The Way to the Meadow--August 18, 2025

The Way to the Meadow--August 18, 2025

[Jesus said:] “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! (Luke 12:49-50)

It turned out that the first step of planting a meadow was to turn the ground brown and bare.  From there, something new could grow.

The church where I serve has planted a prairie meadow in the back of its yard--an intentional space where native plants can grow, blossom, and offer food for pollinators like bees, bugs, and birds throughout the summer and into the fall.  It is often awash in color--the yellows and golds of coneflowers and black-eyed susans, the purples and reds of bee balm and yarrow, and other surprises that come and go from week to week.  But the first step was the equivalent of a fire: we had to kill off the weeds, invasive plants, and grass that was growing and which had left seeds and sprouts in the ground already over decades.  The goal was to restore this piece of ground to looking and functioning something like what it would have been before developers had cut roads and erected houses all around, so the site of the meadow was sprayed and dug up and allowed to die off, so that when native plants started to grow again, they weren't choked off by invasive knotweed or thistle.  The first step looked like death, in order for life to spread again in greater variety of flowers and diversity of colors.

And at those phases when we've had to basically kill off a patch of weedy ground and make it look barren and dead for a while, of course the thought enters one's mind: "I wish we were already past this part and could get to the new growth."  Well, no doubt--the beautiful phase is obviously the part you want to skip ahead to, but wise naturalists know that you have to start with a step that leaves the land empty for a while and gets the seeds of weeds out of the picture before you can get there.  When the goal is life and thriving abundance, it is completely understandable that you would want to get to the blossoming and blooming as soon as possible, even if you know that the only way to get there is the brown and barren season where your future meadow looks only like scorched earth.

I think something like that is what Jesus has in mind as he looks at the world to which he has been sent and reflects that he has a fire to kindle that he wishes were already burning.  The image isn't meant to be one of destruction or condemnation--it is about the process of building a movement.  It is about the way you get to a flourishing meadow; that is to say, it is about how Jesus clears away the old in order to make space for new life to take root and bloom.  All too often, we Respectable Religious Folks hear talk of fire in the Bible and assume it is meant to describe punishment or damnation. And thus it is terribly easy to hear this passage from Luke's Gospel, which many of us heard in worship on Sunday, as if Jesus is saying, "I can't wait to see those sinners fry!  I've got a world to burn up with holy wrath, and I've got my work cut out for me! Let loose with those lightning bolts!" It's easy to hear him like that if our default assumption is that God is first and foremost an angry scorekeeper looking to zap rule-breakers and torture sinners (special thanks to Jonathan Edwards and his "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" thinking that colored generations of preachers', and therefore many Christians', thinking).  It's easy--but awfully wrong--to think that God's primary business is sending people to hell and manage the fires that punish them there.  But that just isn't what Jesus is actually talking about.

Let's stop for a moment and consider the wide sweep of Jesus' words, actions, and ministry.  At every turn, he is talking about bringing the Reign of God (sometimes we call it "the kingdom of God") into people's lives.  Here and now, right in our midst, God's new thing.  It is about building, nurturing, growing, and cultivating God's ordering of life, instead of our old stingy, self-centered, and mean-spirited ways that so often boil down to "Me and My Group First!" thinking.  Jesus has come to inaugurate that reign--he embodies it everywhere he goes, and he brings it to every person he meets.  Everywhere he brings healing, every time the hungry crowds are fed, every time he raises the dead, welcomes the outcast, forgives the sinners, and lifts up those who have been stepped on in life, these are toeholds of the Reign of God. They are places where roots can go down into the soil and where new buds can begin to grow. 

But at the very same time, Jesus is also well aware that bringing God's Reign will mean uprooting and undoing the work of the old orders of the world, too.  That is slower, sweatier work, because the old invasive weeds of greed, cruelty, domination, violence, sin, and evil are pernicious and persistent.  They dig down deep into the earth and hold on tight like the taproot of a stalk of thistle. They vine out like knotweed and leave seeds behind.  They keep coming back and threatening to take over the soil if you only snap them off at the base without getting to the roots.  Jesus knows that his work to enact God's kingdom will mean a struggle with all of those weedy powers and that he will meet with resistance from all directions, ranging from the power-hungry Herods, Caesars, and Pontius Pilates, to the self-righteous Respectable Religious People, to the literally demonic forces at work around him as well.  So every time Jesus casts out evil spirits and sets people free, every time he has a verbal showdown with the self-deputized Godly Gatekeepers, every time he overturns the moneychangers' tables in the temple, and every time he corrects his own disciples who want him to be a conquering king who "takes back his country for God," Jesus is doing that unpleasant--but necessary work.  Every one of those moments is like the yanking of a weed by the roots.  

And of course, some people see and hear Jesus doing things like that, and all they can see is the brown and barren ground.  "He must be an enemy of God! He is a threat!  He is trying to destroy everything we cherish!" You can see why so many people were threatened by Jesus and wanted to get rid of him.  The beautiful parts of cultivating God's Reign in the world--the face cleansed from leprosy, the back that can now stand up straight, the bellies that no longer growl with hunger, the stillness of the sea after the storm has been calmed, the discarded graveclothes left behind when Lazarus walked out and was unbound--come along with the hard work of confronting evil, resisting the Respectable Religious Leaders, defying the powers of the day, and eventually of going to the cross.  All of that is the work of weeding that leaves brown and bare patches in the ground until new life can take root.  Of course, Jesus would rather that work already be done.  Of course he says, "I wish that fire were already kindled, so we could get to the planting of the new garden." He just knows it isn't possible.  You only get to the meadow when you have gotten rid of the weeds.  You only get the flowers when you have yanked up the harmful plants by the roots first.  The kingdom work Jesus does requires both--never with violence, hatred, or cruelty on his part, but it does mean weeding along with planting.

If we are disciples of this Jesus and joined in his work, then we should be prepared: it will involve both the beautiful moments of sharing joys, feeding neighbors, teaching children, and welcoming strangers that all feel like blooming flowers, and the difficult moments of speaking up against the likes of Caesar, Herod, and the self-righteous religious authorities, just as Jesus had to, even though it feels like pulling weeds. We might wish we could skip the unpleasant parts or avoid the difficult (or even provocative and controversial) conversations; we might want to avoid upsetting people or having them call us unrighteous for loving outcasts the way Jesus loves them. We might not want to have to live through the seasons of empty ground and fallow soil, but that is just as much our work as the pleasant moments where we get hugs from children, smiles from the homebound person you visited, or a thank you note in the mail for your extra effort.  We are joined to Jesus work of bringing the whole world more fully to life with the wide diversity of blossoms and flowers God first made it all to have, and so we are called beside him in the challenging work of weeding, too, which is the way we ultimately get to the meadow.

Lord Jesus, equip us and energize us for both the beautiful parts and the difficult parts of your kingdom work in the world today.