Yesterday
I worked in my garden. Let me explain this does not involve anything terribly
strenuous. I have a large back yard and a fairly substantial front yard, but I
have a wonderful person who takes care of the heavy work. I do my gardening in
pots. Large pots, but they are pots all the same. Less weeding but more
watering is the trade-off, but gardening this way seems a wise thing to do
since I don’t stay in one place long.
In my
backyard I have nine or so pots. I grow mostly herbs, and also a few flowers
and sometimes a tomato plant. I haven’t succumbed to a tomato plant yet because
I don’t think my back area gets enough sun. So what I did yesterday – if you
can call it gardening – was to get ready for today when I plant things in pots.
I’ve
learned over the years, that I have to do things to plants that appear cruel,
things that might seem almost punishing, to get the plants to build deep
healthy root systems. This is particularly important with tomatoes. What I do
would be painful to a non-gardener, and even I don’t care for it much. I clip
off the lower leaves of the tomato plants and bury them deeper in the soil than
they were originally planted. What this does, ideally, is to make the plants
form new roots where the leaves were removed. The plants end up rooting more
solidly in their pots. I learned this in Kansas, by the way, a state known for
its winds. In any windy state, a solidly rooted plant is a good thing to have.
When I
clip and plant, I continue to reflect on the idea that to a non-gardener, what
I do appears to have the death of the plant in mind. After all, I remove what
looks like healthy lower leaves and bury the plants until only the top two
leaves or so shows. Yet in actual fact, the process makes the plants healthier
in the long run. Spindly, long-stemmed plants whip about in the wind. They
sometimes topple over before they can put down good roots, and they don’t grow
or yield as much.
Much of
what we see in nature is about change: painful change. Yet change ultimately
brings health to the interdependent eco-system in which we live. Prairie fires
cleanse the landscape, bringing dormant seeds to the surface to sprout new
growth. Forest fires burn out old growth too choked to sustain life. Floods will
at times sweep clean an area that has become barren and wash in healthy soil.
Human
beings need change also. Systems and people become stagnant, choked by old
growth, and unable to move forward. Change for an individual or a system can
appear painful, but it can also mean vitality and thriving. In today’s world,
staying the same means going backward. If we want to stay the same today, we
have to decide what we are willing to give up, because we can no longer hold
onto what we have and stay the same. Prices go up, people age, and customs
change. To an eighteen year-old today, the world was never without cell phones,
social networking, and text messages.
Today’s
gospel is about change. That stomach tightening change most of us dislike. The
gospel is about what happens between Jesus and the disciples before things
change and Jesus goes away.
Jesus, in
his prayer, acknowledges one of the best things we can do when change is coming
or has already happened. Jesus says about the disciples, “They were yours, and
you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”[1]
Painful as the future may be without him, Jesus reminds the disciples of what
they need to stay rooted and grounded in God.
This is
the core of healthy change: the knowledge that we have done something before
and done it well. This is what Jesus does in his prayer, he points to what the
disciples were able to do in the past. They were able to keep God’s word. “They
were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”[2]
In his prayer, said in their hearing, Jesus is recognizing the obedience and
strength of the disciples. The disciples belong to Jesus because God gave them
to him, and the disciples were able to keep God’s word with Jesus.
Now change
is occurring. Jesus’ presence on earth, as the disciples have known him, is
going away. They will be left without the physical presence of the Jesus they
have known. This is something new. Yet Jesus offers comfort. He will no longer
be with them, but they know how to be obedient and how to keep his word. And
now, though Jesus himself is going away, the Holy Spirit will come to guide the
disciples and be their companion in keeping Jesus’ word.
What Jesus
offers is the knowledge that we have
been able to do what we are being asked to do. Perhaps in a slightly different
way, but we can imagine a future strengthened by what we have been able
to do. Then we can look forward to change as cleansing, healing, and
enlightening us so we are blessed by the change.
None of us
really want to be changed – what we do
want is to be blessed. And this is what
Jesus offers us in this morning’s gospel. Jesus offers us a pattern for change
that creates blessing for us and blessing for the world around us.
Jesus
offers us a way to be sure. He offers us a way to know that we are capable of
change because we have survived it before. And most of all, we are capable of
change because of one constant: we belong to God and are one with God as God
and Jesus are one. This is how we stay rooted and grounded in the midst of
change, even if it is painful.
The past
is a place to build from, a place to mine for strength and wisdom and change.
The past can show us what we are capable of doing. It is in listening to the
Holy Spirit that we gain the strength and wisdom for change to bless us.
What is
there today that you and I are capable of doing because we can build on our
experience? What is there today that you and I are willing to do that is new
because we remember our strengths from the past and are rooted and grounded in
Christ Jesus? What is there that you and I can do today because we belong to
God and keep Jesus’ word? AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2017
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