A time to plant, a time to tend what is planted, and a time to let it all go to seed
May 4, 2008
Marilyn Zehr
Text:
Ecclesiastes 3:1-15
I Peter 5:4-10
A time to plant
a time to tend what is planted
and a time to let it all go to seed.
What could I possibly mean – especially that last part – is there ever a time to let it all go to seed? – The good Mennonite farmer in me (I was born and raised on a Dairy farm in South western Ontario) and the good gardeners in many of you may be wondering in particular about that last part.
Let me begin with a short story.
Illustration: A middle-aged woman farmer invited a visiting preacher to dinner after the morning service. After a scrumptious meal, most of which was home grown, the farmer took the preacher out to show him her farm with its rolling landscape complete with fat, well-bread livestock grazing on beautiful green pastures. The preacher saw rows of fruit trees, fields of grain, and a garden that was out of this world. After seeing the beauty of the farm, the preacher commented, “You and God our Creator certainly have a beautiful farm here.” To this She replied, “Yea, but you should have seen it when the Creator had it all by Himself.”
Sounds like a bit of well-justified Pride to me. Anyone who has tended any size plot of ground no matter how large or small knows intimately the amount of work required alongside the Blessings of the Creator if the produce and bounty of the earth is to be realized – harvested and appreciated.
So I would like to invite us to this morning to remember back to the dream that was St. Clair O’Connor just over 25 years ago. Many of us today, particularly my age and younger, can hardly imagine the amount of dreaming, planning, care and “roll up your sleeves” kind of work that went into the creation of that community. “You should have seen it was the Paul Willison’s auto showroom”. God needed the dreams, the visionaries, the ingenuity, the expertise and the help of many hands before the community of St. Clair O’Connor has taken on its special place and reputation and fruitfulness in the community today. Fruitfulness? There is almost no way to calculate the number of persons involved with or affected by the community in 25 years of its existence.
That was the first and foremost time to plant – when looking across the landscape there was only a dream.
A time to tend what’s been planted – that’s the on-going part for past staff, past volunteers, past resident’s, current residents, volunteers and staff. Tending is something we all do all the time.
Tending this particular planting is the care that everyone involved in the community is doing all the time both with and for each other. Every time someone has found a niche for themselves: serving tea and coffee in the store – facilitating the lunch time operas, running to the grocery or drugstore for a neighbour, the running of the heritage club programs, serving meals in the dining room or on a tray so that someone who isn’t feeling well can eat in the comfort of their apartment, wheeling a wheel chair to the patio, accompanying someone from the Nursing home to a program downstairs, holding the hand of someone who feels anxious, watching the children run and laugh and play, laughing with those who laugh, weeping with those who weep.
All of this is a “tending of the garden”. The time to tend the garden –
all the time –
– and in countless ways.
This is not to say that while many are busy “tending” that the time to plant is over because any time a new idea emerges, to better meet the needs or vision or mission of the community – then of course it is time to rearrange, divide another perennial or time to find a new spot to place some bulbs.
The time to plant and the time to tend all that has been planted are not mutually exclusive. Like the farmer who was proud of her farm and the work that had been required alongside the work of God – for anyone who has been involved in SCOC there can be appropriate and justifiable pride and gratitude for all that it has been and all that it still will be.
Now before I get to the “letting it go to seed part “- I want to look at the text from 1 Peter 5:5. In the same way you who are younger, must accept the authority of those who are older. (The text uses the word for elders here in the text but the Greek is equally well translated here – those who are older – not just elders – officials in the church) But most importantly the verse continues – And All of you clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
So far in my sermon I have talked about pride, and I called it justifiable pride. Sometimes pride and humility are seen as opposites as in the Proverb that the author of 1st Peter is quoting – God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. Yes, God opposes sinful pride – the thinking of yourself more highly than you ought.
