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A sermon preached at
Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ
Bethesda, Maryland
by the Rev. Rich Smith
Roots, Shoots, and Fruits
Well, I’ve finally done it! After five years of missing it, complaining about it, and suffering because of the lack it, I have finally returned some grounding and stability to my life by planting a vegetable garden! Over the years, I have found that there are few things more therapeutic than spending time working with the soil, planting seeds, pulling weeds, tilling and hoeing and fertilizing and pruning, and at last, harvesting the fruits of my labors. Nothing better than a salad picked fresh that day, or if I'm lucky, sweet corn, plucked from the stalk just as the water comes to a boil. And there are few things more satisfying than to be able to leave a bag of zucchini on your neighbor’s doorstep while they’re not looking, or on the seat of their car if they’ve left the windows rolled down!
For most of my life I’ve had a garden. Garrison Keillor says that if your grandfather was a gardener, you probably will be also, and that certainly was the case with me -- both grandfathers were, actually, and in my family all of us in my generation garden. We compost, we share produce, we even compete. But for the last five years this joy has been absent from my life. Mostly, that was because in our first house in Bethesda there were twenty-nine trees on the property, doing what trees are supposed to do – provide shade! And while I appreciated the shade, and had plenty of leaves for compost, there was simply no suitable place for a vegetable garden.
A year ago we moved into a different house, and while it has its share of trees, there is a big sunny spot in the back yard, and so we had it dug up and lots of mulch added, and finally, on Friday evening, I planted. And you should soon see a difference in my demeanor! And with luck, the mysterious appearance of zucchini on your door-step!
As I said, gardening is therapeutic -- and it's good to do something where you can actually see the results! -- but more than that, it's spiritually renewing and transformative. It keeps me grounded, if you’ll pardon the pun! In planting and watering and tending, but knowing that it is God who gives the growth, it helps me understand that I am a partner with God in the ongoing work of creation. God isn't going to grow tomatoes without my help (unlike raspberries, which are pure grace); but of course the tomatoes won't grow without the rain and sun that God gives, either. But it's more than understanding. It's experience. It's the experience of being a partner with God. And it is also the practice of faith.
I recall some lines by author E.B. White, from the introduction to his late wife's essays entitled Onward and Upward in the Garden. Of her he writes, "The only moment in the year when she actually got herself up for gardening was on the day in fall that she had selected, in advance, for the laying out of the spring bulb garden.
"The morning often turned out to be raw and overcast, with a searching wind off the waters -- an easterly that finds its way quickly to your bones. Armed with a diagram and a clipboard, Katharine would get into a shabby old Brooks raincoat much too long for her, put on a little round wool hat, pull on a pair of overshoes, and proceed to the director's chair -- a folding canvas thing -- that had been placed for her at the edge of the plot. There she would sit, hour after hour, in the wind and the weather, while (her hired man) produced dozens of brown paper packages of new bulbs and a basketful of old ones, ready for the intricate interment. As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion -- the small, hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection."
Well, you can plot the resurrection in May, as well, and not just by gardening. So many things that we do are acts of faith in which we plant seeds, tend them, nurture them, pray for them, coax them along to the harvest. Mothering is like that. Raising children is a lot like that – an act of faith in which you care for that which you have planted, and birthed – you feed, and nurture, and create the best growing conditions possible, protect them from pests, bring them along to the point where they will bear fruit of their own – the fruit being not only their deeds and accomplishments, but the kind of persons they are. At some point, if you do your job well, the fruit falls to the ground and you have no control over it anymore, and that is an act of faith as well, to relinquish your hold, and trust that if you have done your job as a mother, or father, or gardener, that it will be all right.
Teaching a Confirmation Class is also like that – we receive seven young plants in the fall, and nurture them along in their journey in faith. We try to apply the right sort of fertilizer, nutrients that will strengthen their roots and facilitate their growth. We expose them to other plants in the garden of the church, since these are “smart plants” and they can learn from the example of others. We give them experiences of living in the garden together, because they aren’t just a lone plant in a flower pot. All of which, we hope, leads to maturity and to the production of fruit, a harvest of the Spirit that we can celebrate not only today, but long into the future.
