Seeds and Bulbs

Seeds and Bulbs

Luke 24:13-35

When I was little, I loved to garden.  Like a lot of kids, I took real delight in planting things that grew fast and huge.  I remember planting watermelons and pumpkins and being astounded as those plants took over the yard.  I loved growing “four-o’clocks” which not only spread fast but had flowers that opened every morning and closed every night.  Gardening was amazing!

Maybe the high point of my gardening life was years ago, before we had children, when a very “highbrow” member of the garden club where we lived walked by our house and told me that my garden was “a perfect recreation of an English cottage garden.”  (I never told her that I immediately ran inside and checked to see what an English cottage garden actually looked like.)

Once our children arrived, gardening fell by the wayside.  I planted bulbs in the fall, the polar opposite of my urge to grow things “fast and huge” as a child.  Mostly, I planted bulbs as an act of defiance of the oncoming winter and out of hope that one day, some how, it would be spring.  The first time, I planted the bulbs upside down.  Other years, the chipmunks and squirrels replanted them.  One time, my dog dug up every bulb that I planted just to eat the organic fertilizer that I had put in with the bulbs.  (She neatly lined up each bulb next to the holes—which was very thoughtful!)

This past week, I planted seeds, not in the ground but in an indoor planter—a little nursery of sorts.  In the middle of all the chaos in our world—wars and economic challenges and terrible division—it was time to commit an act of unmitigated hope.  I believe that my zinnias will grow and that I will enjoy them on my deck.  Fully aware of all the things that I can’t fix or change, maybe I can add a little smidge of beauty… Or, maybe my hopes will be dashed and I’ll end up at the farmer’s market purchasing plants again.  At some point, though, you do have to dare to care…

I think God plants things all the time in us—seeds that grow fast and big and bulbs that take forever to grow.  We take some for granted.  We completely miss others.  Every now and then, though, we see what’s been planted.  We make the connections.  We step back and pause and think, “Wow…now that’s amazing.” 

This is precisely what happened to me this past week.  As some of you know, we went on a very quick trip to Missouri to scout out our work trip work sites.  We left after church on Sunday and returned on Monday evening.  In that short span of time, we were reintroduced to a little corner of the world that has mattered to us for decades now.  We also met an amazing family:  two grandparents and seven grandchildren who live with them as a result of devastating drug addictions for the children’s mothers.

The living conditions are tough.  There are two R.V.s, one of which serves as a storage unit, the other of which sleeps a couple of the older girls.  The other building is a prefabricated storage building that serves as their “home.”  When I walked into that building, six of the children were sitting on a couch together.  I stepped outside and started to talk to Randy, the grandfather:  “Randy, what’s the biggest thing that we could do to help?”  He looked me in the eye and said, “I think the most important thing that we need is water.”  They don’t have running water.  Twice a week, the children bathe at someone’s house quite a distance away.  Randy has a storage tank on his pickup truck that he fills sometimes from the neighbor’s hose.

That’s right… 7 children and no running water.  We may put in a storage system and trench the line and install p.v.c. piping.  We may raise the money to install a well and a pump.  One way or another, those kids are going to have running water in June.  (You may just hear more from me about this…)

What I want you to hear this morning, though, is how for me this is one of those moments when God is at work, planting seeds and bulbs.  We have our joys and concerns prayer pretty much every week.  Every week, I sit and write a list of things to share.  What has been appearing for me for weeks has been the thought of people who just need clean water.  Now, there are so many prayers to be prayed for the overlooked and ignored in our world—those who fear violence, those who are refugees, the poor people of Ukraine, and on and on.  However, for weeks now, even when I didn’t write down prayers for those who were seeking clean water, somehow, that prayer kept coming up for me when I started praying.

Now, it’s not unusual for me to wander from what I’ve written.  In fact, that “wandering” is often the place in which I discover what I experience as deeply, spiritually powerful.  We create space and structure for things and often, in my experience, God fills in the blanks.  However, what was unusual was the persistence of this particular idea—people who need clean water.  

