Growing

Worship – and especially sermons — often seem to be full of words …  So in this sermon (and the two to follow), we will be using our eyes as well as our ears to “listen” for the message.  I encourage you to follow the link to the picture as you read …

Growing

Luke 8:4-15 & John 6:35;  Jeremiah 17:7-8

Note: The image used in this sermon is “Mother Root” by Jan L. Richardson,

It is somewhat unnerving to encounter major financial crises in the week leading up to the beginning of our Stewardship season. But stewardship is about much more than money, and certainly about much more than anxiety about money. Stewardship is about receiving the gifts of God with gratitude, and about using the gifts of God with courage, imagination, extravagance, and joy.

So this morning I invite you to join with me in exploring an image and story that will be our teachers about gratitude, courage, imagination, extravagance, and joy.

The image above is the one on the cover of your bulletin today, Mother Root by Jan L. Richardson. We begin by simply looking (either at the bulletin or the projection on the north wall of the sanctuary).

One striking thing about this image is the symmetry of the roots and branches. If you have ever tried to move a tree that has been growing for a while, you may have been surprised by how far the roots reach out from the trunk. In many species, the roots grow out as far as the leaves do – just as they do in this painting. There’s a kind of balance here, between what holds the tree down and steady, and what reaches out and grows. Both are needed for a healthy tree

Let’s take a moment to look at the roots.  Richardson has drawn them with vibrant color, and let them ascend well up into the trunk of the tree. If this tree were our congregation, would we have drawn them in this way? Do we, as Jeremiah suggests, send out our roots to the stream, so that we do not fear from heat comes, and are not anxious in a drought? What else feeds and nurtures our faith community?

And now we turn to the leaves.   Again, if this tree were our congregation, what resources, programs, and services do we extend beyond ourselves? I used to give a talk in the new member class about the whole United Church of Christ being like a large tree, on which local churches like ours are the leaves. It is in the leaves, after all, where the basic work of the tree (photosynthesis) takes place, just as it is in each congregation that the basic work of faith takes place. Do we, as Jeremiah suggests, have a tree that “does not cease to bear fruit”?

Up in the corners of the image are the moon and the sun.  We sometimes talk about night and day as if they were opposites; the truth is that they are both parts of a single cycle. We might think of the moon phase as being times of coolness and rest, and the sun phase as times of warmth and energy. I wonder if our faith community honors that rhythm, or whether we get stuck in either a moon phase or a sun phase?

Finally, we turn our attention to the figures in the center of the image.  We can almost feel them stretching – up on their toes and teaching up and out. They make up the trunk of this great tree, and they are the connection between the roots and the branches. If we thought of these figures as a Trinitarian image (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; or Creator, Christ, and Spirit), what would they say about the divine presence in our community of faith?

  One of the things I love about this image as a representation of our congregation, is that it emphasizes that we are a living, growing organism – not just a building or an institution. It illustrates how important it is that we have deep roots, and shows how our faith forms the connection between those roots and our life in the wider world. It tells our story in a visual form.

But this visual narrative skips the beginning of the story, which is the planting of the seed. For that we turn to the parable of the sower, which we heard this morning from the gospel of Matthew (though it also appears in Mark and Luke). The way it is presented in Matthew, we cannot help but understand that Jesus is the sower, and the word of God is the seed. That makes us all of us into ground of various degrees of fertility – some of us are paving stones, some are rocks, some are thorns, and some are good soil.

Suppose we take a slightly different interpretive path, and see God as the sower and Jesus as the seed – in the sense that Jesus is the living word of God. What is striking about this version of the story is the extravagant way that God sows the seeds of the good news: seeds are strewn everywhere. God seems not to care whether the soil appears paved, rocky, thorn-ridden, or good.

If this were a story about our congregation, could we see ourselves as being extravagant sowers of the word? Are we a community that spreads our time and energies into places that others might see as rocky or thorny, or do we focus pretty much on what has been “good soil” for us in the past? Are we confident enough of God’s abundance that we are willing to take some chances in scattering seed?

Come January, we will probably be anxious about money – worried about the 2009 budget, and about the pledges and other income that we need to carry out the ministries to which we are called. But for now, instead of being distracted by those anxieties, let us focus our attention on this image and this story. Let us remember that we are part of a strong body with deep roots and wide branches; let us remember that God is at our core. Let us remember that God’s grace and mercy are abundant in our world, strewn in even the unlikeliest places.

And let us remember – and celebrate and honor –God’s invitation to live courageously, imaginatively, extravagantly, and joyfully in growing, and making, and sharing a world of Shalom.

Prayer for October 5, 2008

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

Holy One, we pray this morning for our friends.

We thank you for the blessing of having friends: people to share our lives with, who know so much about us, who tolerate our foibles and shortcomings and celebrate our gifts and talents. We are grateful for their help and encouragement and for their humor and companionship; we are grateful, too, for the ways they surprise and challenge us.

Forgive us, we pray, when we are reluctant to invest in our friendships, and when we let other activities crowd out the time that we might spend with one another. Give us a deeper commitment to quality time, and the resolve to set aside distractions that divert our attention.

We also pray today for the wisdom, courage, and persistence to be good friends to others. Open our ears so that we can be careful listeners, and open our hearts so that we can hear the stories behind the stories and the longings behind the laughter. Help us to cherish the friends who come into our lives, comfort with us when we mourn the ones who leave.

We remember that Jesus taught us that we are his friends, and so we pray for the capacity to be worthy of that friendship. Help us to commit to our divine friendships as fully and delightedly as we enter into human friendships, and to share the delights and demands of these divine friendships with one another.

Make this the day, we pray, in which we rekindle friendships that have lapsed, and in which we remember with tenderness and gratitude the friendship of those who have passed on. Grant us the grace to carry their virtues, their stories, and their spirits into the future as a legacy of our relationships.

All this we pray in the name of the one who calls us into relationship with you and all of your creation, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us ..