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Text:
1 Peter 1:17-25, Acts Seeds of Change In the name of him who ransomed us with his
precious blood, dear friends in Christ:
Something I’ve really appreciated in my time serving here is the opportunity
to do a little vegetable gardening. There’s
no question that the parsonage yard has plenty of room for it. I don’t get quite so excited about mowing the
expansive lawn; but that’s another story.
Anyway, this gardening is something I pursue mostly as a hobby rather
than a necessity. I find it
relaxing. And sure, there’s a certain
amount of satisfaction derived from putting food on the table directly from the
work of one’s own hands. Many of you can
appreciate that. And too some things just
taste better when they’re fresh out of the garden. You simply can’t beat an ear of corn that was
picked at the peak of its golden glory just moments before, or tomatoes that
are still warm from the sun that matured them to crimson perfection. But like I said, it’s a hobby, and as such I
don’t mind doing some experimenting. Every
year I’ll try a couple new things – sometimes things far removed from the
beaten path – you know, just to see what grows and what doesn’t do so well, or
what something I’ve never had tastes like.
This year, if you’re interested, the experimental items are Turkish
eggplant and quinoa, which is an ancient South American grain – a distant
cousin to corn, if I’m not mistaken.
I’ll let you know how things turn out – and if I don’t like them, I’ll
even give you some. How’s that? Anyway, the truth is that I also have
a few ulterior professional motives for gardening. One, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is that
provides me with sermon starters like this one.
But another reason is that there’s a lot to learn about theology in the
garden. After all, the Lord God himself
is the original Gardener. And there are
lots of parables and word pictures in the Bible that relate directly to the
subject. Take for example the Parable of
the Sower, or the Weeds among the Wheat, or the Mustard Seed; then there’re the
images Jesus gives us of the True Vine and its branches and the harvest of
souls at the end of the age. There are
many more examples. The point is that to
really understand the images you have to know something about horticulture, and
there’s no better way to learn it than by personal experience. So I want you to remember that next time you
happen by the parsonage and see me out back with hoe in my hand. I’m not just goofing off. I’m seriously studying theology. And in the process I’ve learned a few
things. One of them is that old seeds
don’t perform very well. It seems
there’re almost always some more left over in the package when you’re done
planting a row. And though you might be
tempted to distribute them among the seeds you’ve already carefully set out at
the designated interval, you know that will only crowd the plants and make them
grow poorly. On the other hand, it just
feels wrong to throw seeds away. So you
keep them and come next spring you figure you might as well plant them. It’s a mistake. The germination rate drops off dramatically,
and the few seeds that do eventually sprout do it much slower than usual thus
giving the weeds head start on them. So
what you end up with is a row full of bare spots in which you can’t very well
separate the weeds from the plants you want to grow. No, it’s always better to throw out the old
seeds and start anew with fresh. All of which brings me, believe it or not, to
today’s Epistle lesson from Peter, who, even though he was a fisherman by trade
before his call into the apostolic ministry, also seems to know a thing or two
about gardening. Specifically, he writes
to us about the difference between the perishable and the imperishable seed. And the basic idea is this: think of yourself as a garden – a plot of
soil tilled and ready to receive whatever is going to be planted. And just a side note here: that fits real well with the story of human
kind’s creation. After all, what are we
but soil that God has given life to?
Anyway, the first time around, the way you got your start in life, was
when you were planted with the old, perishable kind of seed. That’s what you got from your parents, which
they in turn got from theirs, all the way back through countless generations to
our first parents who, though they started out well enough, fell into sin and were
thus corrupted. As a consequence of that, your garden, by
which I mean you, is all messed up.
It’s like you were planted with out of date seeds, and those
contaminated with various kinds of weed seeds.
So most of what’s growing in you is worthless; and even the supposedly
good stuff is so crowded and choked by weeds that it’s stunted and wormy and
bug eaten and in every other way rendered unfit for consumption. It is, of course, a picture of our lives in sin: how the fallen nature we inherited from our
parents produces nothing but evil. And
what needs to be emphasized because it’s maybe not so obvious is that even the
good we supposedly produce is in fact evil.