So, we walk onto this potential work site.  What we would normally be looking for would be a deck or a handicapped accessibility ramp to build.  That’s what we’ve done.  That’s probably what we’ll do.  (And, yes, those kids are definitely getting a deck, too!). However, it was the seeds that had been planted in the previous weeks that put me in a place to really be open and ready when I met an actual family who needed clean water.  Rather than dismiss that need as beyond us, my reaction was, “Oh…that project has our name on it.  Consider it done!” It’s like it was marked in yellow highlighter.  In an instant, all sorts of things made sense.

Now, I’m mentioning this in part because I want you to help us get this done.  You will be invited to contribute and I hope you will.  However, I’m also mentioning it because it is this experience of God planting things and then surprising us that is at the heart of our text this morning.  I also think that if you open yourself to this experience, you’ll experience something similar in your own life.

So, two people are walking home after the long Passover Festival week in Jerusalem.  They had heard about Jesus and had hoped he was going to be the one to lead Israel.  Instead, they had been deeply disturbed by everything that they had seen and heard.  Home is in Emmaus so they had about seven miles to walk.  As they walk, they are immersed in trying to sort things out together.

Think of this as “soil preparation,” if you will.  Nothing grows if you don’t do some preparation.  We had to be willing to go to Missouri and take some risks. Before that though, we had to get in the habit of praying and learn the art of listening between the lines of our own prayers: “What’s me?” “What’s not me but is speaking to me?”  In the most basic sense, like the travelers in our text, we have to be willing to speak from our hearts and listen very carefully.

In addition, we have to be open to the “strangers” we meet along the way.  God puts people in our path—if we are open.  Or, in the case of our text, the stranger might just be the risen Christ.  The apostle, Paul, says that sometimes when we welcome a stranger, we entertain angels among us.  Conversely, when we reject the stranger or treat them with contempt, we are, in fact, shutting out God.  We have to be open to God’s presence and open to every child of God, all at the same time.  You just never know…

In the text, the risen Christ plants seeds.  He listens to their description of everything that happened in Jerusalem because there is value in them having a chance to tell the story for themselves.  (The most important question that I asked Randy was, “What do you think would help you most?”).  Asking questions and listening makes room for God.  However, the other key is that the travelers then actually listen to what “some stranger” has to say to them.  He reminds them of everything from the prophets that was fulfilled in what happened.  He plants one seed after another.  

Still, though, at this point, the travelers have seen the risen Jesus with their own eyes and heard him explain things in his own words but they don’t recognize him.  He’s just some guy to them.  However, the next essential step is that they not only care about this stranger in the abstract, they turn that thought into action.  They recognize that the evening is drawing near.  This is no time for someone to be traveling on the roads alone.  They look the stranger in the eye and say, “Hey…why don’t you come to our home?  Come find some shelter and have some dinner with us.”

Faith is not a list of ideas that we agree to believe. Faith is not a set of moral positions that we take.  Faith is what we live.  Are you going to care enough to invite the stranger to dinner?  Do you really believe that everyone is a child of God?  Do you believe that enough to forgive someone or to stop and help someone or to look someone in the eye and say, “It’s not okay that your grandchildren don’t have clean water; we’re going to get that done!”  (Then, you say to the person who came with you, “We can do that, right?”)`

For all the disappointments and heartbreak and pain of the last week of his life, can you imagine what was rising inside the risen Jesus when these travelers invited him in? “This wasn’t for nothing!  This…this right here is what this whole thing was about!  Someone understood!”  Imagine the smile on the “stranger’s” face just then…

Then, the “stranger” sits down at their table with them.  He takes the bread and blesses it and breaks it.  In that instant, the stranger disappears.  In that instant, the travelers realize that their hearts had been burning with God’s presence the whole time.  In that instant, the travelers know not only that Christ has risen but that they have been in the presence of the risen Christ, that he has been made known to them in the breaking and the blessing of the bread.

They run to tell the others what has happened:  “You’ll never believe who we met in Missouri!”  Oh…I’m sorry.  That was me telling you… Well, sooner or later, we all end up telling each other, “You’ll never believe what God has planted and how it is growing.  Come and see for yourself!”

Listen carefully.  Pray relentlessly.  Stay open and available, every day.  Something amazing is waiting to grow.