(Is 53:1-6; Ps 22:6-11; Mk 14:32-42)
Lent 5 ~ 10:30 am, Sun, March 17, 2024 ~ FBCA
Today we’ve looked at Thursday of Holy Week, in Mark’s Gospel. After the Passover supper, with the disciples, Jesus leads them just out of the city to an olive garden. Gethsemane, it is named, which means ‘garden of oil.’ For Jesus, it is an intense time of prayer. It inspired me to consider how Praying is like gardening. So, turn to my list of 24 ways that prayer is like garden work. P. . You get to choose some of these.
1. It definitely takes work.
2. It is not all up to you.
3. It keeps us ‘grounded.’
4. It goes along with the seasons.
5. Not every crop can be grown where you live.
6. Various harvests come at various times.
7. A longer harvest season is possible.
8. What grows in it varies from person to person.
9. Plants build themselves mostly from what? Air!
10. It can make use of… manure.
11. It will have weeds and pests.
12. It will have failures and successes.
13. Sometimes, what grows is a surprise... or a mystery.
14. It can cause trouble, injury, illness!
15. It is sometimes a struggle.
16. Some people just have a natural green thumb.
17. Doing some of our own gardening is important.
18. Some crops are beautiful, blooming, and fragrant.
19. Some crops are hidden, dirty, buried, or prickly.
20. Working on it together is so good.
21. It is learned from others: hands on, books, etc.
22. Many tools are available; but you can do a lot with few.
23. It is one of the most natural human things to do.
24. The products are often worth sharing; they should be.
I will begin by choosing number one.
Praying is like gardening:
1. It definitely takes work.
Jesus is keenly aware of the fate He is about to face – the arrest, interrogation, torture, and execution about to happen, not to mention that His own followers will turn Him in, flee, and deny they even know Jesus. His prayer at this moment is hard work. It is emotional. It is intense. It is prayer in a crisis.
The disciples who are with him all fall asleep, more than once. Praying to God can take energy and attention on our part. When we take it seriously, we put effort into it. Just like growing a garden: when it is a priority, we devote ourselves. Surely you have had terrible moments in life, when your prayer was powerful, or desperate! Prayer demands work.
2. It is not all up to you.
Jesus even said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” (Mk 4:26-27) A farmer, a gardener, does their part to plant and water and feed and cultivate plants. But so much depends upon the plant, and upon to weather. And so on.
Prayer is not all up to you. For the most part, how other people pray – how you pray – is a mystery to me. Because we don’t talk about this much to one another. I do know that the ways I pray naturally and pray well are few and far between the kinds of praying that seem like my failures. But we are not alone. We are in conversation, and the Holy One wants the conversation. The Spirit speaks, and listens, and gazes lovingly upon us. Within us. For us and not against us. Prayer is guided.
Did you notice, in today’s story of Jesus praying three times, there is no mention of Abba God answering with words?
I have always appreciated this phrase from Romans chapter 8, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words.” (Rom 8:26)
3. It keeps us ‘grounded.’
I was visiting a dear friend and soul-mate in Parrsboro the other day. We are also gardening buddies, and thus we are now talking about spring. Ruth was saying she did almost nothing in her flower beds last year: it was so cold and wet! But she is determined to break her hibernation and get out there this year.
It can be cold, and very dirty, getting into the earth in the spring. As the seasons go on, we know there is something so important about getting our hands into the earth, seeing and touching the stems and roots that fill the spaces and are full of life. To walk or stand barefoot upon the earth is also grounding.
We say we are grounded when we are calmed down, and in touch with what holds us up, the foundational things of life. The practice of prayer, in its many forms, grounds us. It can settle us down into who we are, where the Spirit is, and what we are doing next. Why on earth did Jesus need to pray to God the Father after the Passover, before He got betrayed? He always took these quiet moments before great events in His life. He teaches us again, now, to ground ourselves, in the face of great pain or great purpose.
4. It goes along with the seasons.
It goes without saying that in our climate – maybe any climate – what you grow in your garden, and how you tend those plants, must be according to the seasons. What you do with your green beans, or dahlias, or raspberries depends upon the month of the year.
So too, our prayer practices take shape due to the moment. When Jesus goes to prayer in Gethsemane, the end is near! That night, right there, He will be arrested, at last, by Roman soldiers and taken to trial and all that goes with it. He will get executed. His praying in Gethsemane is so vivid and memorable because of His moment. So it is with our life of prayer. Desperation can bring depth; sadness can bring silence; happiness can bring out our inner hallelujahs!
