The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for December 4, 2005

Texts: Isaiah 35:1-10/Matthew 11:2-11

Title: “Beyond Recognition”

                 My dad was a gardener. I can still see him at the kitchen table kitchen table in March, seed catalogue in hand, weighing the merits of the various tomato, bell pepper, and squash varieties being advertised.  Fully two months before the thaw would release its grip on the Wisconsin soil there sat my dad, the gardener, musing over the configuration of the coming year's garden plot.

                Gardeners can become very animated when their subject is discussed, pairing their enthusiasm with language reverential in spirit and precise in detail. The poet Mary Oliver provides a window on the gardener’s enthusiasms, writing, "Now I see him coming from the house--I see him on his knees, cutting away the diseased, the superfluous, coaxing the new, knowing that the hour of fulfillment is buried in  years of patience--yet willing to labor like that on the mortal wheel."

             Though I do not know if Mary Oliver is herself a gardener, I have gained sufficient familiarity with her work to speculate that she may very well be one. “I see him on his knees, cutting away the diseased, the superfluous, coaxing the new, knowing that the hour of fulfillment is buried in years of patience.”  Though, in fact, the subject of her poem is not really gardening, but rather poetry, Oliver uses gardening imagery to describe what the poet does as he or she coaxes a poem into existence.  

                  The metaphor of gardening might be useful in describing numerous creative endeavors in which you and I are privileged to engage. Of course, life itself, whether you happen to be talking about gardening, poetry or something else, often involves work, figuratively if not literally, on our knees, “cutting away” and “coaxing the new” in anticipation of the hour of fulfillment when are various projects finally attain the shape they are meant to have.

                 If gardening is a metaphor that works to describe what we do in the lifelong process of making or rejecting certain life options, it might be said that the same holds for God. We might think of God as the master gardener “cutting away” and “coaxing the new” in anticipation of the hour of fulfillment.

                   The book of Isaiah uses gardening imagery to a great extent. Israel, God’s chosen nation, is depicted as God’s planting, God’s garden. The garden, however, owing to the disobedience of the people, and a series of reversals suffered at the hands of her enemies, in time came to look a lot different from what God envisioned.  The gardener was forced to act, for he retained within himself a picture of what that garden could be if it ever reached its potential. God might be depicted “on his knees, cutting away the diseased, the superfluous, coaxing the new.” 

                  The attention my dad committed to raising the perfect tomato is nothing compared to what God would do to insure that Israel, his garden, reached its potential.  The commitment that God makes to each one of us is like that.  God wants each of us to reach our potential. In and through the experiences of Israel the community of faith today recognizes God’s hand at work in our circumstances. In his commitment to Israel’s survival and prosperity we see God’s commitment to us modeled.

                “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.”  There are many ways God’s ambitions for humanity have been described, but none express as concisely and vividly what God has in mind for creation than that verse I just quoted.  The wilderness will become a garden, but not just any garden, it will be a garden of such magnificence as to humble the most creative imagination. 

                The Garden of Eden described in the book of Genesis was just such a place, an idyllic kingdom where every worthy desire was obtainable. Though humanity forfeited our place in that garden, that perfect place, through the transgression of our ancient ancestors, the gardener never abandoned his commitment to his people. Though it may be the dead of winter when the frozen ground---our sinfulness--- mocks any thought of spring, God still has his mind in Eden, the perfectibility of the earth and the people who inhabit it. 

                  “The hour of fulfillment is buried in years of patience.”  Fulfillment was thought to be unattainable when Isaiah addressed his fellow sufferers so long ago.  Dispossessed of their dreams of freedom and security, the people lived as shriveled vines deprived of a water source.  But Isaiah stepped up to say that the gardener was still on the job.

                  He brought a simple message: you won’t recognize this place when God gets through with it. Surveying the scene spread before them, you might excuse the people if they didn’t buy what Isaiah was selling.  The future that Isaiah described was, in the eyes of the defeated Jews, beyond recognition.  

                 When you get down to it, much of what we teach and preach about here is beyond recognition.  We have no bead on what God is doing in our midst.  We cannot say with certitude that God extended his hand here or withheld it there.  Yet we continue to maintain the conviction that somewhere, somewhere out of our view God is at work, “cutting away the diseased, the superfluous, and coaxing the new.” The scriptures unanimously report that we won’t recognize this place [this world] when God gets through with it.

                   Yet none of us is given to know to what degree God has accomplished his plans for the transformation of creation, and that frustrates us.  With the poet we ask how deep the hour of fulfillment is buried.  God, however, does not leave us clueless. 

                As the eighteenth century concluded a group of our forefathers gathered to ponder when their hour of fulfillment would arrive.  Discontented with their status as vassals of England, these men were fully aware that any attempt to remove themselves from under England’s thumb would subject them to charges of treason.  These American patriots were entering a high stakes game, and they knew it.  Yet in describing the events that led to the American Revolution, author Joseph Ellis tells us that men like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton “emphasized the self-evident character of the principles at stake.”  Though the English crown would certainly disagree, our forefathers believed they were destined to be free.  Ellis describes the prevailing attitude of those revolutionaries when he writes, “American revolutionaries talked as if they were actors in a historical drama that had already been written by the gods.”

                    Independence was beyond recognition, the patriots could point to very little to substantiate their confidence in the future. England held all the cards. Yet they believed they were destined for better things.

                      The gardener, the poet and the patriot might suspend their efforts did they not believe that “fulfillment is buried in years of patience.”  Their vision of the future is a source of continuing motivation, a source of continuing hope.

                      Isaiah pointed to the day when God’s garden would flourish.  He stood up and declared to the Jews, “you are not going to recognize this place when God gets through with it.”  What a glorious vision it was.  “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame shall leap like a deer; the tongue of the speechless sing for joy, waters shall break forth in the wilderness, burning sand shall become a pool.”

                    The glorious day about which Isaiah prophesied has not yet come to pass.  And, frankly, nothing we have experienced in our lifetimes gives us grounds to believe that the transformation to which Isaiah pointed is going to occur anytime soon. We continue to be plagued by the nemesis of war, continue to be assaulted by poverty, greed and injustice. The resource base that sustains life continues to shrink, even as pollutants in the atmosphere deplete the shield that offers us protection from the sun. We await the day when “sorrow and sighing shall flee away,” but we aren’t banking on it to occur in our lifetimes. 

                  We might despair in such circumstances, yet we maintain hope, hope which Paul Zahl defines as “remembrance projected onto the future.  [Hope] satisfies [he continues] because it is based on an objective past.”  The gardener, the poet and the patriot would suspend their labors if they lost confidence in the ultimate success of their endeavors.  They retain confidence because there is an objective past to which they can point; the gardener has feasted for months on the produce of last year’s garden, the poet can point to the poem or several poems he or she has already completed, the patriot is willing to fight for his liberty because he knows his history; men and women were created to live free.

                    Soon after he began his public ministry people began to conclude that Jesus was someone very special. John the Baptist got word of Jesus, sending his disciples to our Lord with a question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  Recall the response.  It’s a good one.  “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  “Hope…satisfies because it is based on an objective past.”  “Am I the one?  Look at the record, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed.” 

                 For centuries the Jews waited for the prophesy of Isaiah to be fulfilled, for hopes and dreams to be fulfilled. They knew the message: “you are not going to recognize this place when God gets through with it.”  They waited for the highway leading to Mount Zion to open up in all its splendor.  And then came Jesus.

“You are not going to recognize this place when God gets through with it.”  That became the message that Jesus proclaimed to the disciples of John as he advised them to open their eyes to the new things God was doing in their midst.

              It takes the eyes of a gardener to see the potential storied up in the frozen ground covered with a foot of snow.  It takes the eyes of the poet to spot the word or phrase that will convert prose into poetry.  Likewise, as we mature in faith we cultivate the ability to see more clearly the signs of God’s reign on earth.

              Much of what God is doing in the world today is beyond recognition.  We do not know the outcome of the war in Iraq. We do not know what future alliances we will make, or what future wars we will enter. We are not given to know the future of our health deliver system, Social Security, or for that matter, the future of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  But just as Isaiah could point to an objective past upon which to base his convictions, so we also base our hope on a God who came to us in Jesus, cutting away the diseased, the superfluous, coaxing the new, knowing that his will would be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  

              A little more than two thousand years ago by most reckonings, that same John who sent his disciples to Jesus, prepared the world for the messiah, declaring, in so many words, “you are not going to recognize this place when God gets through with it.” The Jews with whom he shared that message were slow to accept that message for what it was.  The message didn’t sink in.  It was beyond recognition.  But there were some who saw the longstanding hopes of Israel fulfilled in Jesus, and it is because of them, and their commitment to sharing that news, that we are here today. 

