’t
know until you’re on the other side of it, but you plant
the seed, and you be patient. Sometimes what seems to be dead
is not dead at all.
Gardening
teaches you that. Gardening teaches you that sometimes more activity
is taking place below ground
than there is above ground. Gardening teaches you that sometimes
in order to grow you have to be dug up by the roots and repotted.
Listening,
paying attention. Listening with your soul is a willingness to
be open, to hear more than what is being said, to listen for
what is not being said.
To
be willing to put yourself in someone else’s place. To keep in mind that the world is larger than
your street. To know that there is a God who sits high and looks
low. The Lenten journey is one that requires you to develop new
listening skills.
There
is an old Hasidic tale in which a Jewish rabbi says "When
you die and go to heaven and meet your Maker, your Maker is not
going to ask you why didn’t you discover the cure for such
and such? Why weren’t you a leader? Why weren’t you
successful? Why didn’t you become more?
The
only question that will be asked of you is, why didn’t you become you?
Why didn’t you stay true to yourself? Why didn’t
you feel good about yourself?
Why
did you pretend to be something or someone you weren’t? Why weren’t you proud of who
I made you to be? Why didn’t you ever get to know who you
were supposed to be? Why didn’t you listen to Me with your
soul? Why were you afraid to step out? Why didn’t you become
you?"
A
certain man went out to check on a fig tree one day, and he discovered
that it had no fruit. He said, "Cut it down." But the
tender of the vineyard said, "Give it one more year. Once
I dig up around it and fertilize it and water it, if in another
year there’s nothing there, cut it down, but if it produces,
thank God."
And
perhaps in the year 2000 God is giving us one more year. We should
have been cut off a long time ago, but Jesus said to God, "Give
her one more year, give him one more year.
Let
Me nurture her and let him listen to Me. Perhaps
in another year and another season he will know who I created
him to be, and she will know
who she really is, down in her soul."
And
God planted a garden east of Eden. Amen.
Copyright ©2000
The Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems |
