Cultivating Trust

Raymond Martinez, pencil drawing, “God’s Help, God’s Hope.” Inspired by Psalm 146:5-9. 

From InsideOut Art, an arts program for men incarcerated at California prisons.

Worry is like weeds.  I’ve been learning about weeds lately; let me tell you how that happened.  My next-door neighbor Tomaz was the reason I had the courage to try planting a native garden.  He planted one first, and he knew how.  Then Tomaz moved.  My new neighbor Seema is keeping the native plants in her garden.  But she has joint issues that prevent her from weeding.  I glibly said I’d weed her front yard.  I had no idea what I was in for.  Why does it grow so many more weeds than my garden, when it is right next door?  It’s a mystery.  Part of the problem is that I don’t weed it as carefully or as often as my own garden. Give those weeds a head start, and they’ll outrun you.  Part of the problem is she’s got too much bare dirt, just waiting for weeds to sprout. Seema hires a gardener to come weed every month or two.  It’s not his garden either.  He doesn’t get all the weeds.  But he did pull up most of the California Poppies last time he came.  

We don’t cultivate weeds on purpose.  You don’t invite weeds into your garden.  They just come.  The seeds blow in on the wind of the nightly news and a culture that teaches us to fear and resent.  The more you put up with those weeds of worry, the more they take over.  The more you try to ignore them, work around them them, the bigger they get.  

Trust is the open soil that allows new things to grow in us.  Worry, like weeds, crowds out the possibility of new things.  Where do your weeds come from?  Were the seeds planted in childhood? Worry can be a mental health issue. Worry is also a spiritual issue, because how we understand the world and the sacred makes a big difference in how we deal with those weeds. Cultivating the garden of our mind, our soul, is a sacred task and privilege to which God invites us.  

Cultivating is usually slow and careful work.  It requires persistent attention, and repetition.  Despite frustrations, despite a modest result, cultivating trust is worth doing.  Last week I showed you a hula-hoe, a great tool for weeding our native garden.  What tools can we use to weed out worry and cultivate trust?

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

March 17, 2019

Cultivating Trust

Luke 12:22-32  He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.  23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.  24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!  25 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?  26 If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?  27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.  28 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith!  29 And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying.  30  For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them.  31 Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

“Don’t worry,” says Jesus in today’s reading.  Easier said than done.  He was talking about the most basic things we can worry about, having food and clothing and shelter.  But we can worry and fret and second-guess ourselves over just about anything.  A healthy jolt of fear at the right time can protect us, cause us to take action.  But nagging ongoing worry steals our joy, saps our energy, and even undermines our health. Oh boy, now we can worry about worrying. 

“Oh you of little faith!” says Jesus.   It would be easy to hear that as blaming the victim.  Let’s not go there.  Instead let’s hear Jesus inviting and challenging us to live with less worry.  Worry is not normal or inevitable.  We can replace worry with trust, at least some of it.  In Greek, ‘trust’ is the same word as ‘faith’ and ‘belief’: pistos.  In English, ‘trust’ is a little less loaded with religious baggage than ‘faith’ and ‘belief’.  Trust in God is very helpful.  Trust that the universe is basically friendly.  But we also need to trust each other, and to trust ourselves.

We can replace worry with trust.  And it doesn’t happen by wishing it so.  We have to cultivate trust.  We cancultivate trust; we can practice and get better at it.  If that sounds easy to you, yay for you!  You don’t have much cultivating to do.  If cultivating trust sounds hard, or even impossible, then it will really be valuable for you to do. 

I don’t usually worry about preparing sermons.  I worry about other things.  Week after week I trust that if I show up and put in the work, God will give me something useful to say to you.  Somehow I have learned to trust that it is not my job to get inspired; it is my job to show up and put in the work and leave the results to God.  Experience has shown that usually works.  Experience has also shown that all my worrying accomplishes is to ruin my Saturdays.

So I don’t usually worry about sermons but I worried about this one.  The irony!  I didn’t want to be glib about a reality that causes so much suffering.  I didn’t want to just tell you some platitudes and quick fixes.  So I got to experience some worry first hand, for the purposes of sermon illustration no doubt.  

