A Garden

A Garden

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

March 11, 2018

at Bethany Presbyterian Church, Zuni, Virginia

Matthew 26:36-42

Genesis 2: 8-15

Continuing with Jesus’s walk from the triumphant Palm laden entrance to Jerusalem

He headed for the temple

Broke bread with his disciples,

And then headed out into a garden to pray. . .

^{Matthew 26: 36-42}

³⁶ Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” ³⁷ He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. ³⁸ Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

³⁹ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

⁴⁰ Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. ⁴¹ “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

⁴² He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

The setting matters

I’d like to juxtapose three different stories and places this morning

And so I want to put them in your head to before I begin. . .

Picture the place of this prayer, Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane

Picture the place of the temptation – 40 days and nights in the wilderness

And picture the place of the fall of Adam and Eve. . . another garden

I do think the setting of these three is significant,

So having taken a minute to think of the three. . . let’s look at the first in the Bible

Our Old Testament Lesson

 God creates the world in 6 days, according to Genesis 1,

and then there is the day of rest

And then we are put in a garden

Here is is for this morning Genesis 2: 8-15

⁸ Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰ A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. ¹¹ The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin^[d] and onyx are also there.)¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush.^[e] 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 

What is it about gardens?

Jesus prays in the garden, let this cup pass, thy will be done. . .

God puts Adam and Eve into the Garden

To work it and to take care of it. . .

Have you ever worked a garden?

When I was younger I use to hate it

Dad would take me out with him, the sun was always hot,

the ground too was hot and dry, or the other extreme too muddy

the work took forever, and there were no winners and losers, no score, nothing to keep my attention

And it seemed at least to me like Dad always gave me the jobs he didn’t want to do,

The ones that had low skill level, the boring ones. . .

The garden took too long, and I just didn’t like it.

I remember Dad though walking in during the summer hours,

with the latest huge piece of lettuce,

With great Pride, Hey yall look at this one!

Yeah great, Dad. . .  I didn’t get it.

I didn’t get it then, but now I do

Now I get it, I love my hands in the dirt, I love planting seeds, I love the wait and anticipation of growth

I love that I get to share it with my kids, I love that we can grow our own food, that I can show that to the girls

I love that what we grow in our garden would potentially be more healthy for us to eat,

I love that we can save a little money, at least hypothetically speaking. . . we’re not there yet

I love that I’m connected to the rest of humanity, who has done this for thousands of years. . .

But most of all I love it now because it is my land, and my garden. . .

It’s mine

I get to plan it

I get to make the decisions,

I get to decide where things will go,

what they will look like while they grow

I get the satisfaction of going to the hardware store if I need to, to get whatever it is I need for it

When problems arise I get to be the one who solves them, and if I don’t it don’t

I don’t need winners and losers and a score anymore because I understand the reality of the battle

And if you’ve owned land, as most of you have probably, you know the battle

Against weeds, and vines, and time, and varmints, wascally wabbits, and flower sucking deer

Root eating moles, bugs, slugs, grubs, mites and blights

And digging in the ground and finding the unexpected snake in your peripherals

It’s a battle, but you have a vision

You can see it in your mind, exactly what it could be like, and that vision may not be attainable, and maybe it’s better that it isn’t, because it keeps you fighting.

It keeps you out there, digging, and planting, and weeding, and clearing, and cutting turf, and taking more trips to the hardware store,

And it does begin to take shape

And you want to show it off, that huge piece of lettuce, that picturesque vista,

that shaded flower bedecked oasis, where the hammock fits so perfectly,

and the lemonade is fresh and inviting, or any other cold beverage of choice,

God did mandate rest of course, didn’t he, to take it all in and truly appreciate a job well done,

But then the battle looms again,

And it is all a cycle, cultivate, plant, weed, wait, weed, wait, weed, wait, harvest. . . and again.

And when someone comes to visit and compliments you on your work it feels good.

There is the Old Joke, when the missionary comes by says

What a beautiful garden that you and God have here. . .

And the guy doesn’t miss a beat and says, “yeah you should have seen it when God had it by himself!”

And it makes you wonder whether God has a different thing in mind entirely when he sees garden

Because look at a forest, look at the edge of your yard, when you let things go. . .

Look at a field of nothing but wild flowers,

I once described a field of wild flowers like this. . .

I object to its disorder, its tangles, its lack of lines,

Its disunity, and patently patternless being;

I wonder  how it can produce the fruit

Of such multiplying color free from

Any bound. . .

What is God’s garden like? Is it like our own or not?

Would he consider our gardens gardens, would we consider his?

But it is true that a garden is the picture of the partnership between God and Man at balance. . .

Both are needed to at least fit the human definition. . .

It is as if Human’s add the lines, the details, the order. . .

And God supplies the life. . .

That’s interesting to think about for a moment before we go on. . .

            Because that is what the weeds are, and the encroaching woods, the disorder of the wildflowers

            Life without bound. . .

