gardening, Snow White, & apologetics
I will admit - I do not have a lot of experience with gardening. My parents often had a garden while I was growing up, but I'm afraid I never got too interested. As an adult though, I'm becoming more intrigued with the idea of growing our own food (does this just mean I'm officially getting old?) and also the spiritual lessons to be learned from the daily practice of caring for creation. So, yay, we have a garden this year!
When I reflect on the gospel accounts of Jesus, I remember that he used a ton of gardening, planting, and harvesting metaphors to communicate spiritual ideas. That intrigues me too. Just off the top of my head, I remember a few -
“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Luke 10:2
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." John 15:1-2
And of course, I think of Matthew 13, where Jesus tells a story about a farmer who scatters seed on his soil. However, in some sections the seeds don’t grow, because the soil is either too rocky, too shallow, or full of weeds. Only in the one section of soil did the seed grow and bear fruit 100 times what was planted. Jesus explains his story - that the seed is the Word of God that falls on our hearts, but our hearts are so often too full of other things. Worries of this life or the deceitfulness of wealth are a few weeds Jesus specifically names. Rarely, the story goes, does someone hear the word of God and actually understand it, because the soil of our hearts is hardly ever prepared, tilled, and ready for fruit to grow.
It's important that we understand Jesus' teaching on the soils before we seek to understand Paul's famous 'fruit of the spirit' mentioned in his letter to the Galatians. I'm no expert gardener, but I know you can't just skip ahead to the harvest without doing the hard work of preparing the ground, tilling, planting, weeding, watering, and protecting. Growing fruit in our hearts is no different. We all know the fruit of the spirit and have it memorized in some fun little Sunday school song, but it is one thing to know of the fruit and another thing entirely to tend to our gardens (our hearts) in order that said fruit will grow.
By the grace of God and by the sin nature we share, each of us have this wild garden of both fruits and weeds trying to grow up out of our hearts, competing for space each day. The primary work of the Christian, perhaps, is to tend this garden. If we truly declare that we want love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control to grow in us, we must do the hard work of gardening. Or, rather, the hard work of allowing the Master Gardener into our hearts to prune, water, and work.
My daughter saw that "the real Snow White" (how she refers to live-action films) just came out on Disney+ last week. Even though I'd heard mixed reviews and knew it had terribly awful ratings, we decided to take a chance and watch it for family movie night last week. I won't speak to the rest of the movie, but it does have a fabulous opening number called "Good Things Grow." (If you just watch the first 10 minutes of the movie, you have probably seen enough 😆) I teared up as Snow White's parents (who, of course, die promptly following the song) asked her who she wants to be when she grows up - not asking what kind of 'job' she might want to hold, as we often ask kids today - but what kind of person she wants to become. They encourage her to seek to become someone "who will lead and make the good things grow...someone fearless, someone fair, someone brave, someone true."
God, too, has an agenda for what kind of people we become. That is what he was always trying to get at with the old law, and now with His Holy Spirit that dwells in his people with the goal of forming us into the likeness of Christ. The natural fruit of walking in step with the Spirit will be a life that is a better expression of the God who lives in us (Galatians 5:13-25) - a life that is loving, and good, and patient, and faithful...the list goes on.
And, wow, the world desperately needs more accurate expressions of God's heart walking around.
When God’s people actually do the work of sitting down and tending to our wild hearts, God can grow something incredible in us for the world to see and be affected by - God's deep kindness, and deep gentleness, and deep joy. These things truly stand out in a world that is characterized instead by shallow niceties, downright cruelty, and surface-level happiness that quickly fades.
I used to be so concerned with apologetics. And I suppose I should be glad that there are sectors of Christianity that still are, because I do believe we need one another. But in a postmodern age, where no one is concerned or convinced of any truth, I don't think a scientific & historic argument for Christianity is going to work any longer. (Did it ever? I'm not sure it did.) We live in a time where ‘fact’ no longer matters to people, and yet, the way we’ve been taught to 'convert people' is to argue the facts of our faith until they hopefully relent and see our great intelligence...er, I mean...see God!
I just think we’re in a society where we are seeing that that approach to evangelism doesn’t work anymore. But you know what does work (and has always worked?) The attractive beauty of a life transformed by God’s Spirit.
A life of deep, unconditional love,
of goodness in an evil world,
of patience in a fast food society.
The evidence for God is in the fruit. This was always God’s plan - that people could see from afar the good things growing in us. So, tend to your garden this summer. Let the Master Gardener do his thing in your heart - for the sake of the world and our neighbors.
Amen.
- Pastor Sarah