I don’t like to admit I’m worrying.  I like to call it thinking things over.  And over, and over, and over, like a hamster on a wheel.  When I’m thinking things over at 3 in the morning, I finally have to admit it’s fear or resentment.  Worry is a nice name for fear or resentment.  So when I am awake at 3 in the morning, I get up and pray and journal.  Or this week, write a sermon.  And then my worry usually eases, because instead of spinning that hamster wheel in my head, my worry is on the page in front of me.  I can put it in perspective.  I can be honest with myself about my fears or resentments.  I can remember what’s my job and what’s God’s job.  Sometimes that’s enough right there, to let go of what’s not mine to fix or control, and let God do the heavy lifting.  Even if my worry persists, it’s no longer in the driver’s seat, and I can usually get back to sleep.  

Once I took an anti-anxiety medication for a few weeks.  I took it as a sleep aid, but when I woke up the first morning, I wasn’t thinking anything over (and over and over.)  What a surprise!  I hadn’t even realized I had been waking up every morning worrying till I stopped. 

Worry is like weeds.  I’ve been learning about weeds lately; let me tell you how that happened.  My next-door neighbor Tomaz was the reason I had the courage to try planting a native garden.  He planted one first, and he knew how.  Then Tomaz moved.  My new neighbor Seema is keeping the native plants in her garden.  But she has joint issues that prevent her from weeding.  I glibly said I’d weed her front yard.  I had no idea what I was in for.  Why does it grow so many more weeds than my garden, when it is right next door?  It’s a mystery.  Part of the problem is that I don’t weed it as carefully or as often as my own garden. Give those weeds a head start, and they’ll outrun you.  Part of the problem is she’s got too much bare dirt, just waiting for weeds to sprout. Seema hires a gardener to come weed every month or two.  It’s not his garden either.  He doesn’t get all the weeds.  But he did pull up most of the California Poppies last time he came.  

We don’t cultivate weeds on purpose.  You don’t invite weeds into your garden.  They just come.  The seeds blow in on the wind of the nightly news and a culture that teaches us to fear and resent.  The more you put up with those weeds of worry, the more they take over.  The more you try to ignore them, work around them them, the bigger they get.  

Trust is the open soil that allows new things to grow in us.  Worry, like weeds, crowds out the possibility of new things.  Where do your weeds come from?  Were the seeds planted in childhood? Worry can be a mental health issue. Worry is also a spiritual issue, because how we understand the world and the sacred makes a big difference in how we deal with those weeds. Cultivating the garden of our mind, our soul, is a sacred task and privilege to which God invites us.  

Cultivating is usually slow and careful work.  It requires persistent attention, and repetition.  Despite frustrations, despite a modest result, cultivating trust is worth doing.  Last week I showed you a hula-hoe, a great tool for weeding our native garden.  What tools can we use to weed out worry and cultivate trust?

How handy that Joe Conti is here today to give us a taste of the first, time-honored, tool: guiding our minds through a process of meditation or contemplation.  Much of the time our minds are like unruly toddlers, running in any and every direction.  We can gently invite our attention to a focus: our breath, or a mantra, or a specific image or bible verse and invite that toddler that is our unruly mind to sit still just for a few moments.  And with practice, we can do it persistently.  Imagine that, instead of persistent worry, persistent focus on something helpful!  There are of course many other reasons to meditate.  Time and again people have discovered that when they quiet the chatter of their own minds, in that stillness they encounter a Presence that is trustworthy, a Presence that brings healing and peace.

A second tool: shift our thinking with a few choice words: bible verses or slogans or words from your favorite song or prayer.   We can memorize them, chant them, keep a list to remind us.  Through the bible are scattered little jewels that invite us to trust God.  Twelve-step groups have great one-liners.  The Psalms are full of good ones.  Keep a lookout for your personal favorites.  If saying it makes you take a deep breath and feel a little peace, you know you’ve found a keeper.  Here are some of my personal favorites.

            The “I am” statements from John’s gospel:  I am the bread of life.  I am the light of the world.  I am the true vine.

            A bible verse: Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God. 

                        (Romans 8:38-39, the short)

            Slogans like : God loves me just as I am, flaws and all.

            I have a savior and I’m not it.

            Let go and let God.  

            A question: 

                        What is my business, what is your business, and what is God’s business?

            A metaphor:  An unhelpful thought is a car driving by.  I don’t have to open that car door and go for a ride. 

            A song: Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me…

            And this one is not mine but I enjoy it:  Not my circus, not my monkeys.

I wonder what are your favorites?

