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Doe, A Deer... - The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
God provides abundant life - more than we expect, and more than we could hope for - if only we'll acknowledge and water the seed already planted within us.
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 13, 2021.
Today's readings are:
Ezekiel 17:22-24
Psalm 92:1-4,11-14
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,14-17
Mark 4:26-34
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for Proper 6, Year B.
Transcript:
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Gracious God, we give you thanks that you have begun in us a new creation. Help us by your grace to grow, continually leaving behind what must be left behind, and growing into that newness of life that you promise. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
In my perennial garden there's a thriving strawberry patch that I did not plant. For years, as we sampled lovely wild strawberries, my wife and I, we wondered where did this unexpected gift come from? Over time, I observed that above the volunteer strawberries, there is a patch of coneflowers. And on the coneflowers sit birds, feeding on the seeds of the flowers, and it seems over the years, some of these birds had feasted in strawberry patches before visiting my garden. And while on the flowers, they made deposits. We shall call them deposits. And in those deposits were undigested strawberry seeds. Voila! A thriving, unwanted, accidental, and delicious patch of strawberries.
Life's abundance is absolutely awe-inspiring. We're having a cicada outbreak in New Jersey, and it is intense to say the least. Today in scripture we have metaphors of propagation, metaphors from nature, meant to turn our hearts to God's surprising, persistent, prevailing, life-giving project. Barb Ballenger preached a great sermon on this mustard seed stuff a few years ago, look it up and do see a big footnote in the next section here. Jesus is at his bizarre and ironic best in the mustard seed parable. He depicts God's tree of life as a mustard shrub. Mustard was an invasive, unwelcome by farmers, and devilish to uproot. Yet Jesus chose this tiny seed and lowly plant to teach us something about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard shrub, even imagined here as the tree of life itself, where all the birds have room to roost. So what does that mean about the Kingdom of God, what is it like? Well it's like an intrusive, hard to detect, unwanted weed tree, that disrupts the well-planned garden and makes room for birds who will add their own...deposits...to the mess. The Kingdom of God will disrupt the established order, the well-planned garden, and make room for the unwelcomed.
A mission to give hope is in this Gospel, and a mission to give hope to the oppressed is shared by the Gospel and by Ezekiel. The Gospel, in the face of the Roman Empire, and Ezekiel in the face of the Babylonian exile. God's abundant life prevails in surprising ways, in both situations, like grass finding its way through a crack in a cement sidewalk.
In the case of Ezekiel, the prophet gives us a good description of how to propagate a cedar tree. You can actually do what he says in the prophecy and get a new cedar tree, so go home, climb a cedar tree, cut a young bough, and bring it down and plant it, and you will have, if you want, a new cedar tree. The prophet offers this image as a word of hope, to the Jews held in exile in Babylon, at the time of the telling, 17 years in exile, long enough for the first children to be adults with no memory of independence, no memory of a cohesive culture, and no memory of the holy city of Jerusalem. This generation is growing up in a hostile culture, surrounded daily by a set of stories and practices and habits guaranteed to horrify and offend and undermine everything the Jews hold dear.
And in fact, the Babylonians had their own story about cedar trees. In their story, their mythic hero Gilgamesh kills the steward who looked after all the cedar trees, and then Gilgamesh chops down every tree in the forest. The cedar was considered the tallest and most majestic tree in the ancient world, and nothing could be greater than Gilgamesh, so they had to go. The mythic hero prevails by marking and despoiling the earth in service of his grandeur. Ezekiel, a captive in Babylon, tells a different story about cedar trees, a subversive counter-narrative of the God who gives life, who plants and who propagates, the God of a good creation, the God of abundance in the midst of myths about despoiling, exploiting, and extracting.
Two quotes I heard this week led me off in this direction with these texts. Both were in a movie we screened here at the church, 8 Billion Angels, a movie about the climate crisis. One quote in the movie came from Mahatma Gandhi, who said, "the world is able to support our need, but not our greed." The world is able to support our need, but not our greed. And the second from someone interviewed in the movie, who said, "We have an economy premised on the notion that growth is continual in a world of finite resources." We have an economy premised on continuous growth in a world of finite resources. How does that make sense? We are called, like Ezekiel, to tell a story of life, and to live a life in balance with creation, under a tree of abundance rooted in trust in God's goodness, rooted in God's providence, working to rebalance and restore the harmony God intended in God's good world.