When Peter writes about the “futile ways inherited by your forefathers”
he doesn’t just mean what we would obviously recognize as sin such as lying,
cheating, stealing, and so on. No, he
means also that because we are corrupt, even our standard for determining what
is good is 180 degrees out of kilter. The
worldly wisdom and human traditions we inherited glorifies and strives for exactly
the wrong things. The result is that even
our best produce – the things we have done that we count as gold and silver, and
that we imagine will last and retain their value forever – even these things Peter
calls perishable. They are worthless in
the sight of God. Like the flowers of
the field they wither and fall. (And
yes, I know I’m mixing metaphors; but I’m only following Peter’s example.) The upshot of all this is that the only hope
for your garden (you) is a completely new beginning. Everything that’s growing there that comes
from the old seed, both the noticeably bad and what’s falsely called “good”,
needs to be yanked out by the roots, piled up in a heap, and burned. It’s altogether worthless. And then the soil needs to be broken up and
turned over. That’s the picture; but
really what’s being described is the process we call repentance and confession. It’s what clears out the old and sinful and prepares
the soil to receive the good seed, the imperishable seed from above. This is the seed that has the power to change
you and make you into a garden that grows good produce for the Lord. And this is precisely what we see in this
morning’s reading from Acts. It’s a
portion of Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. He’s addressing a large group of people in It’s the moment Peter has been building up
to. Now that the soil is prepared, he
sows them with the imperishable Seed from above, which is the Word of Christ’s
Gospel: “Repent and be baptized every
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and
you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
And here the garden imagery continues:
we’re told that 3000 people received the Word (the imperishable Seed)
and they were baptized – which, to
use some of the Apostle Paul’s words, is to say that they died with Christ to
sin, were buried with him in baptism like a seed planted in the ground, and
then, just as Christ burst forth living from the grave they too have had the
living Word of Christ germinate in them and appear in and through them,
emerging above the surface of their soil like so many tender green seedlings
ready to mature and become the precious produce the Lord seeks. All right then, returning to the Epistle
lesson, Peter says this has already happened to you. You call God “Father” because his
imperishable Seed (the Word of Christ’s Gospel) has been planted in you and you have been born again by baptism
into God’s family. And it may sound like
I’m mixing metaphors again by not distinguishing between plants growing in the
soil and people being born or reborn into the world; but the simple truth is
that in the original language of the Scriptures the exact same vocabulary is
used for both so it’s easy to switch from one to the other without confusing
the issue. Either way, the point is that
because we have been reborn by the Word of God’s forgiveness in Christ, or
replanted with it if you prefer, what ought to be evident in us is the produce
of that Seed. I mean if you plant beans,
you ought to get beans. And if you plant
potatoes, you ought to get potatoes. And
now God has planted you with Christ – with his living Word of forgiveness,
grace, and love – and therefore, Peter exhorts, that’s what you ought to see
increasingly growing in and out of you:
Christ, his complete sacrifice of self, his forgiveness for others, and his
sincere brotherly love that flows from a pure heart. But wait, you say, that’s not what I see
growing in my soil. Well, maybe just a
bit; but mostly what I see are the weeds of envy and contention and
self-centeredness. They’ve got taproots
in me deeper than dandelions. I also see
a bristling reluctance to forgive those who sin against me. It’s like a thorny, hard stemmed Canadian
thistle. It doesn’t want to budge. And I’ve got pride spreading out over me like
Creeping Charlie. It stifles and
suffocates anything in me that even comes close to sincere, Christ-like love. Does that sound like your garden? If so, you should know that the most common
mistake people make is to go on feeding and watering the weeds thinking that
somehow, if we treat them with enough patience and care, they will magically
transform themselves into the desirable plants you’re after. It doesn’t work that way. To get rid of weeds you have to go on the
attack and you must be merciless. To the
extent that you cut yourself some slack and make excuses for them they will
reward you by spreading more of their seeds in your soil. No.
With the weeds of sin there’s only one thing to do: uproot, slash, and burn. Call the sin what it is. Hate it for what it is. And repent of it. Then replant with the imperishable Seed of
the Gospel. Water it with the precious
blood Jesus shed for you. And then you
will be amazed at what will grow. It’ll
be like one of those Miracle-Gro
commercials. And that’s a fitting
analogy because it really will be a miracle. And do this understanding that it’s an
ongoing process. The work in a garden is
never all done. And this, I think, is
nicely illustrated by today’s Gospel lesson.
In it we have Jesus’ encounter with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. What’s always stuck me is how Jesus doesn’t
simply reveal himself to these guys and say, “Hey guys, cheer up. It’s me.
I’ve risen from the dead.” Surely
he could have done that, but that would have been like planting just one
seed. Instead he very patiently takes
them on a grand tour of the Holy Scriptures, showing them in all of God’s Word
what it has to say about him and his mission to redeem the world by his death
and resurrection. And you see what he’s
doing is planting in them row after row of the imperishable Seed of God’s Word
so that his life in them will spring forth abundantly. This is what changes them from the depressed
and faithless characters we meet at first to the enthusiastic hearers and
believers whose hearts are aflame. They
can’t seem to get enough of what Jesus has to say – so much so that they invite
him in to stay with them. And there to
them he reveals himself in the breaking of the bread. My friends, I’m looking forward to a great
gardening season. My hope and prayer is
that you are too. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |
