The Consuming Fire of God's Love

 Preached at  North Valley Friends Church

September 22, 2024

The Consuming Fire of God’s Love

When Leslie asked me to consider preaching at NVFC, I told her that I think I am always preaching one sermon in different guises, namely that God’s love must have an object and God’s creation is that object, that God loves you and me. Often this is a consoling message. As Jesus said, perhaps with a bit of wry humor, “are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and yet not one of them falls to the ground without my Father knowing. Fear not, for you are of more value than many sparrows.” Here is a bit of the flavor of Micah 3.  "Listen, pray, chieftains of Jacob and captains of the house of Israel. Is it not yours to know what is right? Haters of good and lovers of evil . . . who devour My people's flesh and strip their skin from them and crack open their bones.  And they cut it like flesh in the pot and like meat in the cauldron" (The Hebrew Bible, "Prophets," tr. Robert Alter, 2015).

It was a surprise to me to find that it took only a few hours to see that this message too is about the fact that God loves us, you and me.  This is a message about God’s grace.

But first, I want to respond to Micah. I notice that he addresses three classes of people with power in their culture: priests, judges, and prophets. These define morality for the rest of their society. They tell other people what is right and wrong. But Micah accuses them of cannibalism towards other people, skinning them, breaking their bones, sucking out the marrow. To bring this into non-figurative terms, they destroy the lives of those for whom they define the rules, those in their care, under their influence; they take away their lives in order to enrich their own. They are predatory. 

We can look at those in our own society’s leadership who also cannibalize others, who remove from them the means of life; who destroy others to add to their own abundance; who ruin others’ chances to live fully and freely. 

And while it is comforting to point the finger at corruption above us in the power structure,

it would be a mistake to hear Micah talking only to those at the top of his culture. For this to have relevance to us, we need to consider that power includes greater physical strength, greater prestige and social capital, greater ability to decide who gets in and who must stay out—gate keeping. We need to recognize our own power over others, whether it is coercive or manipulative or accidental. We need to admit when we have misused our power, our privilege, depriving others of the ability to thrive and become their whole selves.

We can hear echoes of Micah’s message in the words of Jesus, first to the religious leaders, but then to everyone who has ears. I won’t rehearse all of the condemnations of the actions of the scribes and Pharisees, but I’ll remind you of this one: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and uncleanness. You bind heavy loads on others’ shoulders but you are unwilling to lift a finger to help them carry those loads.”  I will remind us, remind me, that Jesus also said, shockingly, that anyone who makes it hard for a little one to trust God would be better off drowned, and that whatever is done to the “least of these” is done to Jesus Himself.  And also that not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what Jesus’s Father and our Father says to do. And further that those who look on their hungry, thirsty, ragged, imprisoned neighbors and do nothing to alleviate this distress are not part of God’s sheep, not among God’s people. How much worse to actively contribute to or even cause another’s misery.  Jesus is not less demanding than Micah, and perhaps, given that he is talking right to us, is even more so. No wonder the liturgical confession includes both what we have done and what we have left undone.  

When Jesus was asked the greatest commandment, he said, “Love God with everything you are and have, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus knew he had to add the second, which he said is like the first, because we can talk ourselves into believing we love God while we are doing harm to our neighbor. But also, this contains in it the truth that when we harm others we also harm ourselves, and conversely that love for others and love for oneself go arm in arm.

We have seen that Jesus shares Micah’s outrage about the misuse of power and influence. So how can we move from admitting our selfishness and apathy and self-indulgence at others’ expense to a better understanding about God’s love for us, God’s grace toward us? We need to recognize that God’s grace may look a lot like judgment, God’s grace is surgical, and our response to this intrusive grace of God makes all the difference.

I owe much of my understanding of God’s intrusive and uncomfortable grace to three writers: George MacDonald, Flannery O’Connor, and Julian of Norwich. George MacDonald was a novelist and preacher in the 1800s whose writing was hugely influential on C.S. Lewis.  He writes in one of his Unspoken Sermons, “The Consuming Fire”:

Nothing is inexorable but love….Love has ever in view the absolute [the potential] loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more…Therefore all that…comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire. (18-19)

Let us have grace to serve the Consuming Fire, our God, with divine fear; not with the fear that cringes and craves, but with the bowing down of all thoughts, all delights, all loves before him who is the life of them all and will have them all pure. (20)

…the fear towards God will be one with the homeliest love. Yea, the fear of God will cause a person to flee, not from God, but from the self, in terror lest that person do [wrong to ] God or [to] a neighbor .… (21)

In sum, God will love us into our best selves, and whatever we carry around with us that prevents us being that best self will have to go. This is the work of grace for us.

I learned a similar view of God’s grace from Flannery O’Connor, a mid 20th century writer of novels and short stories. Her self-satisfied characters are often jolted awake by God’s grace in a way they would never have chosen. Their casual American Christianity is not enough. I’ll mention one character and how God’s grace destroys in order to redeem.  In “Revelation,” a good solid Christian woman named Mrs. Turpin is attacked in the doctor’s office as she is making banal conversation about who is and who isn’t trash. A young woman throws a book at her, raising a bump on the forehead, and shouts, “Go back to hell where you came from, you fat warthog.”

