A
homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given
at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon,
Illinois on Sunday, August 5, 2012.
“UNITED TO CHRIST AND ONE ANOTHER IN LOVE”
(Homily text: Ephesians 4: 1 – 16)
My wife and I have a small garden,
ten foot by sixteen foot, in our back yard.
We’ve tried tending it – with various levels of success – in the past
few years. This year, however, we
decided we’d devote some time and effort to improving it, building a new border
for it, and by adding topsoil and other materials to lighten up the soil.
Since our previous experiments with
sweet corn didn’t work out too well, we decided we’d plant green beans this
year. So three rows of seeds were sown. Frequent weeding and watering followed, and
while I was away at General Convention, Deb went out and took pictures of the
plants as they broke through the surface of the ground. We were excited to see visible proof that our
work was paying off.
It didn’t take long for some
creature or another (as yet unidentified) to find these tender shoots, as well,
for as soon as many of them came up, this mysterious visitor came along and chewed
some of them off. We decided we needed
to install a low fence around the new plants.
That seemed to help, but more steps were needed, so we made a scarecrow
and put that in the middle, next to the middle of the three rows of plants.
We seemed to be winning the battle…the
chewing dropped off dramatically, and now the plants, some of them, are quite
tall. Some others are developing
flowers, which will attract the bees (we hope) that will pollinate the plants,
producing beans for the dinner table.
All in all, the goal for us is to
enjoy the process. If food finds its way
to someone’s table (animal or human), so much the better.
I don’t claim to be a master gardener. But I do know enough to know that every gardener has to have a master plan. Once the plan is in place, some basics are needed to have a successful crop: 1. Good, well-prepared soil; 2. Protection from things that would destroy or damage the crop: a fence to keep animal poachers out; 3. Frequent removal of the weeds; 5. Plenty of water to promote growth; and 5. Bees to pollinate the plants.
With the image of a garden (or
field) in mind, let’s turn to our reading from St. Paul’s letter to the
Ephesians.
God’s master plan is in view here….God’s call and God’s gifts are evident as God’s plan for His garden, His field, unfold…..
God plants the seeds of new life in our hearts when we are baptized. We are buried with Christ in a death like His, and are raised to a new life in a resurrection like His (as St. Paul says in Romans 6: 3 – 9).
As these seeds of new life emerge,
they will be watered by hearing the Word of God read each Sunday, and by
receiving the Body and the Blood of Christ in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Like a garden, the new plants of our life in
Christ need frequent, regular watering and nounrishment.
And as we begin to grow into the full stature of Christ, we can also see threats to good growth emerge…sometimes, the weeds of daily life choke off good growth (as Jesus explains in the “Parable of the Sower”… Matthew 13: 3 – 10). At other times, hostile invaders try to snip off the growth and kill the planting of God.
So we see that we need the protection of God, the master gardener, to save us from the cares of life and from the threats which emerge from outside God’s plan. We need the hedge of protection that regular Bible reading, an active prayer life, and regular attendance at Church can provide. We need to ask for the protection of the Holy Spirit to keep our hearts and minds focused on Christ, and to preserve us from every evil way.
God, in His goodness, not only protects us from the things that would choke off or destroy growth, but He gives us gifts that will encourage us to grow into the full stature of Christ. Paul’s list of these good gifts are that some should be “apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers.”
It is worth our time to take a moment or two to consider some of the ways that each of these ministries promote good growth in Christ:
- Apostles are those who are sent out, bearing the Good News. They spread the seed of the Gospel, laying the groundwork for the harvest.
- Prophets are those who speak the truth of God, reminding us of the things that God has told us about Himself, and about the ways that God wants us to live. So the prophet’s task has much more to do with tending the garden, day-by-day, and much less to do with predicting future harvests or events in some distant time.
- Evangelists share with the apostles in sharing the Good News. Evangelists can help sow the seeds of God’s plantings in a local place, a local community, a local Church, and do God’s will without much traveling. The evangelists’s field is often the immediate area in which they live.
- Pastors are, like a good shepherd, those who care for the Lord’s own, walking with them through hard times and good times, through times of growth and times of spiritual drought. Pastors show the fruits of God’s growth, having grown into the full stature of Christ themselves, so that they can help others to do the same. Pastors function a little like bees in a garden, connecting others to God, and enabling a harvest.
- Teachers help make the wisdom of God understandable. Theirs is the task of being able to understand the deep things of God, and to make them easier. In a sense, they function a little like the root systems of a plant, which take the nutrients from the soil and make them available to the stem and the leaves above.
Of course, that’s why we’re here this morning, in the Lord’s house, hearing the Lord’s Word read, and receiving the Lord’s Body and Blood….
We come to be fed by God’s Word and by God’s table.
We come to examine ourselves to see what things are crowding out God’s voice in our lives, and to seek forgiveness for those things that, like an intruder, threaten to remove the possibilities for growth that God wants us to have.
For God’s desire is that we will bear a good harvest, each of us working together with God and with each other in unity. Then, the harvest will be plentiful indeed, plain for all to see.
AMEN.