A third tool to cultivate trust: pray.  Tell your worries to God.  At length, if you like.  Writing them down works very well.  You have my permission to rant and rave and curse… And then listen.  Ask God what to let go, and how to do it.  And then listen.  Seek God in nature.  And then listen.  Do you detect a theme here?  Listen! Part of worry is getting caught up in our mind’s chatter and not listening. Just the act of listening can interrupt worry.  We’ll talk about more ways to pray next week.

A fourth tool to cultivate trust: talk to other people, people who care about you and believe in you and can help you get perspective.  That could mean a therapist, because when your weeds are looking like trees, you need a professional.  Did you know that everyone in Orange County can get therapy for free?  Good therapy, according to a friend who’s tried it. Our tax dollars at work; try it and tell me if I’m wrong.  The contact information is on our kiosk.  You can also talk to a friend who cares about you and lifts you up.  You could even talk to your pastor.  It’s my job, and I love it.  And you can be this fourth tool for other people.  You can be a good listener.  You can show empathy.  You can share a possibly helpful perspective.  You can look them in the eye and say,  “I believe in you.”  A funny thing happens when I do that for other people.  I stop worrying for a while.

There are more tools if you look for them.  Sensory and body tools.  Cultivating trust is work, and it’s worth the work.  A final tool is in our bible passage: strive for the Kingdom of God, and the rest will follow.  We sing it, right?  Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness.  And all these things will be given to you.  In other words, have purpose in our lives beyond our personal security and happiness. If worries are like weeds, choking out the good things, a vital purpose is like a mulch or groundcover: it keeps the weeds from taking hold.  Our purpose as Christians?  We get to be on God’s team, with the job of enjoying God’s word, and spreading a little hope and comfort and love, and not judging… hmm, if we stopped judging what we shouldbe doing, what shouldhappen… would it even be possible to worry?  

So we begin… to cultivate trust.  And the weeds of worry will keep sprouting from old seeds.  So Jesus helps us cultivate trust.  He gathers us up in his arms like little children, and says, “I’ve got this, honey.  You’re safe.” And he invites us, like teens, to get out of ourselves and into the world:  “I’ve got good things for you to learn.   Come join the family business of making the world a better place.”  And Jesus comforts us, like weary middle-aged people, “What you’re doing is not in vain.  I am with you and in you and you aredo bearing fruit for my kingdom.”  And he reassures us to the end of our lives, “Whatever happens, I am with you.  Forever.” Thank you, God, for being trustworthy, for believing in us, for cultivating our trust.  Amen.

Highs and Lows

(This one got away from me-- sending late!)

Some people think religion is going to get them an exemption from the lows, and then they get surprised and disillusioned when that doesn’t happen.  We are promised abundant life through Christ, but not an easy or painless life.  

We all face low points.  Some of those are our mood, our body’s biochemistry.  Some are rough spots in relationships, health crises, and there are all kinds of lows.  Does our faith make any difference?   The nature of lows is that we lose perspective. When you’re in a deep hole you lose perspective.  All you can see is the walls of your hole.  This is not a lack of faith.  This is being human.  But faith means we can remember things not seen.  We remember the perspective of the mountaintop when we’re in the hole.  We allow ourselves to trust in a God who is with us, suffers with us, and makes a way for us through whatever hole we’ve found ourselves.  Not always around or over.  Sometimes through.  Trusting the perspective we have known from our highs, that God is with us, and for is, and creating possibilities for our future, helps us through the lows. 

****

Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

March 3, 2019

Highs and Lows

Luke 9:28-45  Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.  29  And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.  30  Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.  31  They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.  32  Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.  33  Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said.  34While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.  35  Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 36  When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. 

            37  On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him.  38  Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child.  39  Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him.  40  I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.”  41 Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.”  42  While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.  43 And all were astounded at the greatness of God. 

            While everyone was amazed at all that he was doing, he said to his disciples, 44 “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands.”  45  But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was concealed from them, so that they could not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

A month ago I got to stay at Questhaven Retreat in north San Diego County.  To get to Questhaven, you drive inland from I-5 through miles of suburbs.  You know the style: add stucco and stir.  Miles of condos.  Starbuck on the bluffs.  Then take a right turn, and suddenly: rural.  Questhaven is in a valley that time forgot.  Gardens, hiking trails, and native plants.  I got two nights there with my pastor friend Joy to unplug and contemplate what really matters. T get perspective.  I asked Laurie the host which was the best hike, and of course it was to a mountaintop.  Well, a high hilltop anyway.  So I huffed and puffed, and I made it to the top, and I found plants I hadn’t seen below. Even though I was miles inland, I could see the ocean peeking out from between the far hills.  Sitting on that rocky peak at sunset, surrounded by sages, it felt sacred.  I got perspective on some situations that had been troubling me.  In my everyday life, it’s more hit and miss.  Maybe it was that special place.  And maybe it was because I took the time to pay attention. 

