"Were the Whole Realm of Nature Mine"
9.
“Another Chance”
Luke 13:6-9
First Presbyterian Church
The Reverend Donald E. Ray
August
22, 2010
Not only do we have a rescue dog, we also have
rescue plants. We have geraniums
that are two or three years old rescued from the urns on the family cemetery
plots. We have had orchids that
Karen has spotted in the big box stores, languishing from lack of attention and
watering.
Maybe ten years ago, a decade ago now, we were in
the Home Depot near
A year and a half ago, two of the spruces began to
look quite poorly. On one, the
branches were bare sticks on about half the shrub. The
other looked even worse. At the same
time, a cork screw willow we had planted in the front yard began to look dreary
in late summer and dropped its leaves early that fall. The
next spring, while our neighbor’s tree, planted from a cutting of the one in
our front yard was leafing nicely, its parent tree showed only two or three tiny
sprigs on all its twenty foot height. As
much as we didn’t want to, it had to come down. Perhaps
the two spruces should also.
We did some research and concluded from the signs
that the spruces likely suffered from an infestation of spider mites. Treatment
and nurturing began and this year there remains a few bare spots on one, but for
the most part, their beauty has returned and they show new growth.
I truly enjoy the tree covered hill sides, the
grass and grains growing in the valleys, the budding leaves and flowers of
spring and summer, the radiant colors of autumn, even the stark barren branches
of winter. I marvel on the trip to
the
Magnificent as are the towering evergreens, I am
most intrigued by the straggly saplings growing out of the crevices on the rock
cliffs. Though spindly and short,
many are evidently quite old, having clung to their precarious rooting for years
and still living.
As I look across our backyard through the summer
enjoying the splashes of colorful geraniums, I have a momentary flash back to
the scrawny, bare stems they were, dormant in the greenhouse through the winter.
The tenacity of trees that grow on
inhospitable terrain; the cycle of perennials that weather the harshest of
winters to leaf and bud again in the spring; even the weeds that endure the
hoeing and cultivating only to come back again the next year, never cease to
amaze me.
In the midst of puzzling over the question of why
bad things happen to good and bad people, Jesus told this parable: A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; . . . For three years
he had found no fruit on it. “Cut it
down;” . . .The vinedresser responded, “Let
it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure.” (Luke
13:7-8)
Were the whole realm of nature mine is not about
the harvests we can reap but how we can till and nurture and prune and cultivate
and how we can grow and learn from its marvels. Wonders
abound in the realm of nature in the beauty and symmetry and balance by which
vegetation and animals and insects and birds and fish and creatures of the
waters compliment and fulfill a design that extends far beyond our
comprehension. Wonders abound in
what seems to us freaks of nature - disruptions in the plan. What
should be a mighty hemlock is but a scrawny shrub because its seed found root in
but a little soil in the crevice of a rock.
We live in a throw away society. When
a microwave stops working, repair will cost more than a replacement. A
lawn mower doesn’t start in the spring and we hope the sales are still on so
we can buy a new one. A computer,
well its outdated anyway. We won’t
even talk about cell phones.
While our culture has made significant strides in
making provisions for the handicapped, caring for persons with disabilities, we
admittedly still have far to go. Concluding
that all persons have rights, streets and buildings are made accessible for
those with limitations. But our
spruces say there is more than just making space and allowing.
Helen Keller is the classic example. Stricken
blind and deaf at 19 months, behind that curtain of darkness was a bright child.
She made up her own signs to
communicate. Her intelligence, a
blessing for coping, caused her frustration and anger when others didn’t
recognize it. Helen’s family found
a teacher, Anne Sullivan, who herself had been blind for a time in her life so
was a kindred spirit with Helen. A
biographer attributed Helen Keller’s success in life to determination, but
also to those who helped her, especially Anne Sullivan who stayed with Helen
most of her life.
When people don’t produce as we expect, they may
be neglected, disregarded, left by the way side and that potential not realized.
Working as I did in the hospital
setting, I have had some contact with persons who made suicide attempts. A
few have tried more than once to end their own life. The
attempts were unsuccessful but serious, more than just a desperate cry for help.
The persons were so despairing about
their life, they wanted it over. They
just somehow couldn’t accomplish that. The
turning point in the lives of many of these persons was the identification of a
powerful, though not necessarily conscious, will to live. There
was an indomitable spirit within that if they turned the energy they were using
to end their life to nurturing the growth of that spirited will to live, they
could discover their value and purpose.
That is, I think, what the parable is about. Whatever
the creation, whoever the person, to give up too easily would miss the
fulfillment of a potential that may be now hidden. Plants
live to reproduce. On the farm, we
planted barley in the fall as it is a grain that will begin its growth, then lie
dormant through the winter and resume growing and maturing in the spring and
summer. If the autumn was unusually
warm, the barley would grow to much and we would pasture the cows on it to cut
it back. The next spring, it would
grow normally until its seed ripened. We
could cut alfalfa hay three or four times through the summer as long as its
blossoms didn’t go to seed, it would continue to grow. I
think it is that life stream, that indomitable spirit, will to life, the
experience of rejuvenation in the whole realm of nature that keeps Karen and I
and others involved with Keryx in prison, Royal Family Kids Camp, the church.
Our director at Royal Family Kids Camp shared a
letter she had received from one of our graduates. As
the letter was being read, I kept wondering “How old is this girl?” The
letter was articulate, mature beyond her thirteen years of age. She
wrote of how much the camp had impacted her life and that she could hardly wait
until she was old enough to come back as a staff person. We
had the opportunity to see and talk with this girl when she came to meet her
younger sister who attended camp this year. The
girl had not been one of those memorable for her extreme acting out, but she
definitely had qualified as a troubled child. The
change in her, sustaining two years after her graduation is dramatic, like our
spruces after their care and treatment.
In all our settings in life there are creations
that are less than as fulfilling as they may be. Our
living and being in God is life in grace. God
is God of another chance. It takes
pruning and sometimes unpleasant treatment; it takes careful evaluation of the
circumstances and our response to keep the delineation between helping and
enabling. With cultivation and
treatment, the spruces shrubs are recovering their natural beauty.
I officiated at a funeral this past week for a man
who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was seventeen. He
had done well on his medications but was a classic case who deluded himself to
thinking he was doing so well he didn’t need his medications, not
comprehending that it was because of the meds that he was doing well. Off
the medications, he would lose his battle with the demons and land in hospital,
jail, or both. No one ever expected
he would live to be 66, but he did and then it would be the injuries from a
fall, and evidently the decision on his part that he had had enough that ended
his life.
His case worker spoke at the funeral, affirming the
man’s brothers, who had never given up, had traveled from
When I look at the spruces, I have thoughts about
the cork screw willow that I cut down. What
might have happened had I left it and tended to those tiny sprigs of green. I
can find some justification that it would really have looked bare and ugly in
our front yard through the summer. I
can appease my pondering with the planting in its place of one of our maple’s
offspring rescued from where it had seeded in our neighbor’s yard. We
do have second and third generation cuttings from the willow that we have and
can plant.
But what if I act to hastily and don’t afford
another chance for the persons whose lives I touch along the way?
Amen.
Copyright
© 2010 First Presbyterian Church