In late August, like a good Presbyterian Masters
of Divinity student seeking ordination, I took the Polity examination. Church polity is the process and procedure
book for all situations that may arise in church life, from committee meetings
to calling a pastor to a congregation to disciplinary proceedings. In studying the “Foundations of Presbyterian
Polity,” it struck me how the section titled Christ Gives the Church its Life was explained:
In the worship and service of God and the
government of the church, matters are to be ordered according to the Word by
reason and sound judgment, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. (F-1.0203)
I’m not sure if it is because I was
raised in a post-Enlightenment North America, in a middle class home, with
educated parents, in the Presbyterian church from in utero, or simply that I am
wired this way (or a combination of all of these things), but I have functioned
according to a structured view of life always. Ordering of life to the Word by reason and sound judgment makes total sense. I am your classic Type A. There is a rule book, there are acceptable
ways of operating, and I like to play by the rules. I enjoy being in control of a situation, and
I want to cross my “t”s and dot my “i”s.
My husband may argue that I am not always reasonable, but I do value sound judgment and rational systems that
put things into neat categories for my processing purposes.
As I have grown older, I have become
more convinced that wisdom is not a “color-inside-the-lines” mode of
being. Our standard is higher than
standards. There is something absolutely
breath-taking about grace found in the grey areas of life. Grey is much messier, but so much more worth
living than black and white. That said,
my appreciation for spontaneity, rebellious beauty, and real experience does not mean that I am wired to operate with such
a free view of life. I think I want to
be more “outside the lines” than I am capable of being. Not disobedient, mind you, just convinced
that as a Christian person in this world, I am called to play by different
rules than our society and our institutions condone. It takes an enormous amount of trust to throw
reason and sound judgment to the wind.
Yesterday, a neighbor from across
the street came over to watch me plant some fall vegetables. I have never spoken to this man before other
than the occasional “hi” and a wave in passing.
And yet, here he is over my shoulder watching me methodically plant my
seedlings in almost ruler-straight rows.
My brow was scrunched in concentration, and I was tense all over trying
so hard to get the spacing of my kale just right. It was then that he finally spoke: “You know what they say about gardeners? They’re really good people. “
I did the obligatory Southern
modesty thing and explained this was my first fall garden, and we would see how
it turned out. Did he have any
advice? Was I doing this right?
He
just kind of grinned. “The longer you
garden, the more you will realize that it’s really more about the well-placed
weed than doing it right.”
In talking with my neighbor David, and mulling around all that he had told me about care-free, trusting, spontaneous gardening… I remembered an excerpt from a book by Barbara Brown Taylor[1] I had read earlier this summer. If we truly live our lives in orientation to the Word (Jesus Christ), does it look that ordered? Does it boast of sound judgment and reason?
It was about the parable of the
sower in Matthew 13. You know, the one
where the sower scatters seeds on four different types of soil. The seed on the path gets eaten up by birds,
the seed on the rocky ground withered without roots, the seed in the thorns
were choked out, and then there’s the good soil. She remarked that she always hears that
parable as a story about her, and she inevitably worries about what kind of
ground she is on with God. How she needs
to work harder to turn herself into a better-prepped field for God’s word. But then she described a revelation. What if instead of viewing this parable as a
word about us as the dirt, what if the parable of the sower is in fact really a
parable about the sower?
“What if it is not about our own successes and
failures and birds and rocks and thorns, but about the extravagance of a sower
who does not seem to be fazed by such concerns, who flings seeds everywhere,
wastes it with holy abandon, who feeds the birds, whistles at the rocks, picks
his way through the thorns, shouts hallelujah at the good soil and just keeps
on sowing, confident that there is enough seed to go around, that there is
plenty, and that when the harvest comes at last it will fill every barn in the
neighborhood to the rafters?”
How
awesome. That Jesus could be describing
here not a call to fret over our thorns, but a proclamation about the way God operates! Jesus is suggesting “there is another way to
go about things, a way that is less concerned with productivity than with
plentitude.”
Imagine if the farming industry in
our country did not worry so much about productivity? What if the dollar sign was not the bottom
line? What if plentitude of food to all
was the top priority? What if we had the
courage to live as though there is more than enough, and trust the seeds amidst
the weeds?
I’m going to work on that this
week. I’m going to put my ruler away
when planting kale seedlings! I’m going
to envision that the more I sow, the more I have to sow. I am going to focus on my baby girls, and
care less about the havoc we wreak in the playroom. I’m going to give arbitrarily,
excessively. I am going to practice holy
abandon and just see what happens. I am
going to attempt to not worry about my birds and rocks and thorns quite so
obsessively and focus more on trusting a God who does not see them as
obstacles. Not sure what that looks
like, just yet. I bet it won’t make very
much rational sense, but I suspect it will feel different in a very good
way.
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