I'm not sure why I get this way... I literally go through cycles where I can get up in front of church and do anything... and then become totally afraid to even get near the front. I'm obviously heading into the "bad times" again. It's one of the reasons I left the seminary... imagine a priest who was terrified of saying mass! LOL.
So, here's the sermon, just in case you're interested.
"The Amazon"
Did you know that the Amazon River is the world’s SECOND longest river, but at any one point in time it has the highest amount of water flowing down it. In fact, no other river in the world even comes close. Remember that.
I love spring-time. I like watching the trees, and seeing the bud's sprout on the branches. You know how it is? You look over at some trees and you wonder "Are those BUDS I see?" About the time that those tree buds become obvious, I start watching the poor little rose bushes that grow in my front yard... did they survive the winder? Did the poor little one on the end survive being run over by Gary the first time he mowed the lawn this spring? It's the prettiest, if the smallest of all our roses. It's dusty purple of a shade that I just really love. From the look of it this morning, if I had 2 more weeks before this sermon, I could have brought in one of it's flowers to show you.
About the same time that the trees are beginning to bud, and the roses are stirring into life, some tulips that we've never remembered to take up under our front windows pop out through the sod, and in just a few days they bloom... a beautiful blood red with yellow stamens. Once those are in flower, it's time for the funny blue flowers by the front stoop to show up. Bottle nose something or others!
For the most part, the phlox didn’t make it through winter this year… though a few still valiantly bloom. Next to them, are some wild violets that we didn’t plant… they just found their way to our yard.
All the annuals in the flower beds in the front are gone, naturally... just ugly shoots that need to be taken out.
About this time every year we look at our garden, and Scott says “It’s time to plant.”
“Yup”, I say. And then Scott goes off, buys some flats of annuals, brings them home, and we prep the front beds, and Scott plants.
Scott can verify that I am NOT a gardener. If we’re going to have a garden, it’s Scott that’s going to have to put it in… then, once it’s in, I’ll water the flowers, and I’ll admire their beauty once they’re in bloom. But the credit for our gardens, such as they are, falls to Scott.
Today is known to many as “Good Shepherd Sunday”. The Psalm and the Gospel are shepherd stories. And the NT Reading fits in with them fairly well. “I am the good Shepherd” is one of the better known sayings of Jesus. He used that symbolism, because the people of his time… even the city folk of Jerusalem… would have understood that symbolism. Israel, in Jesus time, was still very much an agrarian, shepherding society.
I suspect that the larger majority of us in this room only know about shepherding by reading about them or hearing about them in church from people like me, who went out and read about them from someone else who wrote stories about shepherding in order to clarify the “Shepherd” stories of the bible. And those writers… well, most of them have very little first-hand knowledge of sheep or shepherding!
What would Jesus use today for his metaphors? I honestly don’t know. But I do know that, even if many of us will never see a sheep except at the petting zoo at Henry Doorly, or encounter shepherds, except perhaps while watching Brokeback Mountain, most of will see flowers this spring. Most of us will admire their beauty. Most of us know that flowers need watering.
Some of us will even know that the prettiest gardens are maintained by gardeners who plant new flowers when old ones die, pull the weeds out to keep the flowers from being strangled. We’ll know that these gardeners will make sure the plants have food, either by mixing fertilizers in with the soils before planting the flowers, or by mixing them in the water they use to nourish the plants.
A few of us may know that some really, really pretty flowers like roses get that way because the gardener carefully prunes the flowers, directing the growth and the resources of the plant in specific ways to ensure that a few promising buds get the most nutrition and grow strong, rather than numerous buds getting little nutrition and thus being weak.
All of this is foreign to me. I just know that no matter how much work Scott puts in to our garden, those plants will die and produce NOTHING, unless one of us waters those plants.
I know this about how gardens and today’s message interrelate. I know there are flowers in the world. Those flowers are you and you and me. I know there is a Gardener; I know that Gardener is our Parent, God. And, I know that just as human gardeners pour water on their flowers, so God pours his love on each of us.
I know this too. If a human gardener decides to water his daisies, then gets called away, leaving the water to run and run and run, the daisies will get too much water, and they’ll drown!
But when God waters us with his love, it’s like the whole of the Amazon River flowing down to water one little daisy.
Can you imagine that kind of love? Have you ever encountered it before? A love so overwhelming, so intense, that when you’re caught up in it you feel like you’re going to drown, to suffocate… and it’s a GOOD feeling?
There have been a few times in my life when I have experienced that kind of love. And when I do, it’s always because God is there. It feels just like that image of the daisy and the Amazon…
I think all of us can feel that love if we open ourselves up to the awesome splendor and wonder of God’s love for us.
God loved us so much that God became ONE of us. And, as the second reading this morning stated, that love was so intense that GOD DIED FOR US. FOR ME. FOR YOU. AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU AND EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM.
Is that a secret to anyone in here? If it is, I am proud to spill the beans! GOD LOVES US, each and every one of us with a love as immense as all the waters of the Amazon flowing down to water one little daisy.
I don’t know how to say it any better than that.
But I do know what to add TO that.
You see, someone shared a message with me on Friday, about an old man who came into church, dressed in grungy clothes. The man came in every day and prayed a simple prayer that went something like this:
"I JUST CAME AGAIN TO TELL YOU, JESUS, HOW HAPPY I'VE BEEN, SINCE WE FOUND EACH OTHER'S FRIENDSHIP AND YOU TOOK AWAY MY SIN... DON'T KNOW MUCH OF HOW TO PRAY, BUT I THINK ABOUT YOU EVERYDAY. SO, JESUS, THIS IS JIM CHECKING IN, TODAY."
Then, one day, the old man came to church no more. The pastor went looking for him, and eventually found him in the hospital. He learned that the old man was alone, with no visitors. But, when he spoke of that to the old man, the old man told him he had it wrong. the old man had a visitor every day. That visitor would come in and sit at the foot of the old man’s bed… and he’d say:
"I JUST CAME AGAIN TO TELL YOU, JIM, HOW HAPPY I'VE BEEN, SINCE WE FOUND THIS FRIENDSHIP AND I TOOK AWAY YOUR SIN... I ALWAYS LOVE TO HEAR YOU PRAY, I THINK ABOUT YOU EVERYDAY. AND SO, JIM, THIS IS JESUS CHECKING IN, TODAY."
I read that message on Friday, and I realized something, and if you all remember nothing else from this poor sermon today, remember this:
When we pray… to God, it’s like all the water of the Amazon flowing up to water one little daisy.
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