There are special places like Questhaven, where heaven and earth seem to touch.  “Thin places,” they’re sometimes called.  God is everywhere, but some places you just feel it.  And you don’t have to be religious to feel it.  Often those places are in nature.  What are your thin places?   

Mountain tops, but also in the crash of waves against a cliff, a high desert sky blazing with stars, a great old oak tree.  The meeting of heaven and earth can also come in the smile of our beloved, or the face of a child, in an act of kindness, or a beautiful piece of music.  This church building can be a thin place.  For or almost sixty years people have gathered here with the intention of meeting the sacred in prayer and song and speech.  Heaven and earth are touching.  Our job is to notice it, to pay attention, so that we will remember it in our everyday lives.

According to Luke, Jesus had a rhythm of working.  He would be among the people for a while, teaching and healing, and then he would withdraw to a thin place, desert or mountaintop, for a quiet prayer vigil, often all night long, to get perspective I suppose.  Jesus did not consider these mountaintop experiences as extras, but essentials for his work.  There’s food for thought.

Let me guess what this mountaintop experience we call transfiguration was like from Jesus’ point of view.  He has been working among the people, and he needs to recharge.  (Sobering to realize that even Jesus had limits, even Jesus could get out of tune with God.)  His relationship with his disciples is deepening, so he invites a few of them along. I don’t think he invites them to witness a miracle.  He invites them to participate in authentic prayer.  He prays, and that prayer connects him with the one he calls Abba.  He speaks with Moses and Elijah, the two greatest figures in Israel’s history. (You can do things like that in prayer, you know.)  And what do they talk about?  His departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.  “Departure” was a nice way to say “death.”  So there, in that radiant high of communion with God and the revered ancestors, Jesus talks about the lowest low that he will have to face.  Does that seem odd to you? I think it makes perfect sense.  What Jesus was called to do was not going to be easy.  He needed to work through it with God, to get perspective from his ancestors, to be ready to face his impending death.

And what about the three disciples, Peter, John and James?  They didn’t sleep through the whole thing.  They were awake to see Jesus’ appearance changed somehow.  They even see the great ancestors. They hear a snippet of their conversation, which they clearly don’t understand.  

Peter, impulsive Peter, wants to make it last.  Get the holy ancestors to stick around and build a shrine!  Show all our friends!  Only as quick as he can get the words out, fog rolls in.  A voice speaks in the fog, “This is my son, the chosen one. Listen to him.”  And they forgot to turn their cell phones on to record it! You can’t record a mountaintop experience, you can’t reproduce it, and you can’t make it last.  But you can savor, and remember the perspective that was revealed to you, and tell about it, and let it sustain you through the low times. 

Their low times began the very next day. As soon as they come off the mountain, they are met by a desperate father seeking healing for his epileptic son.  The disciples who stayed downhill had already failed.  Failed at the work Jesus had just empowered them to do at the beginning of this same chapter.  Jesus is not pleased.  “You faithless generation.”  Ouch!  So much for not judging!  Jesus must be human, as well as divine.  Failed disciples, angry Jesus, a low day all around.  Only the boy is healed, and restored to his father.  Don’t ask me how that works.  So there was drama, but no real damage. Isn’t that true of so many of our lows?  They are more about our bruised egos and our disappointed expectations than what’s actually happening.  Perspective.  Jesus ends with a reminder of his death: “Let these words sink into your ears:” he says.” The Son of Man is going to be given over into human hands.”And the disciples still don’t understand what he means. No wonder he is grumpy.  

Some people think religion is going to get them an exemption from the lows, and then they get surprised and disillusioned when that doesn’t happen.  We are promised abundant life through Christ, but not an easy or painless life.  

We all face low points.  Some of those are our mood, our body’s biochemistry.  Some are rough spots in relationships, health crises, and there are all kinds of lows.  Does our faith make any difference?   The nature of lows is that we lose perspective. When you’re in a deep hole you lose perspective.  All you can see is the walls of your hole.  This is not a lack of faith.  This is being human.  But faith means we can remember things not seen.  We remember the perspective of the mountaintop when we’re in the hole.  We allow ourselves to trust in a God who is with us, suffers with us, and makes a way for us through whatever hole we’ve found ourselves.  Not always around or over.  Sometimes through.  Trusting the perspective we have known from our highs, that God is with us, and for is, and creating possibilities for our future, helps us through the lows.  