What makes this traumatic moment redemptive is that Mrs. Turpin turns immediately to God and complains about being treated like this, while all the while wondering why God would send her this message. And because she turns toward God instead of away, and in recognition of her willingness to learn despite her anger and humiliation, God gives her a vision of the redemption of humanity, beginning with those she places at the bottom of the heap and ending with her kind of people. She sees the vast stream of human beings moving into glory, and her own kind of people are at the end of the line.

She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were [singing] on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.  She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead…In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah. (The Complete Stories, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 508) 

And finally, to Julian of Norwich, a mystic and anchorite from the 1300s. She had a near-death experience in which she had a vision of Jesus. She meditated on that vision for the rest of her life and gained profound understanding about God’s love and God’s intention to redeem and make all things well.  Along the way, she hears Jesus say this:

“For I will wholly break you of your vain affections and your vicious pride; and after that I shall gather you and make you meek and mild, clean and holy by oneing (uniting) you to me.” ( The Revelation of Love, tr. John Skinner, 86)

So what can we take of comfort and consolation from Micah 3? We can rejoice that God’s love always intends what is best for us and always builds up what is best in us; we can trust that God will make us good, and we can welcome the intrusion of God’s grace when we are not good as we face the both the consequences of doing harm and the divine surgery that will save us.  We can understand that God’s grace is not about excusing but about remaking, about healing, about redeeming what is perverse, wounded, and lost.  We can take heart, even as we tremble, that God’s love is inexorable and will do us good.

God's Repair Shop

Preached at Silverton Friends Church

September 24, 2023

 
I’ve been watching The Repair Shop from England on YouTube. The show is built around a workshop of experts in restoration and repair in woodworking, clock-making, leatherwork, art, ceramics, toymaking, metalworking. These experts meet with ordinary people who bring in cherished heirlooms that need attention. As the show says, “While some of the items pass through The Repair Shop due to unfortunate accidents, others are simply ravages of time.” And still others are there because of bad actors. But all are welcomed into the shop and the skillful crafters there work on them, often with nearly magical results. As Will the woodworker says, “This is the workshop of dreams.”

This show makes me reconsider how God looks at the work of restoration and ask myself, “Do these experts reflect something of God’s response to human beings who  need repair, restoration, conservation?”

There are some problems with the analogy I’m going to draw, so let’s acknowledge them up front. First, when people in the Bible encounter God personally (or even just God’s messenger), God often has to say, “Don’t be afraid.” Something about God is awe-inspiring, filling ordinary humans with dread and even terror. “Woe is me!” said Isaiah. Even Jesus occasionally terrified his followers, as when he stilled the storm.  “Who is this that even the weather obeys him!” The experts on The Repair Shop, though amazingly skilled, are friendly humans.  Not scary.  So there is that.

Second, the items brought in do not have wills. They are objects rather than persons, so they do not resist or evade their repairers, though they are certainly often a challenge. Often these items have been loved almost into life by their owners, particularly if they have been a part of their childhood; nonetheless, the items cannot and do not sabotage the repairs.

So what about this show reminds me of the love God has for human beings? As Psalm 8 says, “What are mortals that You God should notice them? What are human creatures that you pay them heed?” There is a mystery about why God loves us, and we take refuge in the word from the Bible that God is love. Jesus is historical evidence that God loves us and wants to save us from error, from brokenness, from evil. This is simply the character of God.

Many Christians have been taught to think that God sees human beings as evil. Some theologies even say that God cannot look on us human beings because of our sins. Imagine this attitude in The Repair Shop.  Clockmaker Steve looks at a broken watch and all he sees is brokenness. So he simply looks away until someone puts a brand-new watch in between him and the broken one. As long as that perfect watch blots out his view of the broken one, he can be happy. Otherwise, he tosses someone’s cherished heirloom into the rubbish.

All through the Bible, the various writers are well aware that God sees their good and their evil.  Job challenges God by reciting how he is good and asking to be told what he’s done that is so wrong it deserves punishment.  The psalmist who wrote Psalm 139 explores in detail how well God knows him or her: You know when I sit and I rise…and with all my ways you are familiar. Wherever I go or even run away from you, your hand leads me and your right hand seizes me. Search me, God, and know my heart, probe me and know my mind. And see if a vexing way be in me, and lead me on the eternal way. (Alter, 316, 317, alt.) And the writer of Hebrews reminds us that the Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword…a discerner of the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.

George MacDonald, 19th century writer and preacher, believed in the inexorable love of God, a love that absolutely wants the best for us, wants us to be our best, and will work on and with us until that goal is met. When C.S. Lewis suffered the loss of his wife Joy, he wrote that if God was just cutting us open to torture us, we could hope that he would lose interest, but that if God was performing surgery to heal us, we could not hope for any relief until God’s work is done.  (Sounds a lot like Job, who said, Could you not look away from me long enough to let me spit on the ground.) Perhaps absolute love can both terrify and comfort us.  After all, God remembers we are dust.
 
When someone brings their beloved object into The Repair Shop, broken, worn, sometimes vandalized, clockmaker Steve and his colleagues say things like this:

I love the challenge of [fixing] something like this.

I love to improve things; I hate to see things thrown away.

This is a nice exciting project.

It’s an honor to be working on this.

I’m thrilled to work on it.

I’ve been imagining God’s Spirit with me, with us, seeing our brokenness, our missing parts, our worn-out-ness, and saying to the rest of the trinity, “I love the challenge of fixing something like this.  I love to improve things; I hate to see things thrown away. It’s an honor to be working on this. I’m thrilled to work on it.”

