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Gardening reveals the mystery of God’s Gospel at work in this world. It does it by the sheer contradiction of the initial reality of the seed. The seed itself as we know is as hard as a “rock” on the outside but once watered (baptized) it grows roots into the surrounding landscape and forms a sprouting plant up out of the ground, facing upward towards the heavens and taking in the “light” of the sun (SON!)
Not
all seeds germinate rightly however... They can partially develop, but perhaps be
choked by the weeds (temptations of the world) to never grow past a certain
point. Or they can become overly focused on their own physical development but
neglect or intellectually ignore the spiritual roots the True Church that Our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ is hoping we would tap into.
Transferring
out of the “School of Athens for Jesus,” in that missionally numbered year of
2012; I had my first class at my new school be “Church Planting Boot Camp.” It
was a summer intensive that literally began one week after my last class at my
former seminary. What was wonderful about this class was that it was a lot
about gardening, a lot about leadership and most importantly about our
spiritual development and role as leaders in the “physical” church of
Christ.
The
physical and spiritual is something we humans have a limited capacity for
understanding yet alone developing into the reality of God’s Will within the
lifestyle of Grace. Some have
cherry-picked the Gospel of Jesus so much so, to have created an anchoring
dogma of foundations or stones... But isn’t the Gospel to always be
transforming and ever shaping our lives?
What
they don’t realize in their intellectual zeal to rationalize the reality of
“church” in the world is that they have placed themselves and the Gospel in
bondage to the physical stones of what comprises their understanding of church. Being confessional and being evangelical are
loaded words to trying to define the disciple’s understanding of the true role
of church, however. We have made them into intellectual borders that polarize
and divide more than encourage and join.
What
was Peter thinking before the infamous cherry-picked understanding of the
foundation of “the church?” He was
changing—Christ Jesus was changing his heart through His Living, transforming
Word! “15Jesus
said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16Simon Peter
answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17And
Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood
has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”
That seed of faith finally had its
hardened shell broken baptismally by Jesus Living Word! Go be fruitful and multiply! There’s another cherry-picked concept that we
have turned into a physical reality over and above a spiritual priority of
discipleship. We’ve done everything but form the physical church into miniature
“Elk clubs,” social, exclusive and self-oriented for “discerning Christians,”
as more or less chaplains to the worldly culture than being and becoming
pastors for Christ Jesus and His Living, Spiritual Gospel!
We have placed ourselves in bondage
to the seed—for it offers itself as a fortress of solid, doctrinal, impermeable
and unchangeable “false” stability. But
if we were to see it from a perhaps disturbing metaphor of the Chrysalis versus
the stone; We would hear and sense the terror of the need of the butterfly to
transform and break free, stifled and encased against walls that have become
stone!
Let’s now imagine the Gospel and its
reality of discipleship as that encased butterfly—bondage in paradox, bondage
in spiritual depravity... In short, the
only way to “walk the talk, keepin’ it real” as they say, is to be completely
transformed in heart and mind to the will of God and establish those spiritual
roots and foundation of the Gospel within these places—the heart, the mind.
That’s hard work; we don’t wanna
really go there—to be fed and led is the True reality of what gathering
together in fellowship as the “Body,” is supposed to be—become! It’s not about
stones, it’s not even about us! It’s
about Jesus, it’s about empowering, encouraging and enlightening others to
spread and live the Good News through their lives lived into the lifestyle of
Grace.
As we know, living into the
lifestyle of Grace is living into our baptism daily as reflection, confession,
repentance and renewal—this is the reality of being Christian—living into our
cost of discipleship. We are a society or culture, however, that loves its
slogans though, “No Pain, No Gain.”
We’re more than fine with adhering, disciplining ourselves to this when
it’s all about us~ Every gym concerned with helping the body has this sign up
in some “shape or form.” However if you
dared to put this up in a church, I’m sure a lot of people would be fleeing in
droves out the door, out of the reality of the “Sunday-frame of mind” and back
into their shell—world of their “priorities and concerns.”
What have we really been given keys
to? Can all we really see this as are keys to a physical building, a pile of
intellectual and institutional rules and books? Doesn’t Jesus Gospel mean much
more than this? Are not our lives to
mean much more than we have “man-made” them to be—become? Being a freely responsible disciple of Christ
is the keys to a Pandora’s box of blessings, challenges, darkness and light.
They are the keys to a “car” that is
seemingly impossible to drive... would this make the perfect metaphor for our
challenge in leading and feeding the Gospel of Jesus as the “church” in the
world? Perhaps this is how Peter may
have felt like in his confession of faith to Jesus... Here he was a simple, “blue-collar” fisherman
being challenged to be an active, fully accountable servant to Christ Jesus
Gospel!
St. Paul says it like it is in this
week’s snippet from his letter to the Romans: “2Do not be conformed
to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you
may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
He further goes on to say that we need to operate from a good humility and a
great sense of fellowship (Koinonia) : “3For
by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself
more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each
according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4For as in
one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5so
we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one
of another.”
Ah, what amazing Words from St.
Paul... easier said than done; am I right? Let’s think about that butterfly
again. It begins as a caterpillar or
basically a burrowing type of earth-worm that looks up, finds a tree branch to
cling to and physically and most literally begins to turn itself inside out to
spin a cocoon or Chrysalis (shell) to soon further develop into the butterfly
to then burst free from the Chrysalis shell and take off!
Maybe
for Peter, this spiritual transformation/ metamorphosis happens more thoroughly
or completely when he has the infamous dream of the “kosher sheet” floating down
to him from heaven. For if we recall, Jesus appears to him and says to “kill
and eat,” for what he says to do is right...
This dream basically helped Peter to break away from the legalistic view
of building and developing discipleship—spreading the Good News. In order for Peter to lead and feed others,
he had to break away from those things that tied his faith down, that made his
faith in action exclusionary and “man-made.”
Here’s
another aspect or layer to the paradox of realizing the true church of Jesus
Christ in the world but not of it. We do
want a place to gather ...a place of true fellowship... but why has it not
opened that spiritual door enough to truly scatter? Bible study, prayer, action
are the components of fellowship as the physical, corporate church. We,
however, have not tapped into this enough or avoided too frequently living
into, growing with the calling and commissioning of Jesus to each and every one
of us into the priesthood of all believers.
Instead
of nurturing those in formation, more often than not as the corporate “church;”
we have become intellectual and existential specialists, who are competitive,
controlling and placing each other into the bondage of the world—our agendas,
priorities, indifference... However, we
are carving and encasing ourselves into impermeable stones. Stones that will never grow, never change,
never move—they are dead.
AMEN
August 24th, 2014; 11thSunday After Pentecost; Lect. 21; Year A; SOLA Lectionary
Nicole Collins
Psalm 138; Isaiah 51:1-6; Romans
11:33-12:8; Matthew 16:13-20
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