Growing Season

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Proper 6, Year B
June 13, 2021
 
Grandaddy Thomas was a grower.  He had a farm and, over the course of years, he raised cows, sheep, chickens, horses, and lots of rotating crops.  Fortunately, he had furniture store too, because farming is a precarious business.  When he retired, he leased out the land for someone else to do the planting, harvesting -- letting them place their faith in forty sacks of seed and good weather.  But at heart, Grandaddy Thomas was a grower.  When he stopped tending creatures and field crops, his vegetable garden became epic.  It’s bounty filled cases and cases of mason jars for the stovetop canner, and boxes and boxes of plastic bags to be filled, labeled, and stuffed into one of the three chest freezers.  If a great famine ever came, Grandaddy Thomas was ready.
 
It all started in the dead of winter.  After the Christmas cards cleared out, P.O. Box 35 was crammed with thick catalogs from Burpee, FedCo, and any number of seed club publications.  The Thomas garden was hip to heirloom seeds before that was even cool.  As hope soared, Grandaddy ordered some of everything.  He grew rows of silver queen corn, fifteen varieties of tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, pole beans, wax beans, snap beans and butter beans, new potatoes, sweet potatoes, and all kinds of onions.  He grew vegetables nobody liked just to see if he could.  Thus, a summer trip to the farm meant cool mornings in the garden, picking our favorite foods for supper, oh, and some mandatory weeding.
 
Right now, we are on the front end of that season when all of that winter dreaming would come to fruition.   This is the time of fruition following winter’s dreaming, ordering, and planning, spring’s back breaking tilling, and delicate planting of row upon row of seeds: those tiny little containers of promise, gently placed, and covered, and watered.  And, of course, there has been constant weeding and thinning, and more watering, and thank God for good farm dogs who know it is their job to keep the rabbits, moles, and groundhogs running to safety at the margins of the woods.
 
Even now, though Grandaddy’s garden plot is covered with grass, the heat, humidity, and afternoon storms remind me that it is about time for the produce to come in.  It is kind of built into me troll the farmers markets and find what is fresh or just ripe, to find out what is coming in.  As important as procuring fresh deliciousness is talking with the growers about what crops are flourishing and what crops are struggling.  Inevitably we get too little rain or not enough and we look to the heavens for signs.
 
So perfectly, produce season always follows Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday.  This is my favorite part of the liturgical calendar, and I have to admit that though I really enjoy the big church days, there is some sweet relief as we move through the things that are large and hard to encapsulate and fathom.  There is real joy in getting back to basics, coming back to earth and where we live and move and have our being.  Taking the cue from spring becoming summer, the rhythm of our remembering invites us to hear Jesus teach though the word pictures of parables, opening our mind’s eye to see God’s abundance and grace.  As if on cue, today he speaks of the tiny smallness of a seed becoming something great and prolific.  He speaks of how the earth mirrors the love and creativity of God, working to make all things new.
 
In one of his poems about finding the meaning in things, Billy Collins laments that all folks want to do is “tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.”  Likewise, we have to remember that a parable is a picture, not moralistic fable.  Sometimes we are the seeds, sometimes we are the soil, and sometimes we are the weeds.  Most of the time a parable is not about us, really, at all.  They are about God, seeking, searching and finding a way through to us.  Jesus knows that his hearers are inextricably tied to the land and dependent on it for survival.  It is be good for us to remember that too, not matter far removed we may seem.
 
There are so many things that parables can do with us.  This is the genius of speaking and thinking of God in big and bold pictures, opening our minds, rather than narrowing them down.  Those little seeds we planted in lent are now bushes of rosemary and blooming marigolds – so long as they were tended and watered.
 
Today, we are back inside our beloved sanctuary.  This space which housed a big wedding yesterday, is a suitcase for growing us in love too.  We are back in the space of remembering and a space where we host crucial rites of passage.  Here, we plant seeds, we work the soil of our hearts, and we name the weeds and worries that beset us with doubts or uncertainties. Here too, we find comfort, hope, and weekly refreshment to live abundant life.  
 
Emmanuel Church has not been dormant, we have just been doing things differently, improvising where we have needed to do so.  I am grateful to all who have schlepped chairs and tables, loudspeakers, boxes of masks and hand sanitizer.  With some of that behind us, we are in a new space, a new season, and it is ripe with opportunity.  As worship is the work of the people, we welcome all of us into the privilege of ushering, acolyting, welcoming, setting the altar table, and adorning the space with flowers.  If you used to do some of these things in here, and want to do so again, it’s time to return.  If you never did any of this before, there is a place for you.  If you want to do something different do something new, there is a place for that too.  We have a nice long summer ahead to plant and grow and weed and water.
 
From last week’s Book and Author Day, we saw how so many hands and hearts came together for something really special.  When the food truck crashed it’s hood and had to shut down, the Emmanuel Hot Dog Miracle came together and folks got well fed.  We do not have to do big things like that all of the time, but the ingredients of that day: welcome, play time, feasting, and loving on each other, that is what Emmanuel does well. 
 
We are in a new season.  It is time for us to dream and hope and plan.  Not everything will just get back to whatever we thought was normal.  At least, I hope not.  Surely, we have learned from being apart, and outside, and covered up.  This is a great season in our life and in our history to fling the seeds of love and faith generously, to pull the weeds that bring us down, and gather whatever produce is ready to come in.  We are God’s growers in this world, and the garden ripe.  Amen.