5. Not every crop can be grown where you live.
The little environmentalist inside me loves the idea of shopping local, shaking the hand that feeds you (nearby farmers), eating produce in season, and growing my own (veggies and fruit). But I like bananas a lot. And avocados. And citrus fruit. And tapioca pudding.
Not every crop can grow here in the Maritimes. Not every prayer can be prayed by you, by you, by me. Not everything we seek will be answered with ‘yes.’ Teach me the secret of unanswered prayer says one classic hymn from our book. (173, ‘Spirit of God! Descend Upon My Heart) I think that author was right; the secrets of prayer can be learned. Look at that Gethsemane conversation of Christ: three times Jesus spoke of not taking the path to His death. Then, we went directly into His suffering and died.
6. Various harvests come at various times.
I want us to have a nice but simple breakfast here on Easter Sunday, after the 7 am, outdoor, sunrise service. Along with baked French toast, we will have fruit. I said I’d shop for the fruit. Someone suggested orange slices or strawberries. Lovely. And they will be in season at a few local grocery stores.
There is not much produce ripe in Nova Scotia on the last day of March. If I hiked and hunted for them, I could come up with a few cranberries in a local bog, or dig up an ostrich fern and cut out some tiny fiddleheads.
So with prayer. There are seasons in our lives when all is very quiet, dry, and empty.
7. A longer harvest season is possible.
A decade ago I got Niki Jabbour’s great book, Year Round Vegetable Gardening. Though I have not yet followed her guidance and plans, we can grow greens for our salads for about ten months of the year, outside, keep beets and carrots and so forth in the ground to dig up all winter, and so on. Our Maritime growing season can be extended – a lot.
The reach of our prayers can be extended – a lot. The ways we learn to pray can grow and develop. The impact of our praying can increase: the harvest can be spread out so so far.
8. What grows in it varies from person to person.
Last year at 20 Clinton Street, we grew some tomatoes, strawberries, chives, parsley, and Cape Gooseberries (do you know what they are?). Right beside us, at 18 Clinton, corn grew, big squash and pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes and strawberries. Out other neighbour, # 24, grew, well, not much food. There were blossoms in the yard.
Not every prayer method is for you, or for me. Silent, Christian meditation is probably a good practice for most people, but not for every single one of us. Prayer and fasting from food might be impossible for some folk. Prayer for your enemies is taught in scripture, but you might not be able, today, to pray for the blessing of that one particular troublemaker in your life.
OK. That can be OK. Someone else will have to do that praying for you. And your crop of prayers will help them.
9. Plants build themselves mostly from what? Air!
If you look at a tomato plant in pot on your patio, or a tall oak tree in your yard... what did the plant make all the fruit out of, all that wood? What materials did it use? Dirt, the soil? Or water? Sunlight – well, that’s energy, not matter.
It used air. Mostly air. Carbon dioxide in the air it turned into solid carbon – used to make wood and fruit – and oxygen gas that it mostly let go of back into the air. Plants build themselves out of air, using the energy of sunlight.
Prayer gets built out of the intangible. Out of spirit: the human spirit and the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, it seems the answers to prayer for help and guidance, the answers come out of thin air. Something appears out of nothing. A healing where there was deep injury. A pathway where there was no path.
10. It can make use of… manure.
A couple weeks ago I was preaching about giving God our failures, our faults, our injuries, our hurts, our sins. We have these things in our lives to present to Creator, and transformation happens. The grace of God is merciful and powerful and beautiful.
Last year I got a big bag of compost from Little Forks landfill. Perhaps some of that rich fertilizer came from what we put in our own composter, which included cat litter. Waste becomes wonderful in the ground. Dung becomes delightful to the plant roots. Manure becomes more nutrients for the garden.
In prayer, the crap of our lives gets recycled and created.
11. It will have weeds and pests.
When it comes to flower gardening, I am a great collector, but a poor curator. In other words, I plant lots of cool stuff, but don’t keep ahead of the weeds. Things get out of control. And Every spot seems to have its one bad weed. Or bug.
