“A Watered Garden”
“A Watered Garden”
Isaiah 58:1-12 Psalm 112:1-10 Matthew 5:13-20
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany Year A
February 5, 2023
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Andrew Kennaly, Pastor
In our lives, much energy goes into forming identity, things like making money, getting educated, having kids, paying a mortgage, and these are backed up by culture’s insistence on law, tradition, authority, or structure. Today we look biblical passages that take us deeper. They use familiar images but point to depths that our unreflective ego identities cannot take us. Today we explore soul language, and with the soul, language makes use of symbolism and metaphor and story. Our soul can shape and reveal true meaning.
“You are the salt of the earth.” “You are the light of the world.” Salt and light are essential. Today as we gather for communion, we are also renewed, told “you are the body of Christ sent into the world.” The body of Christ. Let’s play with that.
With that as the context, communion that tells us you are the body of Christ in the world, do this in remembrance of me, what would be the opposite of remember? What’s the opposite of remember? (forget) Forget. Yes, and no! Yes, the opposite of remember is forget, and this involves not remembering, not recognizing, even denying our own body as sacred gift, our participation and important place in something larger than ourselves. We forget who we are.
And no, the no part, this is because the opposite of remember is not only to forget, but it is to dismember. The opposite of remember is dismember, to actively take apart a body, to detach that which is meant to be together. Dismembering is a gruesome process and is the opposite of good religion. That word, religion, from Latin’s re-ligio, like ligaments that connect, they bring the bones, the structure of a body together. That’s good religion’s intent, to bring together, to form a body, and this reflects and expresses divine truth.
With communion, or the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper, this sacrament is intended to help us claim our true identity as the Body of Christ. We so often forgot or deny who we are in Christ. Communion does remind us to re-member as it attempts to touch the depth of our soul. You know you have a soul, don’t you? Our soul is our God-given Godly nature, that part of us that has always been and always will be, wrapped in Love’s embrace for all eternity. Our soul doesn’t get caught up in those limiting ego-identity needs. Our soul knows who it is, and in touching our soul, communion helps us re-member, as in the opposite of dismember. This religious rite, this sacrament unites, rather than fragments. It doesn’t give in to a process of entropy that leads to disorder; for communion we come to the table in that mix of life’s confusions and celebrations to find reorder, community, union, and the righteousness of divinity as the essence of our existence.
Our life, along with all life, is the love of God embodied, animated, and enlivened. Through our soul’s Godly-given, Godly nature, Christians claim the incarnation of Christ as a unique feature of our religion. We take the gifts of bread and juice, each of which is both ordinary and holy, and by way of sacrament we claim a sacred moment where we re-member the inherent union of spirit and matter. As we partake of those elements and respond to Christ’s invitation to be embodied in our lives, we celebrate salt and light, that we are, as Christ’s body, part of a blessed world in an enchanted universe. Any brokenness or suffering, persecution or shame is only in light of dismembering, or forgetting, who we truly are, united with all things as one in Christ.
Fragmentation seems so pervasive. It’s like taking a light and putting it under a bushel basket, as Matthew uses as an example of what not to do. The lampstand is a better representation of reality, the shining light of Christ shared with others, even as their light is shared with us in the well-watered garden of the Christ-soaked world.
The words of Isaiah guide us as they say, “The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. (In my manuscript I’ve attached a You Tube music link to John Philip Newell’s meditative chant called, You Shall Be Like a Garden. You can find it after the sermon is posted online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxHYw4vMNx0&list=RDsnPv8n3H4SE&index=2).
Christ’s body is given, the bread is broken, the grain of wheat falls, the grapes are crushed, the blood flows. These are active images, as are a flowing fountain and a watered garden. All these are sources that share their abundance, their sustenance, their gifts of love. Jesus seems to know that people are hesitant, that we don’t seek the deep fountains but prefer the shallow pools because it feels like we have our footing, like we are safe and secure. But these shallow pools also can become stagnant. We focus so much on first-half-of-life-religion, to the neglect of religio’s larger intent.
Bill Plotkin calls this the “survival dance.” But he contrasts it with the deeper waters that invite “our sacred dance.” (Richard Rohr’s daily email meditation for January 31, 2023, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/moving-beyond-survival-2023-01-30/). Rather than get stuck on first-half-of-life-questions, like “How can I be important?... be safe? be significant? How can I make money? …look good? or die a happy death and go to heaven?” Jesus tries to move the conversation along, and opens up the imagery to sacred realities, the sacred dance, the sense of “being part of a cosmos, a historical sweep, and that God does more than save individual souls.” Religion is so much more, like Jesus mentions, righteousness exceeds the scribes and Pharisees and any expectations one may have.
As we come to the table, maybe we can open our hearts to come alongside author and retreat leader, Paula D’Arcy as she asks, “Do I have what takes to really love, to do the second half of the journey?” (https://cac.org/daily-meditations/making-room-for-something-new-2023-01-31/).
As we come to the table, we can bring our pain, our shadows, our questions about the meaning of life and let them fall like seeds to the ground. In letting them go we no longer cling to the need for a certain outcome but instead can trust the new growth, that what is needed has been provided, that love fulfills at the root what grows from within. We can partake, and trust, the inner journey of Wisdom’s path. Thanks be to God for helping us re-member who we are in Christ, both now, and forever. Amen.