“LEARNING THE GREEN THUMB”

            I was never meant to have green thumbs. Some authority adult guided me when I was a boy to a garden bed and bid me pull out some tough looking things called weeds then left me to it. They were certainly tough weeds and the novelty of this new experience soon wore off once my hands started protesting.

            Much more inviting were similar looking plants nearby and I found them much easier to pull out. The authority adult returned to scrutinise what I’d done and I looked up with my beaming smile to receive my well-deserved praise. Instead a thundery brow loomed down on me, “You stupid little boy. You were meant to pull out those infernal weeds, not those flower plants I planted yesterday.” Sigh! Ever since then I’ve been guilty of watering plants that ought not to have be watered and leaving unwatered those plants that ought to have been watered. Gardeners, have mercy on me!

            How that reminds me of Jesus’ Parable of the Weeds found in Matthew 13:24-30 among the parables of growing things. Weeds are defined as plants in the wrong place. They have a special habit of sneaking among the “good” plants and using them as shields when human hands reach down to uproot them. I am sure other would-be gardeners have caused some collateral damage in finding they have uprooted the wrong plants in their tidying up the garden patch.

            The gardener in this parable is fortunately very wise. Obviously having heard of my experience in my boyhood attempts at horticulture, he hesitates to let his staff loose on his garden at this point, preferring to wait until the reapers can better distinguish the crops.

            If only we could take this to heart more often today. Over this year or more, two great ancient cities have been destroyed before our televiewing eyes.

Aleppo was known to me in my childhood as a prominent trading centre, and Mosul was just across the River Tigris (one of the first rivers mentioned in the Bible) from even more ancient Ninevah, capital of ancient Assyria, known to us from the Book of Jonah and other parts of our Old Testament. To see such ancient history destroyed before our eyes is enough, in itself, to make one weep.

            Aleppo and Mosul have been unlucky to be caught up in two not unrelated wars continuing side by side. Invading forces have determined to root out militant resistance hiding within those cities among the terrified citizens. On this morning’s news, I learned that 40,000 civilians in Mosul have been killed, and God knows how many before in Aleppo.

            Tragically absent in all of the falling of Aleppo and Mosul is the wise words of the gardener in this parable. The “weeds” defending their patch in these respective cities have been hiding behind the civilians, effectively using them as human shields. Families able to flee are caught in the cross-fire, escaping one danger and succumbing to another. Just seeing their distressed faces and hearing their stories of unrelenting crises brings out the lament in me. Good Lord! Where are you?

            We hear excited shouts of victory with guns let off into the air and flags flying as if returning from a footy match where our team has won. The weeds have been taken out, yes, but what a pyrrhic victory with even more civilians, children, women, and men, those who couldn’t get out of the road in time, the casualties numbering much more than these “weeds”.

            Just imagine these cities were ours, every place bearing our postcode number reduced to unlivable rubble, family members, friends and neighbours no more to be seen or heard and we reduced to living from crisis to crisis. Not even a church building for shelter. Doesn’t bear thinking about it, does it?

            All this has happened before, of course. During the Normandy invasion after D-Day, the ancient city of Caen was bombed by the Allies to flush out German defenders, who had already retreated. Look up for yourselves the number of civilian citizens who perished in what was then considered a necessary act. “C’est la guerre!” was the resigned shrug.

            It’s so easy to plunge right in when wrongs need to be righted without considering the collateral damage which may well exceed the worth of the effort made. The number of civilians caught in crossfire by being in the wrong place at the wrong time because of human irresponsibility should sit heavily on human conscience while God weeps over the loss of human beings loved by him and by one another, future doctors, teachers, prime ministers, scientists all necessary to the future of their communities.

            Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers, as Tennyson keeps reminding us.

We may know this parable but we also need to have the wisdom to remember it when tough decisions are being made.

“THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT”

Mothers’ Day this year was significant for those who remembered our mothers now long gone. It is amazing to hear the stories from so many who felt their mothers still with them in spirit guiding or just being there for them in times of uncertainty and challenge.

Looking back, I would say, no matter what our age, we remain influenced and inspired by inner voices from our past representing the people now no longer with us. In an uncertain world with uncertain values and goals, we depend upon those influences to help see us do. It may be simplistic to discuss, “What would Jesus do?” when there are factors in what confronts us completely unknown in his time. Churches have held many councils to try to work out how best to follow the way of Jesus for the time.

That period between Easter Day and Pentecost is the time when the disciples of Jesus Christ accept that Good Friday was not the end of the story but that Jesus remains unconquered despite the worst that could be hurled at him and still can be hurled at his disciples, past and present.

First is the promise that although Jesus has left us in the flesh, we need not feel abandoned. The disciples had felt this on that Good Friday. We feel it today when a chapter in our lives slams shut when a loved one is taken forever from our midst. Where do we go from here? Time and time again, we have heard Jesus’ words about leaving his spirit, coming from God, with whoever loved and followed him, then and now, as a “paraclete”, one who comes alongside and even stays within. As a child remarked when taking Holy Communion, “We take a little piece of Jesus home within us.”

Jesus ascends to the Father, leaving his guarantee to us as his church. How do we know his spirit is alive and well within and among us? Paul wrote about this to the Galatians in chapter five. I won’t quote the verses leading up to verse 22 because I don’t have your mother’s permission to expose you to the bad things that were, and probably still are, got up to in a dreadful world. But these words in verses 22 and 23 have become for me the yardstick by which I measure Christ in me (and see where I have a long way to go).

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.”

These words returned to me recently when some of us farewelled a quiet and much beloved friend. I had found him the gentlest of men, embodying the fruit of the spirit left behind by Jesus Christ for us to live and show the world that such values are not only possible but so necessary if anything in this world is ever going to work. Our friend has gone but we can take on board the fruit of the Spirit now passed on to us to flourish in us.

This is why Jesus breathed on his first disciples to receive his spirit and those who lived this life of discipleship have left this spirit so that we who are still left may continue to let the fruit of the Spirit continue to flourish (even if I have mixed my metaphors again).

Now through science, we have access to know all about the molecules that came from the Big Bang, recycled through us, then on to eternity. But science steps back when it comes to defining how the fruits of the spirit came about. We know the fruits of the spirit are the ongoing creation by God through Jesus Christ to us and beyond.

When we turn on the news only to hear a further act of evil destroying so many innocent lives in Manchester and elsewhere, it so so easy to give into the fear and hate whipped up by populist demagogues. But Jesus never gave into evil as we well know. Paul describes his nature. The fruits of the spirit are the results of who Jesus was and what he did and these are what have now been passed to us to cherish and in our own time pass onto those who come after us.

Without the fruits of the spirit, nothing ever works. And this world we go out to and live in needs them right now. Go in the Spirit because the Spirit is among and within you!