I take my personal inspiration from the oak tree. In Maine last summer, I was daydreaming in my hiking hammock down by the bay. I was pretending to read some weighty book or the other while gawking at the trees. The tide was out, and only the trickle of a stream from the salt marsh snaked through the wide mud flat. From the corner of my eye, I caught a movement, and there to my surprise was a doe, a deer...[muttering] a female deer, yeah. [To the crowd] I heard you start it. Well now you're singing, great, yeah. Is this church after COVID? This is really it? Yeah.
So the female deer is walking gingerly in the mud by the far shore. I see her stop under a tree with low-hanging branches and I see her stay there for 30 minutes or so with her nose up in the leaves. This made me so curious to see a deer on a mudflat, that the next day, I put on my boots, and walked to the tree through the mud. It was a lovely red oak, a natural tree in that region, that leaned out over the saltwater bay. And there were animal footprints of every type under the tree, a scattering of paws and claws roaming around in the mud under the tree, coming for acorns and caterpillars and other bugs, and all the abundance held in that gorgeous tree. I learned later that an oak tree can host 897 caterpillar species, so go home and plant an oak. It can spread three million acorns in its lifetime, a great source of protein. And a mature tree can drop seven hundred thousand leaves per year. The oak tree is a tree of life. It's beneficent, it is life-giving, it is an anchor rooting the whole ecosystem it inhabits, giving balance and life well beyond the stretch of its branches, from worm, to slug, to caterpillar, to blue jay, to deer, to human, life is given, life is sustained, life is propagated.
God has made this world abundant, and I feel like my message is very simple, but one I want to reaffirm because we are challenged by its simplicity. God has made this world abundant, not so we can abuse it, not so we can exploit it, or despoil it, but so we can live in balance with it, and join in the life-supporting, life-giving ways of our God, who loves us, and who loves all God has created in equal measure. God made the goodness of this world finite, just like us. And to me, it's as if God is saying to us, "in your finitude, my humans, try walking humbly. Try walking humbly on the earth, and you might discover a joy I have hidden there for you, a joy of living within enough."
You might discover another joy I've hidden there for you, this notion that limits, finitude itself, enhances the preciousness, the goodness, of all finite things. And you might even discover through the gift of grace, the sweet spot where your needs are met, and there is no need for greed at all. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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By St. Martin-in-the-FieldsGod provides abundant life - more than we expect, and more than we could hope for - if only we'll acknowledge and water the seed already planted within us.
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 13, 2021.
Today's readings are:
Ezekiel 17:22-24
Psalm 92:1-4,11-14
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,14-17
Mark 4:26-34
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for Proper 6, Year B.
Transcript:
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Gracious God, we give you thanks that you have begun in us a new creation. Help us by your grace to grow, continually leaving behind what must be left behind, and growing into that newness of life that you promise. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
In my perennial garden there's a thriving strawberry patch that I did not plant. For years, as we sampled lovely wild strawberries, my wife and I, we wondered where did this unexpected gift come from? Over time, I observed that above the volunteer strawberries, there is a patch of coneflowers. And on the coneflowers sit birds, feeding on the seeds of the flowers, and it seems over the years, some of these birds had feasted in strawberry patches before visiting my garden. And while on the flowers, they made deposits. We shall call them deposits. And in those deposits were undigested strawberry seeds. Voila! A thriving, unwanted, accidental, and delicious patch of strawberries.
Life's abundance is absolutely awe-inspiring. We're having a cicada outbreak in New Jersey, and it is intense to say the least. Today in scripture we have metaphors of propagation, metaphors from nature, meant to turn our hearts to God's surprising, persistent, prevailing, life-giving project. Barb Ballenger preached a great sermon on this mustard seed stuff a few years ago, look it up and do see a big footnote in the next section here. Jesus is at his bizarre and ironic best in the mustard seed parable. He depicts God's tree of life as a mustard shrub. Mustard was an invasive, unwelcome by farmers, and devilish to uproot. Yet Jesus chose this tiny seed and lowly plant to teach us something about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard shrub, even imagined here as the tree of life itself, where all the birds have room to roost. So what does that mean about the Kingdom of God, what is it like? Well it's like an intrusive, hard to detect, unwanted weed tree, that disrupts the well-planned garden and makes room for birds who will add their own...deposits...to the mess. The Kingdom of God will disrupt the established order, the well-planned garden, and make room for the unwelcomed.