One scripture that comes to mind is this from Psalm 103.

God forgives all your sins, heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the Pit, surrounds you with steadfast love and mercy….The Lord executes righteous acts and judgments for all who are wronged….As a father [an ideal father] has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For He knows how we are formed; He is mindful that we are dust. The Lord’s steadfast love is for all eternity toward those who fear him.” (The Jewish Study Bible, p1396)

Or this translation by Robert Alter: [God] forgives all your wrongs, heals all your diseases, redeems your life from the Pit, crowns you with kindness, compassion…The Lord performs righteous acts and justice for all the oppressed….As a father has compassion for his children, the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For He knows our devisings, recalls that we are dust…The Lord’s kindness is forever and ever over those who fear him…(Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, “The Writings” p. 239-241)

These words stand out: Forgives, heals, redeems, surrounds, crowns—These are the actions of our God. This is the God we stand in awe of. This is the God who has to say over and over, “Fear not!” Respect is too small a word to describe our response to our God. We can see a little of what it means to see God in action when Jesus stills the storm on the lake, and his close followers and friends fall back in fear and amazement. This is the God who forgives, heals, redeems, surrounds, crowns.  This is the God who, for reasons beyond us, loves us.

It is the attitudes of the repairers toward both the object and the owner that reminds me of God. Their tenderheartedness toward the present owner and absolute respect for the original craftsperson shine through over and over.

Listening
When a person brings an object into The Repair Shop to be worked on, The Repair Shop expert will ask: What do you want me to do with this? Sometimes the owner replies, I want it back as close as possible to when it was first made.  Sometimes the owner says, I want this repaired, but I don’t want all the marks of history taken away. Sometimes the owner says, I just want to hear it chime again, or see it move like it did when I was a child, or I hope you can fix the corner the woodworm ate away.

(This is different from when I took my diamond ring in for cleaning and got it back with all the 1970s antiquing removed as well.  I was shocked and sad, but it was too late to change.  Look at how new it looks, the jeweler said.)

The experts listen to the stories of the objects from their owners.  Their response is always tender and hopeful.  They have confidence in their expertise, and they value what the owners value in the item.  No item is beneath their interest. Steve the clockmaker spent hours on a plastic toy spaceship from the 1960s, getting it to spin but most importantly, getting it to hum like its owner remembered.  

Loving the challenge
These experts love a challenge.  They may moan a little over the complexity of the task, but they really enjoy their work.  Will the woodworker looks at a hundred pieces that have fallen off a chalet music box and puzzles them back on appropriately.  Kirsten the ceramicist looks at a shattered vase and not only reforms it but creates the missing pieces and then carefully paints it so it blends in. The toy experts dismantle a much-loved teddy bear, gently clean years of grime away, carefully match fabrics, and return it to the person who loved it as a child. In many cases, the owner does not want the years of love and use erased, but instead just wants it to be whole again. The owners often value the history revealed in scratches and worn patches, and they also are overjoyed that the bear has both eyes again.

Exercising patience
The experts are patient.  They will say things like, “This is the fiddly bit, but I like fiddly bits.” I’m always amazed at the man who repairs music boxes. He gets it moving first, then listens for false notes.  Again and again he solders or files and then tests it again.

Going beyond expectations
These experts like to do even more than asked. When restoring the chalet music box, Will notices a tiny dog house on the front. So he carves a tiny dog for the dog house. Extra. The toy restorers tie a bow around the teddy’s neck just to dress him up. Extra. Lucia, the art conservator, researches the provenance of the painting she has just restored and gives the owner more reasons to be proud of it.  Extra.

God also listens, God loves the challenge, God is patient, and God goes beyond expectations.

Here are a couple of Repair Shop stories that are lovely parables for us.

Lucia, the art expert, works to conserve the paintings brought to her. The one I saw most recently was a portrait with a hole through the lady’s lips, the result of an adolescent boy throwing a dart at it.  So she had first to repair the 15-year-old hole in the canvas by wetting the threads, restoring them to position with an adhesive behind the canvas, filling in the hole from the front with an acrylic filler, and then painting that twice, once with watercolor to cover the filler and once with oil or acrylic to blend in with the rest of the paint.  She also took the time to carefully clean the painting, and in so doing discovered decades worth of nicotine stain that obscured the rich coloring. Her careful work brought the painting back to its original beauty, and took away the damage caused by carelessness, though of course you can see the repairs from the back.  She also took time to research it, and she explained to its owners why it was more than just a sentimental heirloom, how it fit into history.

Steve, the clockmaker, had a pocket watch that was the only family possession saved by a woman taken to the concentration camp in WWII. She had hidden it by sewing it into her clothing. It was so thin and delicate that it gave Steve more anxiety than most of his repairs.  He began by opening it up and observing the works. He cleaned the clockworks of 80 years and he washed its face. Then he put it back together and it ran, as they say, like clockwork. It was a reminder of resilience and also of the present time. The grandson was moved to tears with gratitude.


When people get back their items, they will often tear up in the stoic British way and then apologize for being emotional. They most often say “Wow” and “I can’t believe you were able to do that,” “this takes me right back to my childhood, to happy memories,” and “I want to give this to my grandchildren, to people I love.” They want to share with their loved ones how the item was magical for them, how it brings simple pleasures and sparks the imagination. They want to share joy with their beloveds.

