You may or may not know this, but the season of green stoles, green paraments, the colour green, it lasts forever. We are in the beginning of what is politely known as 'the time of the church,' and impolitely known as 'green stole purgatory.' Yes, that's right, the scourge of common time. We are looking at months, from now on, of green stoles, green paraments, and no change. This comes on the heels of the season of Easter, the season in which there has been massive change, where there has been purple stoles, red stoles, white stoles, and everything in between. And now, well, now it's green. Green forever. There are no festivals coming up, no variety, no big celebrations, just church.
Coming on the heels of big monumental changes, coming on the heels of the time of high highs, what do we do with just going to church. Not building towards anything, just going to church? Well, that's the situation that we get into now, and we tend to not overly care for it. We can get people into church on Christmas and Easter, but it's much harder to get people into the church in the green time. Heck, it's harder to get us into the church in green time too. With it not being a big high holy day, a big festival, the craving that we have for variety, it gets squashed.
But Jesus has promised us that the kingdom of God grows slowly. We sort of want instant results like we do with everything else. We want things to be quick, to grow massively and to be there right away. Both with our faith, and with our plants. We want faith to spring up from nothing and be a fully fledged faith that can move mountains in an instant. But it doesn't work like that.
Think about your garden at home. And if you don't have one, then go put a bean between some pieces of wet blotting paper and come back to it in a few days. You know what it takes to have a seed grow into a plant, and to have flowers come up. You know it takes water, sunshine and time.
And nobody among you will look at someone's garden, with pretty maids all in a row, and say 'boy, they sure are lucky that all those plants just happened to grow there. They sure are lucky that those sunflowers, those peonies, those beans, those peas, just happened to grow up right in those spots. Lucky.
Yeah, you know gardens don't work like that. A beautiful garden doesn't just happen to people. The only flowers that just happen to grow somewhere are the ones you don't want, like the ever popular dandelion. Or South African Capeweed. Those grow without your input, without your help, and will take over. everything else, you have to work at.
But even though Jesus talks about slow and steady growth, as he does, we still expect faith to be instant. Not only that, we expect it to be instant, and we also expect it to be something that just happens to people. Like the gene for rolling your tongue, some people have it, others do not. We feel as though faith in God is inexorable, that you were born with it, will live with it, will die with it, and if you don't have it, then you won't ever get it. We feel about it like the gardens mentioned above, assuming that if someone has a garden then they were just destined to have a nice garden. But you know it doesn't work like that. And nor does your faith.
This time of green, it's the time where we work on our faith. How does our faith grow in this time? Well, like the man in the Gospel Reading who plants and sleeps, we know not how. We don't know how our faith grows, not really. We don't really know how our faith grows in a time of worship and communion and prayer and participation in the Lord's Supper and the body of Christ. But it does. And just like you can't grow a garden with anything but water, sunlight and time, so too do we need time to grow in our faith right now. Bit by bit and piece by piece, Day by day and moment by moment, that's how faith grows, growing from something as small as a mustard seed, starting small in infants at their baptisms as it does, then growing up into the great, fully fledged faith that we see in our staunchest people. None of the people you see around you who seem to have it all together, who seem to have it totally figured out, who believe with a deep and rich and abiding faith, none of those people just got lucky, or just happened to have a rich faith, or had it be enormous and deep out of nowhere. All of those people had to grow it, week by week, devotion by devotion, moment by moment, prayer by prayer, spending time with their Lord in his word and in his church, developing and fostering that faith ,planting and watering, and allowing God to provide the increase, they know not how.
Now, you may be saying to me 'pastor Jim, I don't have faith. I wish I did, but I don't.' Okay. But faith that can move mountaints, faith that is so big that even the birds of the air build their nests therein, that doesn't just happen fully grown. It grows from something small. Just like plants grow from seeds, your faith starts small too. And you may be feeling about your faith that it is dried out, withered, broken and twisted. It's no good anymore, it's not up to much, it isn't like the faith you see in other people, who are doing great, who don't let the world get in the way, who say 'God said it, I believe it, that settles it.' Your faith doesn't seem like that.
Well, good news. Good news for you who are weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care. God is in the business of breathing life into things that were long thought to be dead and gone. Think of the valley of dry bones from a few weeks ago, or think of Adam being created from the dust of the ground. Think of the stump of Jesse from whence a shoot sprang up, or think of Lazarus having life spoken into him. and think about the reading from Sunday, where we heard Ezekiel talking about taking a shoot from the cedar and planting it again. Taking a branch and grafting it, planting it and making it secure and safe, letting it grow up again. Think about your faith like a seed, as Jesus describes it. And seeds, well, they look dead. They look inert. They look dry and gone, useless. But in each of those seeds, dried out as they are, dessicated as they are, is the promise of a new plant, new growth, new flowering of life to be found even where it looks like no life can be. God can take even what we would assume is dead and gone, and give it life, life abundantly. That's what he's in the business of doing, taking dried plants, plants that bear no fruit, plants that we would assume are dead, finding the life in them, and saying to them 'behold, I make all things new.'
Pascal's wager deals with this, you know. After making his case that in the wager, it makes more sense to have faith in God than not, no matter the outcome, Pascal deals with objections to his thesis, so here following is the text of the objections, followed by Pascal's answer to them.
'My hands are tied and my mouth is gagged; I am forced to wager,
and am not free; no one frees me from these bonds, and I am so made that I
cannot believe. What then do you wish me to do?'
That is true. But understand at least that your ability to believe is the
result of your passions; for, although reason inclines you to believe, you cannot
do so. Try therefore to convince yourself, not by piling up proofs of God, but
by subduing your passions. You desire to attain faith, but do not know the way.
You would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and you ask for remedies. Learn of
those who were bound and gagged like you, and who now stake all they possess.
They are men who know the road you desire to follow, and who have been cured
of a sickness of which you desire to be cured. Follow the way by which they set
out, acting as if they already believed, taking holy water, having masses said,
etc. Even this will naturally cause you to believe and bunt your cleverness.
‘But that is what I fear.’
Why? What have you to lose?
Your relationship with God is the same as your relationship with everyone else, which is that it grows and develops not just on the big days, but over the days and weeks that go into regular daily interaction. We grow in our relationship with our families, with our friends not by talking to them once a year at Christmas, but by growing and sharing with them even and especailly when there's not an event going on. That's how we grow in our relationships with those we know, by daily watering, tending, weeding, and care. And that's how we develop our relationship with God, too. Not a matter of it just happening to people, but a matter of daily, weekly care and growth. Here in the time of greenery. The time of green stoles. The time of the church.
PJ
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