Tend your Garden: Hubris or Humus?

Have you ever noticed the similarity of the words humility and humus? Non-gardening, city dweller types might not be so familiar with humus, either the word or having to get the dirt out from underneath their fingernails after the weed-pulling impulse or some such thing as one daily tends the garden. Humus means soil. Humility is the word that everyone thinks they know the meaning but our lack of it as a species shows we either misunderstand it or don’t value it. Actually, if we don’t value humility that points to a probable misunderstanding because if we knew how needful it is to have ears to hear the good news, we would cultivate humility. We are children of Adam, a word that means earth. When our bodies are lowered into the grave the minister might say, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust”. Children of Adam, children of a fallen world, are connected to the world indelibly (we can’t get the stain out) therefore we need humility.

One recurring biblical theme no one can escape but is brought home in Bible reading and prayer is the need for humility. Seems it is hard to know our proper place. We are always wanting to play King of the Hill, or to wrest our way onto the throne. Or we can't see the log in our own eye while tsk-tsking the spliner in our neighbors. How can we confess our sin when we don't even know what sin is anymore or who we are sinning against? In order to pray well, that is, to profit by it, to grow and to be someone God can use for Kingdom, one really needs humility, to realize our proper size.

Recalling the opening line of a recent hymn that begins, ”Let my heart be good soil," we pause to think of the Word being planted in the soil of our hearts. Our hearts are the starting place of each new beginning, the place from where the plant is going to stretch forth. I'm reminded of another hymn, "The Word of God is Source and Seed.” Fall is time of year gardeners get catalogs from nurseries. Gardening is all about preparation. The soil must be prepared. The seasons must be part of the calculation. Early, mid and late bloomers are part of the enduring beauty.

I love running across the old-fashioned seed catalogues like Ferry-Morse. Someone can thumb through the pages and see a picture of a tomato plant drooping with a hundred big red balls, and think to themselves "Oh, look at those look so good, I can taste them. Let me order some- I'll have so many I can give them away!" Turn the pages and there are so many appealing pictures, one starts to mentally order this and that and then remembers how much work gardening is.

The Bible is a source of seeds too. We can open the Bible and start imagining how much we want the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. We need dto be aware that one can not order a devoted spirit or love for ones neighbor simoly by wishing or writing a check anymore than one can have a garden withour rolling up their sleeves. It happens by grace and we are hardly the progenitor, but it takes work. Work.

Plant nurseries (there’s a term one could meditate on for a while) have beautiful pictures of gorgeous roses, majestic trees, gardens packed with blooms. When one orders either a rose or a small tree, once the UPS truck pulls out and the packaging is removed, all that is left is a stem and roots. Many beautiful perennials one orders is often a small, gnarly ball of roots. They too have to be planted in specially prepared soil, watered and nourished. When the sun and rain are added to the good soil, the gardener is rewarded with plants that resemble the pictures seen the year before and the gnarled root and cut stem are forgotten.

God’s Word often comes us like this. If we could see ourselves as God sees us, we would realize that by nature we are not beautiful to look at. By nature we are hardly magnificent trees straining toward heaven sheltering life below our branches, rather we are more a gnarly thing bent down and turned in on itself. There is much too much pride in ourselves and in our congregations and institutions, our choirs and musicians and our telegenic pastors. How can these people lead the people of God in humility when they look like they are positioning themselves for a spot on "The Next Big Thing"?

The only good we have or do is what comes from God. Good thing God likes gardening. Our pride is just the stuff that mixes in good with food scraps and leaves for good compost. Reject all this entrepreneurship, I-am-the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread, beauty pageant, Christianity and go back to the discipleship of old that knows that the Christian faith is something that is known, formulated, reflected on, explained, and critiqued was well as worshiped, lived, practiced, mentored and tithed. One had to get their hands dirty in the old days and it is hard to see how it is going to exist another generation if we don’t stop thinking of Christianity as something they can be watched on TV and ordered from catalogues. Pity the poor human pastor who is being compared to the telegenic superstars of religion by members of the congregation. May they all, pastor and congregation fall in love with the concepts of humility and hard work and turn their backs on being the next big thing.

Let our hearts be good soil. May our hubris make good humus. The People of God being tenders of a plot of land has an old history.

Isaiah says,

"Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it, cleared it of stones,
and planted it with red grapes.
In the middle he built a tower,
he hewed a press there too.
He expected it to yield fine grapes:
wild grapes were all it yielded.

(5:1-2)

And Jesus told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, "See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?'
He replied, "Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.' " (Luke 13:6-9)

What is to happen to your plot of land? Are you a member of a local congregation? Do you do your faith with the digits of the hand or do you think the digital age has ushered in something utterly new? It is both. If the new isn’t planted in the old it will wither and f the old doesn’t reach for the new it will fail to reach a generation. At least I think the Kingdom is still like a garden, which like a marriage, needs work, if not every day, one can not take too many days off before it starts to show.

There are actually so many connecting points between our faith and a garden, one has to reign in impulses for yet another. I’ll close with “Go therefore and be a George” (or Georgina). “Geo” equals “earth” and George is a good name for one who practices husbandry. Go and tend your plot of earth, wherever the LORD has planted you!

May the Word which does not go forth without bearing fruit, well with you richly.

Jeremiah wrote:

"Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,

whose hope is the Lord.

They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.

(17:7-8)

Eric Swensson

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Tend your Garden: Hubris or Humus?

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