Giant Sequoia Patience

Readings for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6 Year B)

Ezekiel 17:22-24
Psalm 92:1-4,11-14
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,[11-13],14-17
Mark 4:26-34

This sermon was preached by Fr. Daniel London at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA and at Sts. Martha & Mary parochial mission on June 17, 2018.

Over the last few weeks, several of us have been trying to maintain a practice of daily prayer. On Tuesday nights, after Compline in the chapel, we have been sitting together in prayerful silence for about 20 minutes. Some of us gather in the chapel on Thursdays at noon for meditation and Centering Prayer. On the other days of the week, I have been trying to pray in the garden at the Transfiguration House, where I have been enjoying the beautiful weather and the garden’s morning and evening breeze. I sit under the garden’s great redwood tree, which I learned was Sister Alice’s favorite; and I sometimes touch its soft exterior and lean against its robust solidity and imagine its deep strong roots. I think about my times of prayer as times when I strengthen and deepen my own roots so that I’m not easily swayed or disturbed or toppled over by strong winds or periods of dryness.[1] I also think of this time as a kind of sermon preparation. (I remember meeting a priest who said he spent most of the week in prayer. And I wondered when he had time to prepare his sermons. And then I realized that that was his sermon prep and really the best kind of sermon prep.) English clergyman R. E. C. Browne said, “All speech that moves people was minted when some person’s mind was poised and still.”

I try to be still and know that God is God so that when I stand here and preach at this pulpit I know that what I am saying to you is rooted in the soil of prayer. I also want to know that what I am saying to you is rooted in the soil of the Holy Scriptures. Each week, I try to draw relevant spiritual nutrients from the readings and I will admit that I sometimes find this difficult and frustrating. The readings don’t always say what I want them to say. The Bible refuses to be a megaphone for my own personal agenda and desires. The Bible also refuses to be a weapon or tool to justify cruelty. Whenever anyone abuses the Bible in that way, they are committing blasphemy and must repent. Authentic engagement with Scripture produces the fruits of the Spirit for all people and results in the healing and protection of the weak and vulnerable, not their exploitation. Also, authentic engagement with Scripture often involves letting go of some of our previous readings of the Bible in order to let the Bible read us. The Gospel this morning has been reading me this week; and feeding me.

Jesus’s earthy and agrarian parables invite me to reflect on the many fruits of the Spirit that I have witnessed here at Christ Church during my first five months. Last week, we celebrated the 10^th anniversary of the dedication of the Kegg Pipe Organ. This place was packed, the music was spectacular, Charles Kegg joined us and the Spirit was in the house. I know that the seeds for this organ installation were planted almost twenty years ago and I have some idea of all the blood, sweat and tears and patience that went into installing these pipes. I feel privileged and honored to be able to enjoy with you the beautiful fruits of your labor. Please know that I do not take that for granted.

And I’m very eager to see how the Spirit will continue to show up and speak to us and produce fruits as we begin to have conversations about our mission and our vision for the church, as we move into a new season of life together. I really do believe that the best is yet to be. I’m eager and I’m excited and this morning’s parables remind me to be patient, to sow seed but to not try forcing growth.

Eugene Peterson, the author of the Message, said, “The person…who looks for quick results in the seed planting of well-doing will be disappointed. If I want potatoes for dinner tomorrow, it will do me little good to go out and plant potatoes in my garden tonight. There are long stretches of darkness and invisibility and silence that separate planting and reaping. During the stretches of waiting there is cultivating and weeding and nurturing and planting still other seeds.”[2]

I imagine we all would like our church to grow with lots of new members and new young families and programs. And I would love to see all of this growth take place right now or even yesterday. However, realistically and statistically speaking, healthy and substantial church growth really starts to occur after a new priest has been consistently in leadership for about five years. So far, it’s been almost five months, so we have a way to go. Now this does not give us permission to be lazy. We have a lot of work to do.

This patience that the Gospel calls us to practice is “not acquiescence to boredom, not doormat submissiveness.” It is what Eugene Peterson calls “giant sequoia patience.” (49) I invite us to practice the patience of the giant sequoia trees whose deep roots equip them with strength and endurance that can last thousands of years. I invite us to plant seeds this year and next year and the year after that so that we can harvest the bountiful fruits of our labor in five, ten or twenty years from now, just as we are now enjoying the fruits of seeds sown decades ago. Let us sow seeds today and nourish roots so deep that members of Christ Church Eureka can enjoy our fruits and bask in our shade even a hundred or two hundred years from now. Let us practice that “giant sequoia patience” even when there seems to be no growth at all.

According to Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, the key to producing abundant fruit is always in the depth of the root; the key to growth is prayerful patience. In his Royal Wedding sermon, Bishop Curry quoted a French Jesuit priest named Teilhard de Chardin who is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the 20^th century. Because of his many adventures, some call Teilhard de Chardin the “clerical Indiana Jones”; and this “clerical Indiana Jones” also wrote about “giant sequoia patience” when he said,

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything

to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something

unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through

some stages of instability—

and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances

acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

 

In the garden of the Transfiguration House, there is a Celtic Cross with the following words written in a circle around it: Those who plant the seeds of kindness harvest a bounty of love. By practicing this “giant sequoia patience” and trusting in the slow work of God, we are in fact planting seeds of kindness for ourselves and one another. And as we extend our roots deep in the soil of prayer and Scripture, we will continue to harvest a bounty of love beyond anything we can ever ask or imagine. Amen.

[1] Elizabeth DeRuff, For the Beauty of the Earth, 168 – May 18.

[2] Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor, 3.