              Just as an objective past, last year’s crop, sustains the hope of the gardener, so the objective past, God’s covenant with Israel his chosen, and God’s new covenant with us in Jesus Christ, sustains and comforts us as we await God’s final revelation, the ultimate fulfillment of God’s plan toward which history has been unalterably moving.

              As 2005 concludes, we, the congregation of Lakeview Presbyterian, along with the other congregations of this city, find ourselves pondering the future of our churches, and our city, from a place we could not have envisioned before the storm.  “Beyond recognition” more aptly describes our futures than at any time in our history. Our assumptions about who we are and what our futures will be as congregations, has, thanks to the storm, been drowned under flood water to the depth, in some cases, of over seven feet. 

              Yet as we grieve the past, and are demoralized by the present, we nonetheless gather on Sunday morning to retrieve a part of what we did, a piece of who we are. Though depressed, displaced, and disoriented, we come here to declare our allegiance to the gardener upon whose land, and under whose watchful eye, our lives are being lived.  We remember what God has done in the past, we believe he is active in the present, and hope inspirits us to anticipate that that future waiting to be lived, for now so very much beyond recognition, will yield a bountiful harvest.  We hope because we trust in God.  We trust in God because God is trustworthy.  Amen.

PRAYER

              God, our Sovereign, hear our prayers with a patient and forbearing spirit, for we are prone to bring lists of things to fix or correct into your presence, while ignoring our responsibility to thank you for gifts already received.  By the intercession of your Spirit teach us how to pray, even as you form a new attitude for prayer in our hearts.  Concentration drifting as we are assailed by thoughts that demand our attention, help us, O God, to discipline our minds to retain our focus in this hour, making communion with you our first priority. 

              O Lord, it is difficult to trace your hand in the tragedies that play out around us, yet you summon us to take another look.  You have revealed that the schemes of warmongers, despots and villains never succeed for long.  Though that crowd may leave great devastation and suffering in their wake, they expire leaving no lasting monument behind, leaving no one to mourn them.  Be stern and relentless, O God, in judging those whose aim is destruction and perversity, and may the bitter fate they suffer discourage others who might seek to emulate them. 

             Strengthen those who strive against evil.  We acknowledge a great debt to those who serve on our nation’s police forces, who maintain our justice system, who serve in our nation’s penal system.  Exposed to the basest elements of human nature, guard them lest they become cynical in the performance of their duties or overly hasty in judging guilt or innocence.  May they be shown the respect they deserve from all who benefit from their efforts. 

                    Loving Father, as we continue to prepare ourselves for the coming birth of your Son, we are aware that many are making their preparations deprived of the companionship of loved ones. We pray for those who have been widowed, who have been divorced, and children who have experienced the devastation wrought by death or divorce.  Abide with families whose loved ones are stationed abroad.

                     We continue to pray for members of the military, but also members of the foreign service, contractors, and our citizens who work for the many national and international aid agencies that provide essential services to people around the globe. Grant them the assurance that the women and men of this nation stand beside them and pray for their welfare.

                     The future is in your hands, O God, grant us faith, and brace that faith with courage to trust you even as our Savior the Christ trusted you. Teach us patience in this demanding hour, patience to wait and watch for your will to be revealed.  Support the discouraged and the disheartened, particularly those who have no home to call their own, no job to support their families, and no structure around which to order their lives.

                     O God, awaken us to the rich possibilities that are ours to claim as your faithful people.  Transform our minds through our exposure to your word and spirit. Expand our horizons to embrace new wonders that await us at our doorstep.  Awaken us to the delights of nature and reawaken us to the blessing of such simple pleasures as a walk, a midday nap, or a cup of coffee.

                      For all thy good gifts, for the church, the community in which we live, and for the opportunity to worship you freely we give thanks, our prayers and our hope founded on Jesus, our brother. It is in his name we pray.