A mission to give hope is in this Gospel, and a mission to give hope to the oppressed is shared by the Gospel and by Ezekiel. The Gospel, in the face of the Roman Empire, and Ezekiel in the face of the Babylonian exile. God's abundant life prevails in surprising ways, in both situations, like grass finding its way through a crack in a cement sidewalk.
In the case of Ezekiel, the prophet gives us a good description of how to propagate a cedar tree. You can actually do what he says in the prophecy and get a new cedar tree, so go home, climb a cedar tree, cut a young bough, and bring it down and plant it, and you will have, if you want, a new cedar tree. The prophet offers this image as a word of hope, to the Jews held in exile in Babylon, at the time of the telling, 17 years in exile, long enough for the first children to be adults with no memory of independence, no memory of a cohesive culture, and no memory of the holy city of Jerusalem. This generation is growing up in a hostile culture, surrounded daily by a set of stories and practices and habits guaranteed to horrify and offend and undermine everything the Jews hold dear.
And in fact, the Babylonians had their own story about cedar trees. In their story, their mythic hero Gilgamesh kills the steward who looked after all the cedar trees, and then Gilgamesh chops down every tree in the forest. The cedar was considered the tallest and most majestic tree in the ancient world, and nothing could be greater than Gilgamesh, so they had to go. The mythic hero prevails by marking and despoiling the earth in service of his grandeur. Ezekiel, a captive in Babylon, tells a different story about cedar trees, a subversive counter-narrative of the God who gives life, who plants and who propagates, the God of a good creation, the God of abundance in the midst of myths about despoiling, exploiting, and extracting.
Two quotes I heard this week led me off in this direction with these texts. Both were in a movie we screened here at the church, 8 Billion Angels, a movie about the climate crisis. One quote in the movie came from Mahatma Gandhi, who said, "the world is able to support our need, but not our greed." The world is able to support our need, but not our greed. And the second from someone interviewed in the movie, who said, "We have an economy premised on the notion that growth is continual in a world of finite resources." We have an economy premised on continuous growth in a world of finite resources. How does that make sense? We are called, like Ezekiel, to tell a story of life, and to live a life in balance with creation, under a tree of abundance rooted in trust in God's goodness, rooted in God's providence, working to rebalance and restore the harmony God intended in God's good world.
I take my personal inspiration from the oak tree. In Maine last summer, I was daydreaming in my hiking hammock down by the bay. I was pretending to read some weighty book or the other while gawking at the trees. The tide was out, and only the trickle of a stream from the salt marsh snaked through the wide mud flat. From the corner of my eye, I caught a movement, and there to my surprise was a doe, a deer...[muttering] a female deer, yeah. [To the crowd] I heard you start it. Well now you're singing, great, yeah. Is this church after COVID? This is really it? Yeah.
So the female deer is walking gingerly in the mud by the far shore. I see her stop under a tree with low-hanging branches and I see her stay there for 30 minutes or so with her nose up in the leaves. This made me so curious to see a deer on a mudflat, that the next day, I put on my boots, and walked to the tree through the mud. It was a lovely red oak, a natural tree in that region, that leaned out over the saltwater bay. And there were animal footprints of every type under the tree, a scattering of paws and claws roaming around in the mud under the tree, coming for acorns and caterpillars and other bugs, and all the abundance held in that gorgeous tree. I learned later that an oak tree can host 897 caterpillar species, so go home and plant an oak. It can spread three million acorns in its lifetime, a great source of protein. And a mature tree can drop seven hundred thousand leaves per year. The oak tree is a tree of life. It's beneficent, it is life-giving, it is an anchor rooting the whole ecosystem it inhabits, giving balance and life well beyond the stretch of its branches, from worm, to slug, to caterpillar, to blue jay, to deer, to human, life is given, life is sustained, life is propagated.
God has made this world abundant, and I feel like my message is very simple, but one I want to reaffirm because we are challenged by its simplicity. God has made this world abundant, not so we can abuse it, not so we can exploit it, or despoil it, but so we can live in balance with it, and join in the life-supporting, life-giving ways of our God, who loves us, and who loves all God has created in equal measure. God made the goodness of this world finite, just like us. And to me, it's as if God is saying to us, "in your finitude, my humans, try walking humbly. Try walking humbly on the earth, and you might discover a joy I have hidden there for you, a joy of living within enough."
You might discover another joy I've hidden there for you, this notion that limits, finitude itself, enhances the preciousness, the goodness, of all finite things. And you might even discover through the gift of grace, the sweet spot where your needs are met, and there is no need for greed at all. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org