I admire those people who always seem to have the perspective that their lows are not so so low.  I think of my friend Diane who fell of a ladder and broke both ankles.  She met me in her wheelchair with a smile on her face. “Terry, this wheelchair gives me such an interesting perspective.  I am learning so much being in a wheelchair.”  Diane may be a special case.  But when I take the time to remember that God is with us, and for us, and working through us, and we don’t have to stay alone, or guilty, or inadequate, or grieving… the lows are not as low.   

Back to the highs.  Who doesn’t like a high?  There are all kinds of highs out there, and not all of them are sacred.  It is natural for us to seek the highs.  As followers of Jesus, we learn which ones are momentary pleasures, that do not really feed our souls and sometimes leave us worse off than before, and which highs heal us, strengthen us, and bring our awareness to the sacred.  These experiences may or may not seem overtly religious.  But they feed our faith, our hope, our love.  We need to make time to find those highs, find the thin places where heaven and earth touch, so that we can get perspective, be renewed, become strong and wise enough to do God’s work effectively, in fact even to know what it is we are supposed to be doing.  Remember, God never asks you to do the impossible.

Devout religious people have understood that we need the high that comes from connecting with God.  Only we may have heard it expressed it as duty and obligation.  Try a change of perspective.  It is a gift and a privilege to take time to encounter the sacred. You haven’t found the way that’s right for you to connect with the sacred till you can trust that it is a gift and a privilege.

But we are all so busy.  Busy can be real or not, but busy is always a trap.  We need inspiration more when we’re busy, not less.  Busy too often means we start spinning our wheels.  We can be busy trying to do what isn’t good for us, or what isn’t meant for us to do.  We can be busy not doing the one thing God longs for us to do.  Being too busy to seek connection with God is like driving a car and being in too much of a hurry to look at the map and figure out where we’re going, or the gas gauge! 

Let me invite you, on this last Sunday before Lent, to think about how you can make a regular time to find a high place, a thin place, a place or a practice that works for you to get inspired, listen, get perspective, whatever that looks like for you. And maybe to get healed, strengthened, renewed.  A regular repeated practice requires discipline. Discipline is remembering what you want. If you don’t succeed in being disciplined, Lent is a great time for letting go– of guilt, and for second chances. 

There are the familiar spiritual disciplines, prayer and Bible Study and we’ll have those nice daily devotional booklets from the UCC for Lent, but don’t limit yourself. Do something wonderful to connect with the sacred.  Discover the practice that works for you to touch the sacred, just one.  Just one.  You might have to buy yourself flowers.  You might have to make appointments to make love with your spouse. You might have to take regular walks in the green hills among the native plants.  You might have to dust off that instrument or songbook and make some music.  Finding the high places is not a luxury. It’s like air and food and water. We need the sacred in our lives for perspective, to remember that we are each beloved children of God, that we are loved, that we are never alone, always supported and invited into abundant life.  Amen.

God Cultivates

Pity the California native plants.  Many of them lose their leaves in summer, when it doesn’t rain for seven months around here.  Smart, right?  “Summer dormant.” “Stress deciduous.”  Except gardeners think they’re dead, and rip them out of the ground.  Or declare them too homely to possibly be seen in a public garden.  Nobody says that about the roses or trees that are bare in winter.  More attentive gardeners see the native plants turning brown and assume they need more water. But they are not used to water in the summer. They never developed resistance to rot; they never were exposed to warm wet soil in thousands of years on the coastal hills of California. So water them well when it’s hot, and they’ll die for real.  Stress deciduous.  We don’t know how to cultivate what belongs here, because it is so different from what we expect in its inevitable imperfection.  Living things are always imperfect.  If you want perfection, buy lawn furniture. 

God is the master cultivator.  God is not surprised by our imperfections.  So…when we are in horror and shame at our failures, not ready to face the world, thinking we want to hide from everyone including the God whom we have failed, because we are only good for the compost heap, guess what? God might be smiling and saying, well, what do you expect?  I knew you were stress deciduous, even if you didn’t.  People are like that; they fall apart now and then.  Don’t panic!  You might need a pruning.  But you’ll green up and sprout again.  You’ll bloom when it’s your time. 

