Psalm 119:1-20;
Colossian 1:1-14
I only have a green thumb when I’m
finger painting. And I haven’t finger
painted with any color in very many years.
And even when I did, I don’t quite recall using my thumb. Anyway, instead of a green thumb, I’m happier
having a Gospel thumb. I’ve spent my
adult life trying to plant and help grow seeds of God’s gracious, Good News
love in Jesus Christ. I especially hope
and pray I’m able to reveal a big Gospel “thumbs up” every week I have the
privilege of the pulpit.
Ministry and gardening imagery is
found throughout Scripture. It began to
come together for me in an especially influential way some eighteen years ago,
in my second year of seminary studies. I had a preaching professor, Dr. Nichols, who
claimed he was “a gardener of sorts.”
He had built plenty of new gardens, had “reaped the special joy of
seeing bare lots or tangled patches of woodland become places of beauty and
abundance.” But what he most enjoyed was
coming upon gardens “once ordered and lovely, now gone to rack and ruin and
crying out for restoration.”[i] Tilling
and tending to sin-stricken soil was his
true vocation in ministry.
Let’s recall that God’s good garden,
this amazing world we live in, was once upon a time perfectly, harmoniously ordered
and lovely. But then, as the great
faith story of our beginnings goes, the first of our humankind freely chose to
abuse the freedom they were created with.
They chose to rebel against their loving Creator. The
blight of sin settled in and began spoiling all the good fruit God had
created. It has been seeded within every
one of our generations as a spiritual inheritance ever since. Gone
to rack and ruin, cries for holy restoration have been constant across the
ages.
Those cries are fully and mercifully
answered by the forgiving, garden-restoring Word of God in Jesus Christ. Do you recall how our Lord chose to appear to
Mary Magdalene after His resurrection? As a gardener! In Christ, all of us, in a myriad of amazing
ways, are gifted with Gospel thumbs and called to go out and sow His Good News each
day in this sin soiled world.
As we go about this, we really should
keep in mind an important teaching from this morning’s lesson in Colossians --
the Gospel grows itself. Its reality
doesn’t depend on us. Our Lord’s blight-of-sin
banishing, soul restoring truth is all-sufficient. This is secure for us in heaven. While it doesn’t depend on is, it is for us. Through the mysterious working of the Holy Spirit,
the Gospel is planted in our hearts and minds. There, by grace and through our faith, it grows
the good fruits that reveal and sow its restorative power wherever there is
rack and ruin.
Listen again to how Colossians 1:5-6
speaks to the Gospel as an all-sufficient power unto itself that makes
salvation and sacred living possible for us – “Just as it is bearing fruit and
growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from
the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God.” The Gospel grows itself.
Do you recall how you first came to
realize the Gospel was within you? Were
there moments when you truly felt God’s grace in Christ dispelling darkness and
growing true light in your life? What
kind of good fruit – faith, hope and love -- has it born through you to feed
the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of your loved ones and neighbors? And who were the Gospel thumb gardeners who helped
sow the Word within and with you?
For the early people living in first
century Colossae, the Gospel became known and grew when their garden, I mean,
their congregation was planted. It was
not planted by the Apostle Paul. This
restoration garden was instead established by a convert from paganism named
Epaphras whose Gospel thumb was trained, loved and admired by Paul.
As first Colossians makes clear, Paul,
who was imprisoned in Rome at the time, was tremendously pleased to received
reports from Epaphras about the ongoing good growth happening in this Christian
community. He rejoiced learning about all
the fresh shoots of Jesus’ love, about their holding fast to sustaining roots
of spiritual wisdom and understanding, about the many good works being done for
all God’s people. But he also exhorted
them to stay strong, grateful and joyful in the Lord. He reaffirmed that they needed to “endure
everything with patience.”
Why this word about patient endurance? Was there a particular blight visiting their
plot of world-restoring work in the Lord?
Bible commentaries tell us that
there were indeed certain people trying to spoil the Gospel fruit grown from
the truth of salvation in Christ alone.
Presbyterian scholar William Barclay simply and bluntly calls them “The
Mistaken Thinkers.” More academically,
they were a movement known as the Gnostics.
These were intellectual elites who believed they alone were “in the know”
and who were “dissatisfied with what they considered the rude simplicity of
Christianity.” They couldn’t accept
that the only thing needing to be done for salvation was freely accept the Good
News -- the Gospel -- of God’s love in Jesus Christ. They preferred to think that there must be
some further means in addition to this message, something else they could do to
save themselves from sin. They wanted to
change the Gospel into yet another fancy world philosophy”[ii] such as
were in vogue across the Greco-Roman empire.
There’s much more to what these
mistaken thinkers taught, but suffice it to say Paul preached that any complicating,
culturally coopted teaching about Christian faith is to be patiently endured and
totally rejected. Nothing further needs
to be believed about the, yes, simple message that “God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may
not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16). There’s nothing rude and instead everything righteous
about proclaiming in word and deed that God “has rescued us from the power of
darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we
have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (1:13) This Gospel graciously grows
itself, we need only freely and faithfully accept the restorative fullness of it
and commit ourselves to bearing its good fruit of faith, hope and above all,
love.
Next Saturday morning,
many local Gospel thumbs are hitting the road to Warfield, Kentucky as part of
the Appalachia Service Project. This
will be my ninth straight trip, my wife Stefanie’s second trip, and my daughter
Anna’s first trip. We are very excited for
many reasons, including the fact that we’ll be in the good company of the following
folks from our church family – Bob Eyet and daughter Katie Eyet, Gary
Falkenstern, Lindsay Fritz, Rick Frost and daughter Emma Frost, sisters Avery
Gavornik and Madison Gavornik, siblings Rachel Giardin and Garret Giardin, Gill
Smith and son Kevin Smith. Plus, we fifteen from our church family will
also be there with 79 brothers and sisters from Presbyterian churches in
Chester, Califon, Stillwater, as well as the United Methodist Church in Califon
and St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Flemington.
The 94 of us aren’t
going to work on our salvation. Again,
as Colossians reminds us, is secure in heaven through Christ our Lord. We are going there to be gardeners of the
Gospel growing itself! We’ll do this by sowing faith, hope and love
as we simultaneously make the homes of poverty-stricken neighbors in great need
warmer, safer and dryer.
We will be inspired and
guided by a bible study theme, which, for this year, is “Radical Reversal.” This means living into what it means to take
on the attitude of Christ, an attitude which begins with the radical reversal
of realizing that “people of faith don’t just make plans; they believe God has
plans for them.”[iii] For all of you who have been so supportive
in prayer and fundraising, and by committing to go on this mission trip, I
trust that at our returning worship service at the Community House on the 28th,
there will be many fruitful words of love in the Spirit to share.
Over the coming two
weeks, notice and use your Gospel thumbs. And please pray Colossians 1, verses 11 and
12 for us preparing for and going to Warfield. Please pray that we all may be “made strong
with all the strength that comes from [Christ’s] glorious power,” and “be
prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to
the Father, who has enabled [us] to share in the inheritance of the saints in
the light.” Amen.