Imagine God asking us, what do you want me to do with you? Do you want yourself restored to like new? Do you want yourself conserved by having areas of wear and tear and damage remedied? Do you want cleaning so you can operate normally? Do you want the signs of age removed? Or do you want to keep the honorable scars of your history, even as the brokenness is repaired and beauty is restored?

The Fruit of the Spirit Is Love

Preached at Wayside Friends Church, 2023

When the pastors asked me to consider speaking on Love, I became immediately conscious of many failures to love in my daily life, and I nearly declined. But often in preparing to speak to others, I find God speaking to me, so I thought this sermon prep might create that opportunity.

I’ll start with a confession that when I was discussing politics, I said, “I despise that person. He’s a liar.” So there’s that. And then, I’ve been married to a lovely man, Mark, for 48 years and counting, and I find that instead of worshiping the ground he walks on as I did at 16 when we began dating, now I snap at him daily for one thing or another. It reminds me of my dad who came up to my house one day from his room at Friendsview and said, “Your mommy loves me, but she doesn’t love all my ways.” So there’s that, also.  And then I have not outgrown neediness—particularly with those I love the most.  To quote the movie “What About Bob,” “I want I want I want, I need I need I need.” Perhaps the most embarrassing on this list.

None of these things I confess to you make me love myself. In fact, I am ashamed of my unloving actions and words. I am also sad that as I age, I am not becoming sweeter and kinder. This actually dismays me.

When I was in graduate school for English literature, I chose to do my doctoral research on George MacDonald. MacDonald was a 19th century Christian who wrote fiction, poetry, and sermons. His thinking has shaped me in more ways than I can identify.

He lost his preaching job because of his beliefs. He believed that God’s love would never rest until hell is emptied, though the way out of hell is to give up saying "I am my own," to cede our sovereignty to God. We must give ourselves to God, and the way we do that is to obey what God says to us to do.

I turned to my friend and mentor George MacDonald and his disciple C. S. Lewis for help in thinking through this topic of love with something that I hope you and I will find useful. Together, George and I will cover topics of vengeance, justice, forgiveness, and obedience, all as aspects of love.  

Much of what follows is directly quoted or my paraphrase of things George MacDonald wrote, particularly in his 3 volumes of Unspoken Sermons.  His writing is infused with scripture.

As St. Paul confessed, “The good I want to do, I don’t do; the evil I don’t want to do, I do.” What MacDonald says is that we do not know the sources or causes of our impulses, our desires, our tendencies, our likings. To put his ideas into modern terms, we are subject to neurological diseases, we catch the contagious evil around us, we have hatreds rooted in our childhoods, we have inherited genetic tendencies and traits. MacDonald also says that God will make every excuse for us that can be made, that God is pleased with every effort we make in the right direction toward love, and that God will not rest until we have been made right from deep within.  MacDonald is fond of quoting that “Our God is a consuming fire.”

We must recognize the inward opposition to love comes from the part where God is not yet present; we need to realize that it takes time for our whole selves to be redeemed because God goes to the roots of ourselves beyond our consciousness, starts there—when God inhabits that part which is presently opposing our desire to love, it will become holy.

MacDonald counsels honesty. Don’t try to feel good when you recognize that you are not good, but cry to God who is good. Wait in the quietness until light goes up in your darkness, and in the meantime, do something positive that needs doing—make your bed, prepare a meal, visit a friend, weed the garden. He says, astringently, we must give up any notion of playing the hero when we are not yet barely honest. Indeed, the purest efforts of will of which we are capable cannot keep us from doing wrong to our neighbor.

Now on to MacDonald on love (what follows are assorted quotations from MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons, many of then collected in C.S. Lewis's George MacDonald, An Anthology):

Why do we love? We do not love because we see why but because we love. In the main, we love because we cannot help it—there is no merit in it but neither is it selfish. The love that is born in us is our salvation from selfishness.  

Where we do not love, the not-loving seems rational. How can we love a man or woman who is mean, unlovely, fault-finding, untrusting and untrustworthy, self-righteous, self-seeking, sneering and contemptuous? These things cannot be loved. But are they the whole of the person? Is there not within the person the divine element of brotherhood or sisterhood, something lovely and lovable, something human, however it seems to be fading or even dying?

Though we cannot make ourselves love, we can and must fight against the hatred inside us.  Hate concentrates itself on the thing hated. Love makes everything lovely.

If your neighbor, who owes you love, gives you hate, you must nevertheless pay that neighbor the love you owe them, says MacDonald (and also Jesus).

Do not heed much if people mock you and speak lies of you, or even in goodwill defend you unworthily. Heed not much if even the righteous turn their backs on you. Only take heed that you turn not from them.  

In the dungeon of self we are breathing in the same air we breathed out.  “Love your neighbor” is the only way out of  this dungeon. “Love your neighbor” frees us into God’s sunlight and the sweet winds of the universe.

However, the impossibility of following God’s command to love our neighbor drives us to God for help.  

God says, “Vengeance is mine.” When we understand God rightly, we might as well pray for God’s vengeance as for God’s forgiveness. God’s vengeance is to destroy the sin, to make the sinner reject and hate it. The same unblinking purifying love God has for us, God has as well for our enemy. No one escapes the flame of God’s love.