****

Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

March 10, 2019

God Cultivates

Psalm 65         Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion; and to you shall vows be performed, 

            O you who answer prayer! To you all flesh shall come. 

            When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us, you forgive our transgressions. 

            Happy are those whom you choose and bring near to live in your courts. 

            We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple.

  

            By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance, O God of our salvation; 

            you are the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas. 

            By your strength you established the mountains; you are girded with might. 

            You silence the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, 

                        the tumult of the peoples. 

            Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs; 

            you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.

  

            You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; 

            the river of God is full of water; 

            you provide the people with grain, so you have prepared it. 

            You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, 

            softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. 

            You crown the year with your bounty; 

            your wagon tracks overflow with richness. 

            The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, 

            the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, 

            the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.

It’s been a bad year for roofs and a great year for gardens.  Every morning I go to the kitchen window and check on my happy garden residents. Hummingbirds love the Baja Fairy Duster. Bare spots that I’ve struggled to hide for years are finally getting filled in with volunteer sages and baja daisies.  My toyon needs a chain saw; it’s taller than the roof and shows no signs of stopping. And sometimes the dewdrops lie on the sagebrush like jewels in the rising sun.  I plant, I trim a little, I weed, I watch.  Once a month if it hasn’t rained, I water.  I haven’t watered in a while.  I pinch, I rake, and I enjoy.  That’s cultivating a native garden.   

The Christian origin story describes our first home as a garden, and God was the gardener.  I like that.  Of the many metaphors for God in our Bible, God cultivating comes up frequently.  The ancient Israelites were farmers and herders, in symbiotic relationship with the land.  Jesus has parables of seeds and weeds and trees, of sheep and mother hens; they all show that he knows how to cultivate.  The way he treated people showed that he knows how to cultivate what is good in us.

Cultivation is an earthy kind of power, power with. It seems ordinary, but it is life-giving.  Somebody better know how to cultivate, or we’ll starve.  We are more impressed with dramatic power, power over. Kings were the pinnacles of earthly power in biblical times, so of course many writers in the bible called God King and gave God kingly attributes including punishment and control.  Is a king your image for God?  Our Bible predates our experiments in democratic government.  When people say they don’t believe in God, it is usually that dictator in the sky that they mean.  The god who dictated unchanging ethical laws thousands of years ago, and a human hierarchy to enforce them.  The god who has all power over us, and chooses to let people suffer anyway, sometimes horribly. Jesus Seminar scholar Dom Crossan said, “Tell me about the god you don’t believe in, because I probably don’t believe in him either.”

Jesus saw God as Abba, father, dad.  Loving parents cultivate; they do a minimum of dictating.  They do their best to nourish and protect and guide their children, knowing that the children must do the growing for themselves, and become themselves.  

Metaphors for God might seem like abstract matters, but I don’t think they are abstract at all.  When I pray, what am doing?  Am I trying to get loud enough or close enough or grovel enough at divine throne to beg a favor from a King?  Or am I tugging on the sleeve, bending the ear, of a beloved mentor, confiding in someone who can’t wave a magic wand to solve my problems, but has some pretty good ideas about how to nurture and guide and comfort me?

God doesn’t dictate, God cultivates.  Cultivating is the patient work, mostly behind the scenes, that allows for growth and transformation.  We don’t control growth and transformation, ours or anybody else’s. But we can do the groundwork: we can do some cultivating.  Before we figure out what we want to cultivate in Lent, let’s observe how God might be cultivating…us!

People in cultures around the world are skilled at various ways of cultivating.  It has been our survival for thousands of years.  Most modern farmers have a lot more in common with dictators. They use chemicals and machines and hybridization if not GMO’s, to force an abundant harvest, at a cost.  They prefer monoculture.  Sameness. It’s easier.  They grow thousands of acres of the same exact plant, at yields three times what my husband’s grandfather used to get in the nineteen-thirties.  They use huge amounts of fossil fuel and strip the soil and poison the water.  They do not really cultivate at all. They are mining the earth.  

The human art of cultivation is not lost.  My son’s good friend Anthony had grandparents from rural China who came to live with him in Irvine when he was in grade school. They turned his little yard into a vegetable garden high-rise.  They knew how to cultivate, with little space and much attention and love.  Their garden was a glorious explosion of food. Experience helped I’m sure, but there is no substitute for attention and love, and that’s how God cultivates us.

