August 25, 2005
Gardens
Pentecost 15/17A
“I never promised you a rose garden.” That’s often the familiar copout when the chore we took on for somebody doesn’t turn out as comfy as we thought it would. I don’t know why roses. Rose gardens are lovely, but anybody who ever planted one knows they’re no snap to nurse, and that their thorns last a lot longer than their blooms.
Being faithful to the call of God is like that. Do it, and life right away gets complex and tumultuous rather than simple and peaceful. Jeremiah and Paul and Jesus can all testify to this and do in their stories that make up today’s lections. The common theme? Faithfulness will get you nowhere or maybe somewhere you’d rather not be.
Jeremiah tangles with God’s dynamic and swings between faith and doubt, peace and turmoil, certainty and confusion (Jer 15.15-21). Paul’s commitment to the Gentiles only drives a deeper wedge between himself and the Jews (Rms 12.1-8). Jesus’ certain awareness of the perils ahead challenges the loyalties of his disciples and puts their relationship on very shaky ground (Mt 16.21-26).
Any church worth its salt lives in this kind of tension all the way from leaving its doors unlocked 24/7 and risking theft and vandalism to exposing — even wasting — its program and budget in the interest of the sick and the poor and dispossessed. Too many of us never get that far being preoccupied with orthodox niceties like we so often are. Faith is always risky and even clumsy, especially when we try to use canon law and discipline as a vehicle for grace and love.
Today’s church is busily setting standards for membership in pew and pulpit and requiring of its clergy to withhold its blessing for love wherever and in whatever form we may find it. When Jesus sets the demands for discipleship — Take up your cross and follow me — he does not talk in terms of rules to be followed or specific tasks to be accomplished. He talks about the need for us to get out of the way of ourselves with an open invitation to follow him when we have not the vaguest notion where his Way will lead and are not all that sure that he does, either.
As well with Paul’s counsel to the Romans. “Do not be conformed to this world… ” but be “transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Do not be conformed to the world’s obsession with the symbols of power and prestige, but be transformed in Christ. Do not be conformed to the exploitation of others, but be transformed by letting your love be genuine. Do not be conformed to the way of vengeance and hatred, but bless them that persecute you and, as Jesus urged, even love them and offer them justice.
Facing the world’s current traumas, how is such a ministry informed and shaped? What might the world’s families be like now had we set out to conquer poverty and genocide as our response to 9/11 by pouring our billions into such a mission rather than into the explosive and interminable violence of Iraq? How might the victims of 9/11 and their families feel about love and generosity and justice in their name and the memory of their loved ones? How might our armies of death now function and what might they have accomplished had we enlisted them rather into legions of peace? What if we had truly risked modeling our constitutional democracy in a palpable community of justice more consistent with our founding?
A couple of memorable gardens — Eden and Gethsemane — stand prominent in our tradition. A garden of irresistible temptation and a garden of redemptive commitment. I don’t remember any rose gardens ever figuring in the scheme of things.
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