However the real meaning of humility is accurate self-knowledge. Sometimes accurate self-knowledge in the light of the Holy Spirit – will shine light on the good in our lives – on the things by God’s grace we may feel proud of just as accurate self-knowledge, again in the light of the Holy Spirit, will show up our short-comings – fair-enough. Humility therefore,
as accurate self-knowledge, is important for seeing ourselves clearly and in that “seeing” we might see both how we need to be cared for (what we need) and how we are able to care for others (what we are able to give) and according to 1 Peter this should be the basis for persons’ relationships with one another in a community. All persons in a community the younger and the older are encouraged to clothe themselves with humility. What might we see if we see ourselves clearly? We may see that we truly do care for each other and we truly need each other – the old and the young. This was the vision behind the Intergenerational concept of St. Clair O’Connor. No one wanted to build a community that in its most negative term “ghettoized” seniors. As this intergenerational concept is actually lived out at St. Clair O’Connor – when the vision works – it’s a sacred and beautiful thing – if we look at the intergenerational aspect of SCOC with the eyes of humility we must admit that conflicts occur also but so goes life in any family or community. If conflicts are opportunities for growth then we are certainly not without our share of opportunities for growth.
But what about the connection between younger persons in this community – in the church here at TUMC and the Seniors both here at TUMC and at SCOC. As I said, if we look with eyes of humility, we may recognize mutual need and mutual resources. Let’s speak first about need. I know that younger lives are busy, sometimes frantic, often fragmented. Younger lives in the midst of this kind of experience may be searching for a centre around which to rotate – something that can make sense of and ground the fragmentation. One’s faith in God, sometimes spirituality expressed through connection with the church is one such meaning making and grounding place for all the pieces. I would like to propose that the church community, however, is not just what happens here at TUMC on Queen street West of Woodbine but also because of the insight, vision and mission of an earlier generation – a branch of that church – the body of Christ also exists up at SCOC. And it is a vast resource of potential meaning making and grounding.
Again if we look with eyes of humility, older lives are potentially (although, not always) – less busy, sometimes lonely, and certainly fraught with increasing experiences of frailty. There are certainly needs here, all kinds of different needs for assistance of various kinds. But having worked in the community of the elderly off and on for most of my adult life and having accompanied many persons in the last days of their lives, I can see the beautiful though often painful way that Spiritual wisdom and other resources can increase with age.
There is a remarkable poem by Pierre Theilhard De Chardin SJ that captures this painful though divinely fruitful journey.
When the signs of age begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind)
when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes
in which I suddenly
awaken to the fact that I am ill
or growing old;
and above all at that last moment
when I feel I am losing hold of myself and
am absolutely passive within the hands
of the great unknown forces that have formed me;
in all those dark moments, 0 God,
grant that I may understand that it is you
who are painfully parting the fibres of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance
and bear me away within yourself
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ
If there is any truth in these words then the divine is potentially closer to and more deeply part of the older people in our community than anywhere else. What a remarkable resource – what a potentially sacred place to be. What a potentially grounding and sacred presence to be close to in our harried and frantic world. (For anyone who has read Jean Vanier’s work about the sacred task of tending to the “least of these” persons with such profound disabilities that they require total care – you may recognize a similar concept)
God knows the needs of the younger ones and God knows the needs of the older ones and God knows and God created us to be a vast resource for each other. We are invited to be aware of our needs and we are almost commanded in this text “to be humbled by casting our anxiety on God for God cares for us”.
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Be humbled by casting all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Ultimately God cares for us This is the deepest insight of humility or accurate self-knowledge – Our dependence on the God who cares for us. Dependence is not always a friendly word. Granted, in our active “farming” years – there is an appropriate interdependence as the Spirit working in us allows us to be Christ’s hands, heart and feet in this world, but the ultimate gift of humility – true personal insight – and this gift can only come from God – is to see also the depth of our dependence on God – the very source of our breath and life.
And Thanks be to God, this caring God has provided resources in real-life earthly terms for our needs to be met.
With the eyes of humility, we are enabled to see our need and the gracious way that God has made us, the young and the old, as a resource for each other.
The seniors at St. Clair O’Connor have and continue to live long, full and rich lives. Many of them are over the age of 90 and at various stages of need for assistance. And all of them, the young elderly and really elderly ones and many of the senior volunt
eers as well – are full of seeds – Seeds of vision, wisdom, compassion, and insight.
Have you ever allowed part of your garden’s harvest to produce seeds for the following year? In other words – let at least some of it “go to seed”?
Have you reached out to touch the seed pods and had the seeds fall with their minute abundance into your hands.
Have you wondered in awe at the potential for those seeds to produce next year’s harvest?
By the grace of God, St. Clair O’Connor is full of marvellous people who contain the wonder and hope and future promise of those seeds just waiting to fill your hands. Those of us who either live, work or volunteer at SCOC do not want to hoard the wealth of all those seeds. The seeds are for sharing. Thanks be to God.