The Girls have been watching The Lorax Movie non stop this week

The movie based on the Dr. Seuss book about the Trufula trees,

and the little orange dude that speaks for the trees, and the guy cuts’em all down to make Thneeds

You know the thing that all people need. . .

The movie, reimagines the old story, that there is no a world after all the trees are gone, Thneedville,

And everything is a man made, artificial copy of what it used to naturally be like,

So they have fake, trees, and sky, and sun, and the bad guys even sells fake clean air for everyone

It’s total propaganda, but a pretty cute movie all in all. . .

But I wonder if that is the man version of the garden

Without God anymore. . . everything is neat tidy and perfect, but lifeless, messless, and in a sense: awful,

That is the Utopic picture of human beings without limitation, without God,

and the rules a real gardener knows. . .

which may be the cause or divide between rural and urban areas. . .

people who garden retain that humility that comes from fighting the battle,

but not winning it by breaking the rules. . . by disrespecting life. . .

Because experience teaches that if you let something grow itself,

rather than forcing it the results are better. . .

The poem on the back of your bulletin, is about such a time.

I had planted some sweet peas, but planted them where the rain beat them down a bit,

So they were a tangled mess on the ground, I tried to raise one up to meat the trellis that would save them,

But they wouldn’t go, they had too much spine,

so they were beaten down, and they wouldn’t let me save them

They wouldn’t let me do what I knew was best for them, no matter how much I pulled and pulled,

But then I just left the trellis there, and they grew up it on their own. . .

I called the poem experience, and closed it like this. . .

True gardeners, having seen

Before, remembering

July’s flowerng harvest,

Move to other meddling

Gardening experience teaches to let things go, to let them happen, and God does. . . Life does

Whereas pulling, forcing, just destroys that life. . . breaks the spine of the plant

Look at what Jesus is wrestling with here in the garden

Let this cup pass. . . thy will be done

He knows what he faces. . . he knows the pain, the cross, all of it,

But he accepts God’s will, knowing that it is the way of life, even if it leads through death

Think about Adam and Eve. . . God lies, his way is not better, we will not surely die

No but God’s way is life, and the way they chose was its opposite. . .

Think about our other setting of the three in the Wilderness

Jesus is there, the devil too, the devil promises him escapes from suffering

Food to a hungry man, power and control over all things, and a test for God,

I had said that defeating the devil is not difficult for Jesus, he simply says no, the devil says, Ok

It is easy to choose Good over Evil I think if you know the difference

It’s just sometimes we don’t know that difference, things that are evil seem good,

And vice versa, its that place of the serpent in the garden, the lie, you will not surely die,

That seed, planting that seed of doubt is enough to make us question, to make us lose surety

But look at the prayer of confession,

easy to say, “His will is perfect” difficult to say “His will be done

It is easy to say His will is perfect, but difficult to know and accept his Will for us

But Jesus does both. . . He knows his will and submits to it, and though it leads through death

It leads to life, he must let go, he must allow for the garden to be that partnership,

He must remember what the garden is about. . .

Man being put in the garden to work it and to take care of it

We are put in the garden to work it, and to take care of it, because that is who we are, who we are made to be, not for our own glory but for His. . .

And it can because mixed up right, who am I doing this for, who’s will is being done?

Remember I didn’t like helping dad in his garden, I didn’t feel that right sense

It wasn’t mine. . . and this isn’t mine either, if we think about it being God’s,

But there is a sense that it must be the garden God gives us directly, right

And it may not just be a garden. . .

Maybe it’s our job, maybe its art, maybe it is relationships, our families. . . work it, take care of it

Maybe it is our church

Look at the main parts of this sermon with the garden as a metaphor for church

It must be our own, we must have a personal call to it, ownership, our church, not our fathers

But it is connected completely to our humanity—we are connected to our forebearers

Vision, constant battle, but a battle that must never be won, can’t cheat it

God’s way is messy – our way is order,

God’s way leads to life – ours to artificiality, slow cheap death

Remember the Wildflowers

Would God consider our church, church? Would we consider his?

Remember the sweet peas and the lattice

Experience teaches we shouldn’t force things to fit, but allow God to work them

We mustn’t break the spines of others to force them to our will

Humility, partnership, all important for a garden to flourish

At all points of life, in every step of life we find ourselves in the garden with God, or rejecting God and standing tempted in the wilderness. . .

blown by the wind of our viewpoint

The garden flourishes and life abounds when we say as Jesus does, Thy Will be done

And that means being open to letting go, letting God, and picking up the cross, allowing the mess of the beauty of an occasional wildflower, while still holding onto a vision and fighting the battles continuously. . . tall order, and a conflicting order, but then again, there is order beyond our imaginings in the beauty which passes our understanding in the mind of God. . .

His will is perfect, despite our eyes. . .

Let it be done, and may life abound. . .

Amen