Story:  The Reluctant Seed

Perry was a pea seed who talked daily with his friends.  There was a legend that they would be buried in the ground and that strange things would happen to them, so strange it was like dieing. Perry said he wouldn’t change, no matter what!

Spring came, and Perry and his friends were planted in the cold ground.  After a few days, one friend after another said, “So long friends, I am changing.”

Perry could feel an urge to change, but he resisted, and resisted.  Soon he was the last seed that was still a seed.  He thought he could hear a different kind of sound coming from above the ground, but he couldn’t understand what was being said.  He felt very lonely, and decided he would rather die than be alone.  So he stopped resisting the urge to change.  His outer coat split – it just hurt a little bit.  Then something started growing out of him and bent downwards, sending out furry little branches.  Then he felt himself being pushed upwards.  After a day, he was pushed up into the light, and his body split.  Between the two halves, something else developed, but he could no longer remember who he had been.  He had become something new and totally different from the seed he had been.  He also had a new language, one spoken by all the strange new things around him, and he felt incredibly alive with a powerful urge to stretch and grow.

We are often invited to leave what we have been in order to become something new, and that can be terribly frightening.  I lived in many rural communities, and there are some people born and raised in those towns who will not leave because they are afraid of being someplace new.  There are workers who have worked at the same job for 20 or more years that will not take any training because they don’t want to do anything new.

There are people in abusive relationships who will not leave because they are afraid of the unknown, of trying to live a new way.

We might laugh at Perry trying to resist his fate as a seed, but all of us in some way are a bit like him, afraid of leaving what we know for something new.  I put off going into ministry as long as I could, because I was comfortable with being a teacher.  Finally taking the chance, selling our dream home, and moving across the country opened the way to what has been a very rewarding experience for me.

There are many good reasons sometimes for not changing, but fear is never one of them.  Fear may be the reason we avoid a change, but it is not a good reason.  The history of the church is full of people who feared doing something new, but did it anyway.  Moses did not want to be the leader for his people, but he eventually accepted his call.  Jesus feared dieing, but he went to the cross anyway.  His disciples resisted change, but they changed.  Paul resisted the Gospel by violently pursuing its followers, but he changed and became the most important evangelist for the early church.

In our own lives, we may feel God pulling us to something new.  It is not helpful to allow fear to make us resist that pull.  There may be other good reasons to hesitate, but fear is not one of them.

Loving God, thank you for courage that helps us let go of safety so we can follow our calling to follow Jesus.  Amen

Message:  Grace

Vanessa had purchased Gloria’s house when Gloria moved into a senior’s residence.  Gloria had planted and nurtured a yellow columbine that bloomed for weeks every year.  Both of them belonged to the Golden Needle Sewing Club, and both ran for President.  Gloria won, and Vanessa felt very angry.   When Gloria stopped by to enjoy the columbine in bloom, Vanessa decided to get even by destroying the columbine.  So she hacked it down to ground level and started hauling it off to the compost pile.  She noticed something shiny, and it turned out to be her prized turquoise earring she lost the previous summer.

Good things happen to us, whether or not we deserve them, and we call this grace.  And bad things happen to us, whether we deserve them or not, and this is called life.

In my favourite Jewish scripture reading, we hear of a God who loves us too much to waste time on keeping a record of our wrongs, of a God determined to teach us how to live rightly by changing our hearts instead of through law.

Jesus, we believe, was the instrument God used to advance the process of becoming right with us by changing our hearts.

While Christian doctrine points to Jesus paying a price to a cosmic pawnbroker for our redemption, I focus on how he serves as a model, a mentor, and a guide.

There are two dominant forces in our lives: love and fear.  Everything else represents an expression or an intersection of these forces.  Jesus showed us that love can always overcome fear, and that the fruits of yielding to love are much more durable and worthwhile than the fruits of yielding to fear.

In our reading from the Gospel of John, there are three messages.  The first message is that, if Greeks have heard about Jesus, then his fame has reached the point where the authorities will have to deal with him, so his death is drawing close. 

The second message is that, if we try to hang on to what we have, including life, if we allow fear to rule us, it will be a wasted effort, and we will lose everything.  If we let go of life, if we refuse to let fear rule us, then we will gain everything of worth.

The third message is that Jesus will die on a cross, and, in that dieing, will draw the whole world to himself.

The first message is validated by his approaching arrest and execution.

The second message is a great thorn in all of our sides as almost no one is able to completely let go of everything for the sake of Jesus.  This is where grace needs to come into the equation.  I am reading Soul Survivor by Philip Yancy.  In this book, Yancy examines the lives of people who have been enormously influential in his life, people who have excruciatingly laboured to let Jesus be their model or guide for their own lives.  Many of them were great failures in some ways, and all of them made great differences in the world.  Some of them suffered because they could not accept their own failures, and focused on their shortcomings along with their goals for their lives.  What they did not easily see was that it was what is in the heart that matters most to God, and their love for others or for God mattered far more than their failures to live out that love in some ways.  In their efforts to be perfect, they had difficulty in accepting the loving grace of God.

This leads into the third message.  Jesus, as far as we know, did die on a cross, and some of his followers as well. Through his death, he succeeded in drawing people from around the world, and through 2000 years.

Death in some ways is our final failure in life, and Jesus showed how to turn that failure into enduring success.  In his teaching, his life style, and his death, Jesus spoke to our hearts, and broke down barriers that exist there to being right with God, and with each other.

Yancy contrasts Christianity with other great religions by Christianity’s emphasis on the internal rather than the external.  This message is endorsed by many of our modern prophets.  Stephen Covey, in his book, 7 Habits of Effective People, emphasis fixing our internal being before working at changing our externals.   Dale Carnegie in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, addresses our internal issues.

All of this leads us back to the second message.  If we try to hang on to life, we will lose everything.  If we let go of life, we will gain everything.  These two choices are founded on two ways of seeing the world, two paradigms.  The first paradigm is that we are the masters of our fate, we are responsible for everything that happens to us, good or bad; that life is a commercial transaction in which we get what we earn.  We are in control of our lives, and it is our responsibility to assert that control.

The second paradigm is that our lives and all we have are gifts that we are to be willing to freely give away as necessary.  It is in our giving that we become able to receive.  The first paradigm has no place for grace; the second paradigm relies on grace.

I believe God means for us to live rich, joy-filled lives, and this richness and joy flow out of a love-based relationship with the world, with God, and with ourselves.  To receive this joy, we need to free ourselves from fear, and from controlling attachments.

May the grace of God, made visible in the meal we are soon to share, help each of us free our hearts and minds to live in and with fearless grace.  Amen.