Indeed, Christ died to save us not from suffering, but from ourselves; not from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust. A human being is not made for justice from another human being but for love, which is greater than justice. Love is the law of our condition without which we cannot render justice.

It may be … less evil to murder a person than to refuse to forgive them. When we will not forgive another, we cannot believe that God is willing, even wanting to forgive us.

The will of his and our Father is the yoke Jesus would have us take and bear together with him—it is this yoke—shared with Jesus—that is light and easy.

Do you ask what is faith in God? I answer, leaving your own way, your purposes, your self, and taking God’s way, God’s purposes, God’s self—the leaving of your trust in humans, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and instead doing as God tells you.

Ask yourself whether today you have done one thing because God said "Do it," or abstained from one thing because God said "Do not do it."

To those who obey and thus open the heart’s door to receive the eternal gift, God gives the Spirit of the Son, the spirit of God’s Self to be in them, and lead them to the understanding of all truth…true disciples shall thus always know what they ought to do, though not necessarily what another ought to do.

God does not by the instant gift of the Spirit make us always feel right, desire good, love purity, aspire after God’s self and God’s will. The truth is this. God wants to make us in God’s own image, choosing the good, refusing the evil. For God made our individuality, our apartness, so that freedom would bind us divinely dearer to God’s self with a new and inscrutable marvel of love.

To be right with God is to be right with the universe: one with the power, the love the will of the mighty Mother/Father, the cherisher of joy, the Lord of laughter, whose are all glories, all hopes, who loves everything and hates nothing but selfishness.

It is only in God that the soul has room. In knowing God is life and its gladness. The secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can know God who knows its secret.  

It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.  Let us be compassionate and humble, and hope for every person.

Let us also be compassionate toward ourselves, humble within ourselves, and hopeful for ourselves.  God is faithful and God’s love is unstoppable until it achieves God’s purpose for us which is to love God wholly and first and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Meditations on Plants and Gardening

Recently I left my job, so I've had some time to tend to my gardens. Here are some parables that came to me as I trimmed, weeded, and planted.

Part I

The Violent Seize It by Force

Matthew 11:12, Luke 16:16

As a person who loves plants, I often wait to see what a volunteer seedling will turn into before I consider it a weed. As a result, I have volunteer evening primroses in my flower bed. They provide a spot of pale yellow and the deer prefer them to the plants I deliberately included. Now I like them so much that it distresses me to see them bitten off by my neighborhood herbivores.

However, the most persistent volunteer is a common hawthorn that I did not plant and is not in a place where I want it.  We have cut it back for twenty years with the result that it is bushier and hardier than ever. I suspect that the only way to get rid of it is to dig it up completely or to poison it.  But I just don’t hate it that much. And at this time of year, August, the hawthorn provides a lovely spot of color with its red berries that feed the birds. 

I also meditate as I’m trimming this thorny bush. I think about the vital force that the hawthorn has put into persisting as part of my landscaping. I think about what it adds to the beauty of my yard and how it feeds birds. I think also of a parable about the kingdom of God and those who are forcing their way in, even to the discomfort of local gardeners. Why not appreciate the energy and vitality of their search for God? It’s clear that they are responding to the good news Jesus came to share and be for us. 

In my home denomination, we have spent so much energy trying to prevent the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in our churches, and we set limits on their freedom to listen to Jesus themselves and obey what Jesus tells them and contribute the gifts Jesus has given them to our congregations. Maybe our energy is better spent on our own seeking first God’s kingdom and God’s rightness and justice rather than protecting our space and justifying ourselves.

Part II

Pruning and Shaping

Hebrews 12:6; John 15:2

So, given that this hawthorn has violently forced its way into the kingdom of my plants, and it will not go away, what am I doing? I’m trimming it and shaping it. I mutter to it, “Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth,” and “If you’re going to stay, you can’t grow any old way you please, particularly into the roses.”

It takes some finesse to trim up a thorny plant like roses and hawthorns. I need long sleeves, gloves, long-handled pruners, and clippers.  I need to move slowly and cut judiciously and quickly.  I need my pruners and clippers to be sharp. I need not to slip on the hillside and fall into the bush. I need to know something about how pruning affects the plant’s growth. 

Today I did research into how to help a hawthorn look its best. I found out I need to cut out suckers that grow up from the bottom.  So I went in after them.

We’ve mistreated this hawthorn so much by severe pruning that it has sent up numerous suckers in order to survive. I decided that anything less than one-half inch diameter could come out. To my surprise, these stems were very hard to cut through. It seemed possible my bicep might be the thing to tear. Additionally, pulling out the cuttings required a firm but gentle grip—firm because they were tangled in with the other branches, gentle because, well, long sharp thorns. With all my care, I walked away with one or two new puncture wounds. But the hawthorn looks so much better.

I see a parable here in the harm the inexperienced or thoughtless gardener can do with clippers and pruners. We turned a potentially lovely, airy, flowering tree with three lovely seasons into an unwanted pest partly by never bothering to find out what it is in itself and how best to help it be beautiful.

How often do I look at others and wish they would give up trying to be part of my “landscaping,” my church? They cause me pain, and they intrude on my space. They don’t fit in with how I thought the church should be. But they also won’t go away, despite my lack of welcome. What if I get to know them so that I can see how best to welcome them, how to make space for the gifts they bring, how to help them fit in without destroying who they are? What if I decide I'm willing to suffer a little so they can experience God's freedom?