When it comes to prayer, it does not always go well. We will get distracted. Or keep asking for things without thanking, or confessing. Or we go through the motions without getting closer to God, or to the heart of ourselves, when we pray. We can fall for many temptations when we are near the garden of prayer. An old hymn I found in an Anglican hymn book says
Have we no words? Ah think again;
Words flow apace when we complain,
And fill our fellow-creature’s ear
With the sad tale of all our care. (Wm. Cowper, 1779)
12. It will have failures and successes.
Maybe a few of your are master gardeners, and seldom have a crop failure, but most of us do fail, regularly. I remember years ago, on a whim, buying a couple of eggplant plants, and put them in the ground. One was at the cottage I had, across a dirt road from the acres of a lovely organic farm. That year, potatoes were planted across from the cottage. Midsummer, I noticed the potato plants being eaten up – eaten up completely! By, of course, potato beetles. But my eggplant also got chewed down to a bare stem! My neighbour, the organic farmer, told me the one thing potato beetles like more than potato plants is... eggplant!
When we offer our ordinary prayers, or make desperate pleas to Almighty God, we sometimes feel failure. Feel like our prayers just go up and hit the ceiling and go no farther.
On other occasions, the simplest moments seeking God, become suddenly amazing! Serene. Powerful. Sublime.
13. Sometimes, what grows is a surprise... or a mystery.
Once, a friend pointed out in his farmyard a lovely tall tree, with many nuts falling from it to the ground. “It’s a hazelnut,” He said. Well, I don’t think he ever tried to eat them, because if he did he would soon discover it was not a hazel. It was a hickory tree, a ‘bitternunt hickory.’ It would taste nasty!
What comes of our prayerfulness surprises us too; I hope you have had this experience. In the requests we give, the things we ask for, we sometimes say the answer from God could be ‘yes,’ or ‘no’ or ‘not now, later.’ And the answer can sometimes be something else altogether. And in those devoted times of simply being present with God, not asking for anything, the crop that grows will pleasantly surprise us.
14. It can cause trouble, injury, illness!
“Every rose has its thorn,” sang the band Poison. Yes, yes they almost always do. Pulling weeds, you can get into the stinging nettles, or the hornet’s nest, or poison ivy.
Some approaches to the Holy have their risks. It is a regular, normal thing for people to lash out at God, or reject the Master, when really bad things happen, or a prayer for a miracle is not ‘answered.’
We see Jesus approach this in Gethsemane, pleading about the suffering that is about to happen to Him – and to His friends. Upon the cross, being executed, He speaks out the start of Psalm 22, ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?!’ The road of suffering can be paved with prayers, and there will still be suffering.
15. It is sometimes a struggle.
I think if I lived in Truro, gardening would be a struggle. The deer! The deer would eat and eat and eat so much, until a big fence is put up. And there are lots of other times that gardening is a struggle. Last summer: hot dry spring, then a wet, wet summer! So strange.
Prayer, when we really want God, when we deeply need to find serenity amid the storms of life, prayer can be a problem. Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane was a harsh night; even the brief account in the Gospels gives us a scene of struggle. Somehow, it is comforting to know that Jesus, Son of God and Son of Humanity, had such prayer on the brink of personal trauma.
16. Some people just have a natural green thumb.
That’s just the way it is. My maternal grandfather had a green thumb. He tended certain things with care; always the same things in his yard, every year, it seemed: the impatiens in the flowerbed, the raspberry canes in the back corner of their city lot, the privet hedge along the sidewalk. Even the two white birch trees he’d planted in the back yard. All did well.
Prayer is for everyone, of course. So we believe. But there is also what we might call ‘the gift of prayer.’ Some people are spiritually gifted, blessed by God as people of prayer. There is a contemplative tradition within Christianity, and some folks are naturally (or supernaturally?) adept and praying, mediating, contemplating. They become our teachers and our inspiration. We elevate Jesus as our Master Teacher in the school of prayer.
17. Doing some of our own gardening is important.
Perhaps more than half of you here do not grow any of your own food. I grow very little for me and Sharon. But in terms of prayer, it is vital we all have some going on. We can’t rely upon others to do it all for us. Do our praying, our Bible time, our spiritual practices for us. Yes, there is plenty we can do together, such as on a Sunday morning. But on our own, it is good to go to our own ‘garden of prayer.’
After the Passover supper with the disciples Christ took his friends with Him to pray. We remember other times before when Jesus went off all alone to be in prayer. He taught both.
18. Some crops are beautiful, blooming, and fragrant.
We each have our own foods that we especially love. (I love chocolate – that comes from a bean, doesn’t it?) I really enjoy squash, and corn, and lobster. You have your favourites. And maybe some things you liked to grow – you like to eat them, or you found you could grow them with success.
At our best moments, we learn some ways to pray that work for us. A certain time of day, or familiar words we like to use again and again. Some music that speaks from our soul. I have this hope that our good and easy habits of prayer train us for the harder times. Jesus had lots of times in His life to rejoice in prayer. Today, after the Last Supper, in a time of trouble, He was ready to pray a very serious prayer.
