Pilgrims' Tales: Lent 3

Like Chaucer's travellers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from a gardener.
                                                                                     

I like to stay put. In fact, this journey with Jesus is the first time I’ve ever been on the move like this. Gardening takes a long, long time in the same space. You till and dig and compost and manure and dig and weed and till and compost and manure. You invest the sweat of your brow into a piece of land. It’s not like having a dairy cow that you can lead down the road to another location. If you’re a gardener, you have to stay put to see the fruit of your effort.

Which is why no one could believe it when I walked away from my fruit trees to take to the road with Jesus and the others. See, Jesus gets it, gets it – he gets it. Sure, others celebrate the harvest, the goodness of the earth, all that stuff. But that’s about what the earth can do for us, how the earth feeds us with grain and grape, gives us timber to build tables and temples. But Jesus sees something more, something that good gardeners know: nothing is ever lost. Nothing is ever lost.

You can prune a grapevine or a fig tree, cut off the dead branch that is sapping the life of the plant so the plant can use its inner resources to blossom and bear fruit. And most folks focus on the fruit – grapes, figs, what’s not to like?

But those dead branches aren’t ever lost. They go into the compost, take years to break down in the company of other dead branches, orange peels, apple cores, kitchen scraps, all that stuff nobody wants. All that stuff people think is useless just takes more time to do it differently. It’s a holy mystery how it breaks down, changes into rich dense compost. And the gardener uses that compost to enrich the earth, to help other things grow. Nothing is ever lost, just changed.

Jesus treats people that way. Those who are dead to us, those who are lost to us: the lepers, the collaborators, the sick, the sinful, the ones we turn away from – they are not lost to Jesus. No one is ever lost to him. And here’s the miracle: when Jesus finds them, he finds us, too. We are changed by that holy mystery of insistent belonging. Like a good gardener, Jesus helps us grow. Nothing is ever lost, but things can change.

Pilgrims' Tales: Lent 1

Like Chaucer's travellers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue.

Lent 1: The Devil

You don’t know it, but I’ve got you already.


And the beauty is, you don’t know it because you don’t believe I exist.

Not that I mind. It makes things so much easier for me.

See, I know you.

I know you gave up long ago.

I know you look at the time you were passionate about your faith – remember that time, so long ago? – I know you look at the time you were passionate about your faith with a certain smirking paternalism, the same way you remember your youthful idealism when you got swept up in Trudeau-mania or the Young Communist Party or Greenpeace.

Your faith is like the rusty protest button in the bottom of your sock drawer.

I know you gave up long ago.

You decided there was no contradiction between being faithful and being comfortable.

See, I do know you.

Used to be, it was easy for me to pick out the Christians in the crowd – they were the ones visiting the sick, welcoming the stranger, working on the underground railroad, scouring pots in the soup kitchen, walking the picket line, going to jail.

Time was, the Christians not only went to jail.

They went to the lions.

They were known by their love for everyone, even their enemies. They recognized no distinctions of class or gender or race, and that made them stand out. Which made it easy for me to pick them out.

Which was not the same thing as making it easy for me to do my job.

But now? Piece of cake.

You have confused peace with not making waves.

You’ve become devoted to what makes you feel good instead of what mends the world.

You blend in with everybody else.

You’ve decided to be nice instead of to be faithful.

You are already mine.