Part III 

The Wayward Rose Bush

Luke 15:11-32 “It is fitting that we should be merry and glad; for your own brother was dead and is alive again; he was lost, and now is found.”

Besides the hawthorn, another volunteer is a rose. Its parent plant is above a cinder block rock wall. I think the parent chose to send up a shoot—a scion—at the bottom of the wall, right by the water tap where the hose connects.  I love it because it has beautiful blooms. My husband wants to destroy it because “it thrashed his arm” while he was getting out the hose. We are presently compromising by cutting it away from the hose. I fear if we attack it aggressively, we will kill the bush above, which is attached to it by its roots.

But I might be wrong. So I asked an expert, my friend Phil, and he confirmed my fears. Killing the offshoot might kill the parent plant as well.

I see a parable here. Children in Christian families often grow up to share some values and reject other values their parents have. Parents can find this wounding, and churches can be offended and even blame the parents. I remember when I was a young “elder” and an old saint was complaining about young people not being brought up to follow a particular taboo. I said, “My parents brought me up with that taboo, and I’ve never shared their belief about it.” She may have been offended at my brashness, but she didn’t cut me off from relationship with her or the church. If she had pushed for this punishment, she might have lost my parents also. I’ve seen such things happen.

Even more tragic, I see parents confused between establishing boundaries for relationship and seriously damaging relationship with their own children when their child rejects their values. How can parents and children trim back the thorny branches so they don’t “thrash” our hearts without causing deeply felt estrangement between parent and child?

Perhaps looking for and affirming “that of God”—the equivalent of blossoms—in each other can help. Parents bear the greater responsibility to speak healing and affirmation to their children for those unique gifts each child brings into our world. And children can also initiate loving affirmation for the many good things they inherit from their parents. We need both generations to flourish for each to be healthy.

Part IV

Artificial Scarcity and God's Love

“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” John 10:10

When I first began cooking, I used spices and herbs bought at the grocery store in small glass bottles for large prices. I did not know any other way, and I assumed, because of the packaging, that scarcity dominated the spice and herb world.

Then one day, my husband brought home five pounds of cinnamon and five pounds of nutmeg.  Such a lot of spice! My concept of spices and herbs began to include the idea of abundance (and as a side note, of artificially enforced scarcity.) Now, 30 years later, we still have nutmeg from that original purchase, though we ate our way through the cinnamon years ago. I blame cinnamon toast.

Today, I have many herbs growing in my garden. Most spectacular is an oregano plant that resists drought, winters over, hosts bees in the late summer and produces enough oregano to flavor the sauces of 10 to 20 cooks. I have parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. I have lemon grass, basil, marjoram, summer savory, and fennel. Some of these are perennial, some are annual. All produce far more than I can use. I even discovered that when my cilantro seeds out, I can harvest cardamom, an actual spice.

I see a parable here of the evolution of my understanding of the love of God. When I was a child, I saw the love of God as scarce and expensive, something I had to work hard to earn. I began to be aware that the scarcity was artificial, perhaps even promoted as a way to shape and control my behavior. Now I find through experience and belief that the love of God is abundant, that it just needs a heart ready to let it plant itself, and God will produce enough love to satisfy an individual and even pour out over an entire village.

Part V

The Diverse Mint Family

John 10:16, Matthew 12:41-42, 50

I celebrate today the many plants I love that belong to the mint family.  The Lamiaceae  (according to Wikipedia) are “a family of flowering plants…frequently aromatic in all parts and include…basil, mint, rosemary, sage, savory, marjoram, oregano, hyssop, thyme, lavender and perilla.” Family members can be found all over the plant-supporting globe. Many are grown to eat or drink, some for beauty, some for repelling deer and other plant-eaters.  Salvia and dead-nettle are in this family. They characteristically, though not universally, have square stems, and their leaves are in opposing pairs, each pair at right angle to the one above or below. 

When I breathe in the scent of my salvia plants, I feel a deep sense of pleasure. I say to the plant, “Thank you for smelling so wonderful.” When I water my mint, oregano and sage plants, I enjoy their aromas. I love the strong mint tea I bought at the souk in Tunisia, and I’m fond of “curiously strong mints.”

I cannot believe how many members there are in this family, how tenacious they often are of life, and how they send out runners underground and seeds overground to ensure their persistence.  Lemon balm has invaded my yard. It propagates very successfully and will crowd other plants out, so I pull it up, but I can never pull it all up.

The parable that comes here relates to the wide variety of the individuals and worshiping communities and denominations that make up the church universal. Unbelievably, the gospel propagates itself both underground and above ground, through root—families of faith—and through seed—converts who hear and give heart space for the gospel to sprout and grow. The sweet scents, lovely blooms that feed the bees, and the multiplicity of usefulnesses for human beings are an aspirational analogy to us as individuals and congregations. Do we make our communities more beautiful, more livable, more equitable for our neighbors? Do we soothe their pains, sweeten their existence, and spice up their days?

To paraphrase Jesus’s parable about sheep, “Other mint varieties I have that you have never heard of or did not recognize. These also fulfill God’s will for the mint family, and will add beauty and pleasure and healing to your lives.”

