← Back Published on

Seedlings: Easter Sunday 2023

  • Have you planted your garden yet for the spring and early summer?
    • If you've ever started a garden from scratch, you know how much of a start-up effort it can be
      • The soil here in north Florida isn't the best, so as you till up your soil, you then need to amend it
      • Then it's finding appropriate plants
      • Then it's all the work you need to do at first to make sure things are going okay - stake your tomatoes, monitor the watering and make adjustments
    • But, what's great is after all the initial start up work, subsequent seasons are different
      • Ideally, you've also started a compost pile, so that when the fallow season arrives, you're able to amend with what you already have.
      • If you've figured out your rotations of watering and fertilizing, it's not as much guess work the next time around.
      • And, year over year, if you're strategic, the garden bed gets stronger
    • While it's always tempting to consume everything in a massive feast, setting aside a little bit supplies the garden for the next turn.
      • It's funny how insignificant those seeds are. You dry them, store them, and they look like a bunch of nothing. But in them - especially those you harvest yourself, are the story of your previous year's garden as well as the potential of the next one.
      • And of course, you can always buy the plants next year, or skip it altogether and go to the store for everything, but that little bit of work and planning I think creates something meaningful. I'm not disconnected in the same way from what in some small way sustains me.
  • I wonder where Easter Sunday is in terms of a garden's life
    • It's tempting, I believe, to look at today as the harvest. Jesus coming from the grave, revealing himself.
      • Here makes the labor of the last week worth it.
      • Here we're able to consume the triumph over death and power to new life.
      • And if we do that, I suppose we can even look at a Sunday like this one together as a bit of a consumable feast.
        • The table is set nicely, we're gathered in our best
        • Visitors coming in from out of town
        • This feels like a party!
    • Yet I'm not convinced that is the case. If we were looking for a harvest, we might be too late.
      • Last week seems to be another reenactment of the work of the gardener: fulfilling the Scriptures, doing the work that is needed to ensure that all will happen the way it's supposed to.
      • It then would seem Maundy Thursday - where Jesus and the disciples gather in an intimate, loving space as the harvest.
      • Good Friday and Holy Saturday, then, are the times when the garden, having spent itself, fades to death. But yet, even in its fallow state, there is still preparation to come.
    • Sunday, then, I think, might be that seed saved from the harvest.
      • For something so small to create something so significant, the seed has its own kind of earthquaking ability.
      • And moreover, a seed left for a quiet season that suddenly springs to life feels like a resurrection unto itself.
      • But as Jesus says "Greetings," there is a moment where past ministry and future ministry meet.
        • We cannot ignore all that had happened in the last three years of ministry to get to this point - all the ways the soil has been tilled, the rhythm of growth understood.
        • Nor can we take for granted that this moment is not the end of the ministry. Even if it laid fallow, plants dying and withering, the past provides the new life for what comes next.
        • And while it isn't in our passage today, Matthew ends on this note with his disciples - the last words of the gospel is to "go therefore and make disciples... teach them to obey what I've commanded you" and "I'm with you, to the end of the age"
        • But here, at this moment, that seedling, left from the harvest, peeks it way up from the soil again.
  • I have to imagine here today, there are seeds in your spirit, looking to be planted in good soil.
    • You, too, carry the past with you. Rarely would we gather into this place on this day without carrying some part of the tilling of faithful soil before.
    • And I know the temptation to think that this day is the harvest day, as I mentioned before. Should we consume the fruit of today in full, and then head back out, I wonder what we have left to sustain us. Do our gardens atrophy, bear less. Might we only be left with what we can gather from the store - disconnected from the source, without a past nor a future, less rich in color and taste. It might be more convenient, but convenience isn't always the end goal, especially when a little labor returns such beauty.
    • Instead, what if we all saw today as a chance to plant this seed again in rich soil? To act as communal gardeners, to work the ground, clear the debris, fertilize and water the spirit?
      • Might our spirits erupt like the smallest earthquakes, blooming forth from this soil, offering greetings to the world once again?
      • Might we feel like we are becoming what we were meant to be: connected to a history with a hope for a future?
      • Might we no longer feel commodified? Here to fill a role for a return, nothing more nothing less?
  • I often look at these Sundays - the big ones - as love letters from God and from me to each of you. And I think if I could leave you with anything, it's just that I hope you see that the resurrection seedling here today, that sits in each of our hearts as we wonder if the tilling is worth it all, if the garden really is dead, if we just gotten tired of having to work the ground, that it's still worth it all. Maybe here - maybe elsewhere, but it's worth planting. It's worth being with other folks who want to see the same. Because there, truly, is where I believe we'll see the risen Christ offering greetings once more. Thanks be to God.