Successful cultivating means relationship, paying attention to the particular situation and needs of what you are growing.  It means nurture, and wisdom and patience. It means understanding the nature of a thing and allowing for its nature, not forcing it to be and do what it is not.  It means guiding and helping, but not controlling.  Thank you, God.

David Vetter is a pioneering organic farmer in Nebraska.  He is featured in a movie called “Dreaming of a Vetter World.”  He plants nine different crops in a complicated rotation to keep pests down so he won’t need to use pesticides. When Vetter was asked why more farmers don’t go organic, he replied, “… because it’s more work, and it takes more thought.”  Yeah, relationships are like that.  They take work, and thought.

Traditional village farmers in Central America were dismissed by Americans for their inefficiency.  These farmers might have eleven tiny plots scattered along a couple of miles of paths in a complex patchwork with all their neighbors’ plots.  The Americans who watched them figured they inherited this crazy patchwork and just didn’t have the initiative to consolidate it. But then somebody actually studied this style of farming and realized they weren’t as dumb as they looked.  Crop failure was more than economic loss for those folks, it could be starvation.  But if one tiny plot of corn got mowed down by insects or a flood, another a mile away would probably still be safe.  The power of diversity instead of the sterility of sameness; those farmers knew how to cultivate.  How does God cultivate us?  Diversity or sameness?  Clearly God prefers diversity.  And if your family or your culture didn’t know how to cultivate your unique self, trust that God does.  Sameness is boring. I am so grateful that here in this church we can proclaim God’s love for people in all their diversity, their sexual and gender diversity, their ethnic and racial diversity, among other kinds.  God’s children of all kinds being themselves and caring for each other.  That’s God’s garden.

Cultivating also requires putting up with imperfection. If you want to cultivate anything new, be prepared.  You will meet new forms of imperfection that will surprise you.  The roses on our patio have been bare sticks for two months now. Does that bother anyone?  No, we toleratethatkind of imperfection  as the cost of growing roses.  We whack those rosebushes down to sticks on purpose.  Likewise, we don’t expect the persimmon tree in front of the kitchen to hold its leaves all winter.  Actually I didn’t have a clue before I came here whether persimmon trees were deciduous or evergreen, but I knew not to declare it dead when it lost its leaves in late Fall.  

Pity the California native plants.  Many of them lose their leaves in summer, when it doesn’t rain for seven months around here.  Smart, right?  “Summer dormant.” “Stress deciduous.”  Except gardeners think they’re dead, and rip them out of the ground.  Or declare them too homely to possibly be seen in a public garden.  Nobody says that about the roses or trees that are bare in winter.  More attentive gardeners see the native plants turning brown and assume they need more water. But they are not used to water in the summer. They never developed resistance to rot; they never were exposed to warm wet soil in thousands of years on the coastal hills of California. So water them well when it’s hot, and they’ll die for real.  Stress deciduous.  We don’t know how to cultivate what belongs here, because it is so different from what we expect in its inevitable imperfection.  Living things are always imperfect.  If you want perfection, buy lawn furniture. 

God is the master cultivator.  God is not surprised by our imperfections.  So…when we are in horror and shame at our failures, not ready to face the world, thinking we want to hide from everyone including the God whom we have failed, because we are only good for the compost heap, guess what? God might be smiling and saying, well, what do you expect?  I knew you were stress deciduous, even if you didn’t.  People are like that; they fall apart now and then.  Don’t panic!  You might need a pruning.  But you’ll green up and sprout again.  You’ll bloom when it’s your time.  

As we live into our identity as a Creation Justice church, it is our job to proclaim to the world that the earth is sacred, and that care of the earth and its creatures is a moral responsibility, a sacred imperative.  It’s never been more important to speak up for the earth than now.  We are cultivating a change of heart, so that we can have a future. 

It’s also our job to enjoy this world that God has given to our care, to savor its beauty, to learn its wisdom, and to treasure its gifts to us. When we visit sites of natural beauty, and hike, and bird watch, and garden, we cultivate relationships that make it a joy and a privilege to care for our earth.  And for one another, with patience for our imperfections.

And as we do this, we are learning how God operates.  God doesn’t dictate, God cultivates. With patience and wisdom and attention, knowing that we have our seasons of growth, and our times when we look ready for the compost heap.  God lovingly cultivates us, in our imperfections, in our uniqueness.  And delights in our growing and our blooming, and our sprouting anew.  Amen.