May the beautiful garden of prayer prepare us for the harsh, dark valleys of prayer, and for the dark nights of the soul.
19. Some crops are hidden, dirty, buried, or prickly.
I have a couple pairs of gloves I wear when I got out to work in the yard. Sometimes. I have never liked wearing gloves, or hats, for that matter. Sometimes I am foolish, trimming a rose bush or bramble, thinking I can carefully grab the branches with my bear fingers. Wrong! I end up going for my gloves.
Our lives can be rough. Rough times. Harsh troubles. Pain and anxiety are faced often. Our prayers then are strong, maybe desperate, and we wonder if we will actually get protection, strength, healing, answers, or whatever we cry out for.
A word of blessing is powerful, like those words of St. Patrick’s Lorica, or Breastplate. A prayer, a charm, as a bit of spiritual armour. Reciting or singing the words, we are brought in touch with the inner and outer strengths and powers of Christ.
I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven,
the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lighting free...
Pray to put on the armour of God.
20. Working on it together is so good.
On Olivet, another name for the place where Jesus prayed, under the olive trees, we do not see a very good example of the disciples praying. They kept falling asleep. Maybe Jesus expected this. Yet He took them with Him, that night.
Prayer together is important. Someone speaks, and our prayer thoughts follow them. We say words together from a page that unite our voices in the exact same prayer. We learn from someone else how prayer can happen, what our conversation with God can be like. And we ask someone else to pray about what we want prayed for – we get their help that way. We’re stronger together, closer together, faithful together.
21. It is learned from others: hands on, books, etc.
I learned about taking care of plants from my Mother, mainly. There were always houseplants indoors; always flowerbeds outside; and a little veggie garden. Not to mention hot summer days along the railway tracks, picking wild blueberries, or blackberries.
As a child I got houseplants of my own. Then started digging up flowers and baby trees in the woods to bring home. One thing led to another. I got hooked on it. I got books about plants; I still have them all. Houseplants, wildflowers, trees.
And now I have plenty of Bibles, books explaining prayer, and books of prayers. More and more of them. I just got a great new book of prayers. I find these all helpful. It is a way that I am learning from others how to pray. And in it all, Christ is still my teacher. ‘Teach us to pray,’ the disciples asked Him. And so do we.
22. Many tools are available; but you can do a lot with few.
I’m not a hoarder, but I do have a habit of collecting stuff. I gather gardening tools, bit by bit. But, to be honest, I don’t use that many of them. A shovel, a trowel, a watering can and some pruners – that’s about all I end up using, 90% of the time.
I could name you a lot of prayer tools. Many methods and patterns and routines and words. Do I use lots of them? No. I only use three of four types of prayer, 95% of the time. Are you the same? And if you don’t feel you know much about praying, or think your ways are basic and simple, that could be very good. Remember, Jesus warned about long, fancy prayers and showing off and all that. Use a few tools that work for you. And when you do need to find a new way of prayer, may be there.
23. It is one of the most natural human things to do.
However we understand the origins of humanity, gardening came early on, and became vital to survival. The Genesis stories begin in a garden, with humanity involved, gardening with God, we could say. Tending and growing things is a natural thing for us. And even hunters and gatherers learned where to harvest and how to travel to the right places at the right times for food from Mother Nature.
Prayer is one of the most natural human things to do. Beauty, joy, pleasure bring out thankfulness in us. We get food we did not create, and we look for a Creator. We enjoy a moment in life, and we sense it is from beyond us. To pray is to make personal our relationship with the earth and everything. We see Someone behind it all, in it all, Someone with a capital S. Later on, it becomes natural to call that Creator our Saviour.
24. The products are often worth sharing; they should be.
Most summer seasons, some kind souls share with me and Sharon some food they grew. There was a big tomato crop, so they get shared. The spaghetti squash were prolific, so they were given away. Even if the blueberry field is sparse, “come on in and pick some for yourself.” I did. I am still eating them on my morning granola.
The depths of our prayers, when life is tough, can bring some real grace and blessings. These naturally flow and touch others. The fruit of our prayers is shared. This is certainly the case when we have been praying for a blessing in someone else’s life. They are the ones truly blessed by good that happens.
Almost two thousand years later, we are still reading of Jesus’ prayers in the Garden. That praying is still blessing millions, as we peek in again, in this holy season. Go to dark Gethsamane... learn of Jesus Christ to pray.