Cultivating A Garden of Weeds

A Sermon Preached by the
Rev’d Peter De Franco at
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church,
July 27, 2008

Just think about what will happen today at St. Peter’s Church. We celebrate the baptism of our youngest member and the birthday of one of our oldest members.
So you would imagine that with the parable of the mustard seed, I would preach a sermon where I would compare Ava to the mustard seed and Rosemary to the mustard tree. We would all think that the sermon would encourage Ava’s parents and family to help her grow into the tree, that they would water her soul with love and instruction and discipline and all the things that good parents do for their children. Sort of like the thinks that Rosemary’s parents did for her so that one day Ava will sit in this church and celebrate her 90th birthday and someone will read this same gospel and compare her to the mustard seed that has grown into the mustard tree. Wouldn’t that be a perfect sermon? No, not by a long shot. That sermon would be too predictable.
Whenever we hear Jesus speaking in a parable, we should train our ears to discover the unpredictable. So let me tell you a story.
Someone, way back went in the history of St. Peter’s church, thought that it would be nice to plant morning glories around the church. They thought that morning glories would look really nice where they could do what they did best: climb. So they found the things on which the morning glories could climb: the railings up the steps of the parish hall and the pole in the front of the church. I am sure that the first year the morning glories were planted they were beautiful. Lovely blue flowers opening up to the sun, and every week more and more flowers began to grow on the vine. Every week, the vine must have taken over the railings so that it became impossible to use the railings going up to the Parish Hall.
Every week the vine must have grown up the sign at the front of the church till it covered the sign with a waterfall of blue morning glories cascading down the sign. Were the morning glories a thing of beauty or a weed?
When I first came to St. Peter’s Church, three years ago, there were huge bushes that flanked the entrance to the parish hall. Growing on the crooked branches of those overgrown bushes were morning glories. As they grew closer to the railings, people would pull out the morning glories. I cannot remember a single morning glory flower. No flowers mean no seeds. But, even this year, you can see morning glories sprouting on either side of the parish hall and Fr. Ed pulls them out so they don’t take over the new gardens. And next year, I am sure that we shall continue to find those morning glories continuing to sprout in places where they have not been seen in years.
Morning Glories are invasive. Once you plant them you will have them forever. For those of us who are gardeners, morning glories are like bamboo, or mint, or dandelions, they have a habit of taking over the garden.
In Jesus’ world, mustard was like dandelions, morning glories, bamboo or mint. You would have to be out of your mind to plant it in your garden. Unless you wanted your entire garden to be taken over by the weed. Does that make any sense?
Now every parable of Jesus has something in it that does not make any sense. There is always something in a parable that baffles the one who hears it. A smart shepherd would not risk the lives of 99 sheep for the sake of one lamb. A thrifty housewife would not spend a hundred dollars on a party when she found her silver dollar. A smart gardener would not plant a weed that would take over the garden. Who would plant dandelions? Who would plant morning glories?
Perhaps a God who knows about dandelion wine. Perhaps a God who loves the blue of morning glories. Perhaps a God who knows that mustard can heal and season and prevent disease. Perhaps a God who invites us to look into those places in our lives where we do not expect or even want God, in the dark crevices, in the ordinariness of our days, in the disorders of our minds and hearts, all the places we neglect.
Perhaps, if we anticipate God coming to us in those places we neglect, as we would neglect a weed, we will find God lightening the darkness, cheering our ordinariness, restoring us to peace. It is the crazy seed of God. It is God’s unconditional love. Available to us this day in the sign of water poured, bread broken and a shared cup.
It is the crazy seed of God’s love, that spreads through the world as much as dandelions, when, on a windy spring day the breeze lifts the seeds and spreads them through all the gardens. Not many of us deal with mustard seeds, but many of us know about dandelions, and morning glories, and mint and bamboo.
Today God plants a seed in the soul of Ava. It’s the seed that God plants in each of our hearts when we are baptized – that wild and crazy seed that God plants in mustard plants, dandelions and morning glories. It is God’s unconditional love. That we are loved by God, no matter what we do or say or become.
If you ever watch very young children, and those of us who are parents might remember this happening to us, young children do not seen dandelions as weeds. Children love to go to the lawn and pick a bouquet of dandelions because of their ready made beauty. They see them as a heaven sent gift of God planted in the lawn as a ready gift to pick and bring to mom or dad. Children have that eye to see the beauty of ordinary things. I think they have that eye because they see like the God from whom they have come.
Let us pray this day that we might be overrun with weeds, with dandelions and mustard and mint and bamboo. Let us pray that Ava’s soul will be overgrown with that weed of God’s Love. Let us pray that Rosemary’s heart will continue to be overrun with that same pesty weed. And let us all go out and gather the dandelions and give and receive bouquets of God’s love.