Preparing the Ground--January 18, 2022

Preparing the Ground--January 18, 2022

"Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your lives." [James 1:21]

You can't force a flower to grow or blossom by sheer willpower or brute strength.  The seed has a power all its own, taking cues from the weather and transforming sunshine and rain into life sprouting up from the ground.  But you can at least remove obstacles that could hamper those new green shoots as they push their way up to the light.

That might be a humbling realization for a would-be gardener, but it's actually rather empowering.  Once you can be honest about what is NOT in your power to do, you can spend your efforts where they will be fruitful--on the things that ARE in your power to do.  Like Niebuhr's famous prayer asks, when we have "the wisdom to know the difference" between what we can and cannot change, we can do something productive with our time and energy.

And that's what James is after here.  It's not within our power to make God's word for each of us grow, like a tall oak or a redwood, into maturity within us.  That lies in God's hand and God's power to accomplish. And like a seed growing beyond human effort, God is able to make that happen just fine all on God's own.  But what is within our ability is the weeding of our souls to remove the thistles and thorns that would get in the way of the good growth God gives.

Just a few verses earlier, James had described the way a little rottenness (or, to use the more theological-sounding word, "sin") festers and grows, almost like a cancer, from seemingly small impulses and attitudes into actions, which in turn become habits, which again in turn can consume us.  That can sound ominous, and maybe even hopeless--again, much like a cancer diagnosis can sound at first.  But, like the work of surgeons or chemotherapy to root out tumors where they are starting so that they do not spread, James here is telling us that we do have some agency in pulling up the things that would grow and fester in us otherwise.  Like a surgeon removes gangrene or a gardener pulls out weeds, we do have the ability to tend to our souls.  That doesn't make something good grow by itself, but it does make room for something good to spring up.

Notice here that none of James' thinking here has to do with winning God's approval, earning God's love, or racking up enough points or merits or gold-stars on our permanent record to "get in to heaven."  It's not like that.  For all the bad press James can sometimes get for talking about the importance of what we do to live out our faith, you can see for yourself that he's not suggesting if we do a good enough job that then God will love us.  Rather, James is talk about us clearing the ground in our lives so that, as the song puts it, our hearts can be "good soil, open to the seed of Your word." 

What would that look like in real life?  Now that's a good question.  The metaphor is easy enough to understand:  "Pull the thistles and briars out of the ground so that there will be room for something good to grow."  But what exactly does that mean?  It means, like in your garden, we take the time to make it a regular practice to survey the ground and get rid of what shouldn't be there. When I catch myself being crude or hurtful, even to people who aren't in the room, I call myself out on it. When I've put up some rude, hateful, or profane message on my bumper, my social media feed, or my flagpole, I'll realize that those things not good for my soul and take them down. When I notice that certain voices in my life--whether on TV or radio or social media or wherever--have a tendency to bring the nastiness out in me, or to rile me up over things that aren't worth it, I make the choice not to give them my attention.  When I notice that I'm not sensitive to things--words or attitudes or actions--that other people are really upset or offended by, maybe it's worth investigating whether I've gotten used to weeds in my soul that are causing harm to others without my awareness.  Again, like a good gardener would pay attention if other people were yanking out some plant from their garden beds that I didn't realize was dangerous or noxious, we can listen to and learn from others around us who can help us see things in our blind-spots and recognize them as weeds.  Doing any of those things takes effort, time, humility and honesty--and yeah, any of those can seem in short supply these days.  But they are what allow us to see the soil in our hearts truthfully, and to let the ground be ready for good things to grow.

Today's calling then--one that may begin again today but needs to continue over a lifetime--is just that: to get the ground ready.  Day by day, our prayer can be to ask God to help us see the places where little, socially-acceptable evils are trying to choke out the good growth, and then to have the courage to pull out those pet sins by the roots.  We don't do it with the fear that if we mess up we will no longer be loved, and we don't do it as some attempt to earn heavenly prizes.  But rather, like anyone who knows the joy of watching something good grow up out of the ground--from a field full of wheat to a tomato plant in a back-yard pot to a sunflower in your yard--we prepare the fields of these hearts so that God can make something wonderful blossom in our midst.

Lord God, give us the courage and persistence to remove the thorns and thistles from our souls, and grow something good in us today.