When I signed up to give a homily for the first time in Vespers, I didn't know when I would be asked, or what texts I would be working with. Eric contacted me a couple of weeks ago to ask if I could be ready in 2 weeks, and I had just a slight freakout. Public speaking is not my forte. I decided I should just go ahead and jump this hurdle now, rather than put it off until later in the year. I was pleasantly surprised when I looked over our texts for the evening. You see, I am a gardener. I feel that God has blessed me with a green thumb. While gardening brings me pleasure, I also find that it's one of the best ways for God to speak to me. It's impossible to deny intelligent design when surrounded by such beauty. So when I saw that our chant and 2 of our 3 passages of scripture told stories of a vineyard, and the portion of our peace prayer this week deals with sowing hope in the midst of despair, I felt an instant connection. Jesus spoke in parables, because it was a language everyone could understand. Some people identify with lots of sports references in their sermons (sorry, Josh; I wish was one of them), others with references to careers, parenting, or marriage. When Jesus talks about the different types of soil in which seeds are sown, or the size of a mustard seed, or bearing good fruit, I get it. My gardening experiences give me a point of reference to help me understand His meaning.
In Isaiah (chapter 5:1-7), God is a gardener. He created this great big, beautiful world. He prepared the earth so that when He planted us there, we would shine for Him, thrive, produce wonderful fruit for his Kingdom. But just as any gardener knows, our best laid plans are sometimes thwarted when the plants we've placed have a mind of their own. No matter how we nurture them, some plants just won't give us the beauty we expect. This makes me think of my love of gladiolas, and my frustrating attempts through the years to grow them. I get my green thumb from my grandmother. Gladiolas were her favorites, and they were always a show-stopper in her garden. Try as I might, I just can't get the results she was able to get year after year. More sun, less sun. More water, less water. Good soil, not-so-good soil. Unfortunately, she passed when I was 13, long before I discovered my passion for gardening and had any interest in learning her secret to producing such gorgeous blooms. I imagine God gets just as frustrated with us as I get with those silly plants sometimes. Because, despite His perfect plan for us, sin entered our world and destroyed it. God gives us so much, more than we could ever deserve, in which to grow, soak in His love, and spread the hope of Christ throughout His Kingdom. Yet, sometimes for us, it's never enough. We join the world and their negativity, whine about how unfair life is, complain about what we don't have, spread stories about all the evil and despair in the world. But just as I keep trying to duplicate my grandmother's wonderous gladiolas despite my many failures, God never gives up on us. He keeps giving us reason to hope, showing us over and over again that the battle against evil has already been conquered. In Matthew (chapter 21:33-46), God is still the gardener, but we aren't the plants in the vineyard. Instead, we are the caretakers, entrusted with all that God has given us, and he is sending us constant reminders that we are only the tenants, we own nothing. Not to brag, but gardeners tend to be some of the most generous people I know. Mostly because, as plants multiply in our gardens and we divide and replant, we eventually run out of places to put them. It's our duty to share the bounty with our friends and families, even complete strangers on Craigslist. Though I find it easy to share the gifts from my garden, it isn't always so easy in other areas of my life. Why is that? So many times, we conform to the standards of this world and fight tooth and nail to get what we feel we deserve and then keep it to ourselves. We listen to those voices telling us that people that weren't blessed to be raised as middle or upper class, or weren't as fortunate as we were to have a quality education and therefore, better opportunities in life, are undeserving of our help. I'll admit that it's a struggle for me to tune out those voices, and instead, listen to my Father whispering to me, "Give. Just as I gave to you". Hope in the midst of despair.
I'm no different than any of you. We've ALL weathered storms and been in that pit of despair. Maybe you think your pit doesn't look as deep as my pit, or maybe you think yours looks deeper than mine. I assure you, the feelings are all the same. So when David pleads with God in the Psalms (Psalm 80:7-14) for restoration, for light to shine through the darkness, on some level, we can ALL identify. For me, it's been 3 separate bouts of clinical depression; Pierce's autism diagnosis; the day we thought we'd never see him again when he wandered too far away from home; the devastating (but necessary) decision to leave a church that we so desperately loved, but that no longer represented our family; the many, MANY health crises my sister endured over the last 21 years of her life; the peace my family thought we'd feel when my sister's suffering was finally over, only to endure months of turmoil and uncertainty filled with false accusations that we hastened her death.
How do we sow hope in the midst of despair? Again, I bring up the gardening analogy. I, quite literally, sow hope in my garden by planting perennials and bulbs. In the fall, I dig these pits in my garden, and fill them with little lumps of nothing. They sit in the ground, throughout a freezing gray and bleak winter. But in the spring, I'm rewarded for enduring the torturous cold with bold, beautiful blooms. Same thing with my perennials. I watch them all turn crispy and brown and eventually crumble away every winter. And then, just when I start to think they are never coming back and I may have finally killed them for good this time, I witness their rebirth as tiny green shoots poke their heads through the cold ground every spring. How does this translate into our everyday lives? I don't know exactly. It's taken me 40 years to figure this out, and, as Paul says in our passage in Phillipians (chapter 3:4-14), "Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it." I've been surrounded with such negativity throughout my life, but I'm slowly and surely realizing that God won't shine through if I stay in that place. So, I surround myself with gems of light. Church activities, including Life Groups, affirming quotes (you probably see me whipping out my phone every week to snap pictures of the quotes on the screen. Especially when I forget to turn off my flash), scripture, activities that let me showcase my gifts, like singing and gardening. Sometimes, I have to "fake it, til I make it" when I'd really rather wallow in my pit. Maybe you do, too. But eventually, you pretend long enough that some hope starts to take root, and eventually, it grows high and wide enough to lift you out of that pit and into the light. And once we become filled with that light, we can't help but spread it everywhere we go, sowing hope in the midst of despair. "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead."