Part VI

Sedums and Gifts

Genesis 3:8, Psalm 91:1-4, Matt. 23:37

Someone I didn’t know very well lived with my husband and me for a number of months. He was shy, quiet, and well-behaved, and we didn’t do a good job of getting to know him. Years later, I discovered that he went hungry in my house because he was in his 20s and we were in our 50s, and we were eating salads and other light meals in a vain effort to lose weight. He had that miraculous metabolism that can eat an entire calf. I am still embarrassed at my lack of perceptiveness.

He also loves plants, and he planted some that are still here a decade later. A group of fall-flowering sedums has survived an enormous amount of neglect and drought to bring forth lovely flowers right on time.  So today, in late September, I weeded them.  I’d like to actually see the blooms.  And I’m watering them as we are in our dry season. I hope they don’t die of shock.

There are several parables here. First, pay attention to those in my orbit and under my care. What do they actually need? It is probably not identical to what I need. Perhaps asking them if they have enough to eat, literally or figuratively, is a good place to start.

Second, care for the relationship. Even if it survives on benign neglect, it is in my own best interest to keep it healthy and to let the other person’s virtues shine in it. If I let it be smothered or even just kept invisible by my neglect, I have no one to blame but myself if I miss its beauty.

Third, do not ignore or disparage the gift someone brings. Even if I didn’t ask for it, it represents an effort to be friends. (At the same time, gifts are not quid pro quo. That’s more of a trade and should be negotiated openly.) And when I give a gift, I need to give it cheerfully and without strings attached.

Sometimes we neither bother to get to know what God really wants from us, nor do we value the gifts, particularly the grace-filled love, that God has given us. We might do well to take a little time to listen and to weed out the things we have let grow that make it hard to see the beauty of God.

Part VII Caring for Plants with Thorns

Isaiah 53:5 "He was wounded for our transgressions."

As you can see, I love roses. They need clipping. I love berries that grow on spiny vines. They need pruning and tying up to wires. I love my horse who gets burdock burs in her mane and tail.  I have to work them out without pulling out all her hair. My life is filled with, wait for it, thorny problems.

Once I trimmed my berries or my roses, wearing gloves of course. A day later, my wrists and fingers ached, sort of like arthritis. I discovered then that I am allergic to thorns, that they are just a little poisonous to me. The medical term is “plant thorn arthritis.” I went after each with needle and tweezers and then a little rubbing alcohol. Sometimes a surgeon has to help remove tiny fragments of thorn that elude the home needle, though this didn't happen to me.

This makes me think of a parable or two. First, the work of ministry can include thorny patches, leaving the minister scratched and perhaps a bit poisoned. Sometimes careful self-examination and removal of the poisonous bits from the soul can be done at home, and sometimes the ache and swelling remain and the minister must seek professional help. It’s important to address these small problems before they become systemic.

Second, Jesus himself found his ministry to be wounding. He was despised, rejected, mocked, betrayed. He knew what we humans are like, and he still acted out his love for us, doing for us what we needed rather than what we wanted. This is the same today. He also felt thorns both figurative and literal, and he died to give us new life, abundant life. By his wounds we are healed. We are grateful every day that Jesus showed us God’s true nature of love and made it possible for us to turn toward that love. We recognize every day that though we need pruning, we protect ourselves with strategies that wound others.  Let’s lean in to God’s love, trusting that God will take away what we need to lose and give what we need to gain.

God’s Commitment to Us

Preached at Netarts Friends Church

Jan. 4, 2015

When I was a child, I believed God would abandon me at a moment’s notice despite my desire to be God’s child.  I’m pretty sure now that this idea came about from confusion about my relationship with my parents, who as missionaries did what was expected of them and took me off to boarding school at age 7.  I felt abandoned by them, despite the fact that we loved each other.  So why would I expect that God would be more committed to being with me than my own parents?

I am happy to report that God took steps to meet my small efforts at seeking relationship with God, steps that made clear to me that God loves me. Eventually, it became clear to me that God’s commitment to me was deep and wide and thorough, and that it did not come and go based on my behavior or attitude.  My hope today is that by reviewing two examples of God’s commitment to human beings in Scripture, you too will be convinced of God’s commitment to you, both as individuals and as a congregation.

When God made humans, God made space for human choice.  What that means is that we are separate from God, and that separation makes choice possible. But the separation is not hostile from God’s point of view. God did not make space for us in order to reject us but so that we can choose to love. A novel called Almighty Me had in it the problem for the central character of having for a short time the omnipotence of God and facing the fact that his wife was leaving him. He was sorely tempted to simply make her love him by means of his power, but it became clear to him that it would not be actual love. 

So love requires separate persons. God cares so much about a relationship of mutual love with humans that God makes space for them to be separate. 

We can see this separateness in the development of children. Birth separates them from their mothers. They move toward greater awareness of their separation as they acquire competencies like crawling, walking, feeding themselves, and speaking. Often each achievement is accompanied by some distress, perhaps on both the parents’ and the children’s part. Parents who see their children as extensions of themselves can damage their relationships with those children when the children discover they are not allowed to be separate individuals and hinder their children growing into maturity.

So my own testimony is that though I wanted to be God’s child from as far back as I remember, I mistrusted God’s love and underestimated God’s commitment to relationship with me, and thus spent a lot of my younger life afraid and angry.  However, as I became more open to God, to whatever God wanted for me, I discovered more and more that God wanted to love me, that God is committed to me, even when I fail or fall, and that part of God’s commitment is to help me grow up into maturity.

We can see an example of this commitment of God to a human being in the covenant God made with David.  David is one of the main characters in the Old Testament, and some of the best-known stories of the Bible are part of David’s story.  Here is God’s summary and covenant with David as he has become king and is planning to build God a house, a temple.

2 Samuel 7:8-15

Thus says the Lord of Hosts, I took you from the pasture from following the flock, to be ruler of My people Israel, and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut down all your enemies before you. Moreover, I will give you great renown like that of the greatest men on earth. I will establish a home for My people Israel, and I will plant them firm, so that they shall dwell secure and shall tremble no more… I will give you safety from all your enemies. The Lord declares to you that the Lord will establish a house for you. When your days are done and you lie with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own issue, and I will establish his kingship. …I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to Me.  When he does wrong, I will chastise him with the rod of men and the affliction of mortals, but I will never withdraw My favor from him…

Some things to notice about what God says:  God will do this because God wants to do this. There is no mention of a contingency here based on David’s behavior or faithfulness to God.  A no-conditions covenant.  And God was faithful to this covenant with David. As a result, David found he could be generous to Saul’s surviving family, rather than eliminating all the competition. God was his guarantee of permanency.  However, David also committed adultery with the wife of Uriah and then engineered his death in battle, essentially murdering him to cover his crime.  As God promised, God disciplined David for this. God said, “because you have put Uriah to the sword, the sword shall never depart from your house.” The child of that adultery died in infancy despite David’s passionate prayers. And later, one of David’s sons Amnon manipulated David to gain access to a half-sister, Tamar, and raped her. Her full brother Absalom engineered the murder of  Amnon and then later attempted to usurp the throne from David.

We can read David’s prayer of repentance for the adultery and murder in Psalm 51. And we read that David was a man after God’s own heart. But what I want to point out is first that God made a covenant to stay in relationship with David that was unconditional, and that David did bad things and God stayed in the covenant relationship, which included discipline for those bad things.

When David first understood what God had promised, he responded with this prayer (2 Sam 7:18-29):

King David came and sat before the Lord, and he said: What am I, O Lord God, and what is my family that You have brought me thus far? Yet even this, O Lord God, has seemed too little to you; for you have spoken of your servant’s house also for the future. ..What more can David say to You? You know your servant, O Lord God. For Your word’s sake and of your own accord You have wrought this great thing, and made it known to your servant….And now, O Lord God, You are God and Your words will surely come true; and You have made this gracious promise to your servant.

David recognizes that God’s promise to him is unconditional. God is with David for the long haul. It is not the same as a blank check, in that God includes the provision for correction in the commitment, but God will guarantee the promise because God chooses to do so.

I am not King David. God hasn’t promised me that my family will always be superintendents of NWYM. So what has God promised me, or rather us, in the coming of Jesus to do God’s work among us?

In Luke 4, Jesus tells us the terms of this covenant, using the words of Isaiah: I will preach good news to the poor, I will proclaim freedom for the prisoners, I will recover sight for the blind, I will release the oppressed, I will proclaim the era of God’s delight, God’s pleasure, God’s good will.

Jesus said other things to spell out what his coming means to human beings.

I am come to complete the law. (Matt. 5:17)

I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Matt. 9:13)

I am come to divide families. (Matt 10:34-35)

I am come to send fire on the earth. (Luke 12:49-51)

I am come in my Father’s name, representing God’s interests and character. (John 5:43)

I am come from God, whom you do not know. (John 7:28)

I am come to rule the world, to separate right from wrong, to make things clear to those who have been mystified and to mystify those who thought they knew it all. (John 9:39)

I am come to give life, abundant life, superior, extraordinary, uncommon life. (John 10:10)

I am come to light up the world, so that whoever trusts me shall live in the light, not the darkness. (John 12:46)

I will come again and join you to me, so that you will be wherever I am. (John 14:3)

If we were to put these together into the form of a covenant, it might look like this:

As God’s Son, representing God’s interests and embodying God’s character, I will fill up what is lacking in the law, calling sinners to repent.  I will separate right from wrong, bringing light into dark places, even to dividing families. I will bring justice, not tranquility, pruning away all that is not beneficial. I will light up the world and give abundant life. I will join you to me, so that you will be wherever I am. I will usher in the era of God’s satisfaction with human beings, God’s delight in humanity. Live in this covenant, let it live in you, and trust me to do what I say I will.

The angels announced this, singing, “Glory to God in the highest, Peace on earth, good will to human beings.” This covenant is with all humanity. We know ourselves to be separate from God, and now we know that God is not hostile or rejecting. God wants us to grow up, to be our full selves, not chained to fear or hobbled by our mistakes and sins.

So how do we respond to this statement of God’s intentions toward us?  Do we, like David, sit humbly before God, aware that this is all happening because God wants to do it, not because we earned it or are particularly special? The Spirit of God testifies to our spirits that we are God’s children. God is for us. God justifies us and Jesus intercedes for us. Let us rejoice with St Paul that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Please join me in prayer.

What are we, O Son of God, that you have come to us? And this was not enough for you, but you join us to you so that we may be with you.  What more can we say to you? You know what we are. For your sake and of your own accord you have done this great thing and told us about it.  And now, O Son of God, you are God, and your words will surely come true. You have made this gracious promise to us. May it be so. Amen.