It is no surprise to me that Jesus so often used agricultural images in his teaching, so often compared to kingdom of God to that which was near at hand and so much a part of the daily lives of his hearers. When he said, “I am the vine, you are the branches,” he was employing an image that they could all understand – and we can too – an image of the kingdom marked by a community in which each member is intertwined with the other. Picture, if you will, a vineyard, grape vines with many branches radiating out from a single core. As Jesus puts it, here God is the gardener, or the vine-grower. Christ is the vine, the core of the plant that includes the roots reaching down into the earth, roots which are the conduit for all that brings life, water and nutrients. The disciples, the church, you and I, are the branches, the shoots off the core vine, the shoots which are the link between the roots and the fruits. There is an intimate inter-relatedness, which we call “abiding” – Jesus abides in the disciples, and they in him. There is also constant pruning by this gardener God to pare away those traits and qualities that interfere with kingdom building and to strengthen those traits that ensure the health of the community, pruning that must occur if there is to be any fruit at all. It is a kingdom, a community, marked by a deep mutual love, and an ongoing push to ever greater love.
This image teaches me at least three things about Jesus’ vision for human community, or the realm of God. One is that we’re all in it together, intertwining branches on Christ’s vine. The health of one depends on the health of the others. What affects one, affects the others. And a branch cut off from the others will die. I read a story recently about a young woman who had a heart transplant. After the operation she found herself with some new tastes and new likes. She suddenly had a craving for hot spicy foods, and, worse, now she found she liked sports. Turns out the donor had loved spicy food and was an avid sports fan. When Jesus shows us how interconnected we are, we don’t really realize it until we hear a story like this. It’s not always this literal, but we really are part of one another, one body in Christ. And so famine or genocide or epidemics or earthquakes in other parts of the world are still a part of our world, even when we do not see them first hand. The shooting death of a police detective in Virginia, or a child in an accident in Bethesda – both recently in the news – touches us, even if we didn’t know them, because we are part of one another. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” A hole in the ozone over Antarctica affects the health of the whole planet. We’re in it together, all branches on the same vine.
And a second thing this image teaches me is that painful as it is, pruning is necessary! That was so hard for me to do, when I planted trees at my first house out on the desert nearly three decades ago. I so much wanted shade, and apples, that I hated to take the clippers out. But the garden book said, “Prune, prune, prune. Prune mercilessly!” I drove by our old place last fall, and could hardly see the house for all the trees around it. The pruning paid off.
Harry Emerson Fosdick told of coming upon a apple orchard in Maine, each tree laden with fruit. He noticed that each tree also had a big gash in its trunk. The farmer explained, “If you just let a tree go, it will put out a lot of leaves and foliage, and hardly any fruit. But if you wound it, it will turn its energy toward fruit.” To prune a tree would seem to handicap it, but as it turns out, it also makes it productive. Howard Thurman reminds us that a tree can only grow fruit on new wood, and pruning is what makes that possible. In our own lives, it is the pruning that will lead to our own growth, and the bearing of fruit. Whether that be adversity, challenges, suffering, dealing with the unexpected, intentionally jettisoning our excess baggage, or simply more planned and routine things, like opening ourselves to new ideas and experiences, going out of our way to meet people with whom we would not normally associate, praying – whether to confess our sins and shortcomings or simply to report for duty. In all of this we become new persons, grow new wood, when we listen for the Still Speaking God and enlarge our outlook; hear the needs of others and enlarge our compassion; confront the demands of discipleship and of God’s realm and commit ourselves to follow more nearly the way of Jesus. Then we become like a well-watered, well-pruned tree, able to bear fruit.
And a third thing that this image teaches me is simply this: stay connected. In just about every way I can think of, it means that we are not independent so much as inter-dependent. In baptism, which six of our youth are confirming today, we recognize that we are joined with Jesus, that he is the one in whom we root our lives, and it is only through him that we are able to draw strength and bear fruit. Others may find that rootedness elsewhere, and we are Christians who recognize and celebrate the validity of other paths, other names for the source of life. But Jesus is our path and our source of life, the one in whom we are rooted, and we must choose to stay connected to him. We do this in many ways – through Bible study, through prayer, through our participation in the Church. Some, like me, find this cosmic connection as well in things like music, nature, and gardening. We need to stay connected, however we do it, for without this connection to our roots, we will be fruitless, and surely die.
“I am the vine,” says Jesus, “and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit....God is glorified by this: that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” We come now to that time in our service which we call “the Rite of Confirmation,” in which we affirm and celebrate the abiding connection between the vine and the branches in these young persons, and their desire now to bear fruit and be disciples of Jesus Christ. God is surely glorified in this! And so I invite them to come forward at this time.
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