Copyright ©2001-2005 Cindi Knox
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It really is Spring, isn't it?
The flowers are in bloom; the leaves are coming back on the trees; the grass is growing... people are mowing their lawns...
I remember mowing the lawn. I also remember what happened if we didn't: our lawn would stick out like a sore thumb amongst the more perfectly manicured lawns in our neighborhood. No one had to say anything, we knew they were unhappy with the way our lawn looked. In fact, if we let it grow too long, the worst would happen. Say it if you know it: "it would go to seed".
At any rate, thinking about grass gets me to thinking about grassy plants -- like barley, oats, and...
Wheat.
Now I don't know how many of you grew up on a farm, but I certainly did not. And because of this, I had only the slightest idea of what wheat was about. It was grassy, grew in fields, and people made bread and sugary breakfast cereals out of it.
And I had heard the phrase "separating the wheat from the chaff", and I figured that meant separating the good, or the wheat; from the chaff, or some icky stuff that wasn't wheat.
It wasn't until recently that I discovered that chaff is actually part of the wheat plant. In fact, chaff is the husks. And that made me think about the whole image.
This evening, I want you to consider looking at this scripture in a way you may not have seen it before.
I don't think John the Baptist chose wheat in this metaphor merely at random. He could have chosen figs, he could have chosen grapes, he could have chosen any of dozens of plants which have edible fruit, but he didn't. Wheat has several attributes many other plants simply do not.
Unlike a tree, you will rarely see a stalk of wheat growing alone. Wheat grows in fields of thousands or millions of plants. Even in the wild, grassy plants grow in fields and meadows. And like wheat, people do much better when surrounded by others. Standing alone, we run a greater risk of being bent by the winds of public opinion, or trampled on by those who don't even seem to notice us. So a field of wheat is a metaphor for community, the importance of which Rich helped us to understand last week.
Wheat, at least as it is cultivated on farms, has a defined life time: one season. It is planted, it brings forth fruit, the whole plant is harvested, and it is threshed.
Threshed.
Threshing is where the fruit, the grain, the entire point of a year of growing, is separated from the rest of the plant. That whole rest of the plant -- chaff and straw -- is cast aside, and the fruit is kept.
Likewise, we have earthly bodies and earthly lives, rooted to this Earth. Eventually, we bring forth spiritual fruit. Eventually, our Earthly bodies pass away, but it is our spirit which lives on past the harvest. All that was Earthly; our bodies, our possessions, our jobs, our hobbies; will pass away.
So right now you're probably thinking: "Oh no, not another sermon on the fruits of the spirit and how we need to emphasize the eternal over the transitory."
Nah.
While that is a very good and important sermon, it's not what I have to talk about tonight. This evening, I want to examine how we get to that spiritual fruit, who does the threshing, and what gets in the way of that process.
The fruit of a stalk of wheat is the end product of a healthy, earthly plant. In I Corinthians 15:35-44, Paul writes:
But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as God has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
We are born with Earthly bodies, and yet we can produce fruit which is spiritual, which is everlasting. Yet we do this on our own no more than a grain of wheat grows on its own. Without water, soil, air, and sun, a grain of wheat will remain a grain of wheat. Likewise, we can and must rely on what God has given, is giving, and will give us to grow to become what God has made us to be. We needn't worry about whether we'll have what we need to be who God intends.
Yet there are things which can keep us from producing spiritual fruit. Some of us have been told, by well-meaning Christians, that we can't be Christian until we stop being who we are. We married outside the church, or married the wrong person, or got divorced, or fell in love with someone the same gender as we are. These people have found God, and are assuming we need to be like them to enjoy the peace and joy they feel. In reality, they're cutting us back to conform to their lives.
Sometimes friends will try to get us to "knock off the God talk". Maybe we're praying for travel mercies for them, or we're talking about how faith has carried us through a difficult situation. Our friends aren't being mean, they just don't want to see us "go to seed". Our spiritual fruit is starting to show, and it makes them uncomfortable to know that we're looking a little odd among the mowed-lawn conformity of society.
Yet our neighbors rarely come over to to mow our lawn, and while people will try to trim back our spirituality, the biggest culprit is ourselves. We look around, see others all in conformity, and cut ourselves back so we don't stand out. We put away that cross when we're around people who are uncomfortable with our spirituality. We hold ourselves back from telling our true stories when we're around people who might judge us, not for who we are, but for where we have been. And in the process, we cut ourselves back and keep ourselves from being who God created us to be. And if you keep cutting wheat back, does it ever bear fruit? Well, you never see farmers mowing the wheat, afraid it might go to seed.
Sometimes this idea of unworthiness becomes so deeply ingrained, we spend most of our time cutting ourselves back. We start to believe that we are somehow inherently unworthy of bearing fruit for God.
Almost exactly three years ago, I had a very spritual moment - actually, a whole day - where everything seemed to make sense. My whole life, with all its happy and sad times, was leading up to something, although I wasn't sure what. about six months later, I started to feel called to something in particular. I couldn't - or wouldn't, believe that I was good enough. I was cutting myself back. Still, after about two months of fighting it, I decided to try to follow the path I believed I was put on.
I'd love to tell you that the happy ending is that I now have peace and joy in using the gifts God has given me, that I move with full confidence that I am enough for the task, that I no longer feel afraid.
I'd love that to be true for myself, but it's not true.
I'm still frightened. I'm still wondering why someone stronger, smarter, better isn't doing this instead of me. In fact, when Pastor Rich asked me if I'd like to preach, I felt like I'd been hit by a medicine ball. I still feel small, scared, and weak.
And I feel very blessed.
Being true to how God created you, growing, and bearing spiritual fruit is not an easy task. It's difficult. It will bring you into conflict with others.
It's frightening.
It's also the only way to be fulfilled as a human being. Just as a stalk of wheat which never goes to seed has a simple yet empty life, cutting ourselves back keeps us safely in conformity with this world without reaching into the next. It is our own small vision for ourselves which keps us from blossoming into the people God designed us to be.
So this week, I'm giving you an assignment, a little homework. I want us all to look at the ways we're cutting ourselves back, and why. And I'd like us to pray that God will help us to see what we can be, and to not be afraid of developing into those people.
And I want us to learn to keep our lawnmowers out of our wheat fields.