Lake Edge United Church of Christ

Two summers ago, with good friends I went backpacking into the great Rocky Mountains in western Montana. That summer, as is almost annually the case, wildfires were raging, and from the air, as my plane descended into Great Falls it was as if we were landing unexpectedly in the most polluted city on earth, for there was great haze of smoke that lolled across the great plains like a blanket on an unmade bed. For the first part of our trip the fires were nothing but a nuisance and a source of worry. My friend’s cabin, at which were staying was at the edge of the fire zone, and when we weren’t longing for the rains to fall that never did, we were hoping that the winds would push the fire away from us. It’s an impotent feeling, being wholly at the mercy of nature, knowing that you can’t do anything but hope and pray, and being aware that being a good person has nothing whatsoever to do with the outcome. I do not enjoy the feeling of powerlessness, not then, not now. Perhaps you deal with it better than do I.
In the end, the wind did shift, and the fires were pushed away from Scott’s cabin, which means of course that other people’s cabins and memories were devoured by the flames. But even the fact that our friend’s cabin was spared did nothing to alter our perception of wildfires. They remained an ominous, scary possibility, one with no redeeming qualities.
A few days later, we drove a few dozen miles to the Scapegoat National Wilderness area. Slinging our packs on our backs we headed off to Heart Lake, renowned for its pristine waters. Almost immediately we emerged from the pine woods into a part of the forest that had been burned the previous summer. It seemed at first as if we’d stepped into the very definition of barrenness. Wildfires burn hot, but often move so fast that they burn only the bark and the branches from the pines and spruces that cover the Montana mountains. Left behind are the stark white trunks of the trees, the bark charred away, they stand resolutely and uselessly naked, their pale stalks in sharp contrast to the deep black charcoal of the hillsides. It seemed at first that all life was gone, and we wondered if we would enjoy packing across mile after mile of desolation.
But only at first. For we soon noticed something else in the forest, small green plants with wonderful pink flowers. They were the only signs of life, but what powerful signs! They became a profusion, a rich carpet of green and pink, life amid the charred death left by the fire. “What are they?” we asked Scott, our Montana friend. “It’s commonly called fireweed,“ he told us. And then he completed our education. Fireweed is always the first plant to grow following a fire. It springs up almost immediately, and fortunately so, for it holds the soil in place, keeps erosion from carrying away the soil newly nourished by the ash that has fallen on it. The fireweed lasts only a season, produces its seeds, and then dies with the coming of winter. But here is the wonder: the seeds fall to the ground hard as iron. They will not open, cannot open and produce new plants on their own. It takes a fire, a forest fire, in the heat of which the seeds crack open and the fireweed grows. The seeds we saw growing in such profusion on the way to Heart Lake would in a few weeks fall to the earth, and be buried as the earth built soil over top of them. And there they would wait, until their season, until another fire should destroy the forest above, and in the process crack them open for them to grow and do the necessary work of holding the soil in place until the slower growing plants could begin to reclaim the hillside with pine and spruce.
[Jesus] also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. Did Jesus know about the fireweed? Is there some equivalent plant in Palestine? I do not know. But I suspect that Jesus would have smiled with us as we walked through the fireweed on the way to Heart Lake. I suspect that it would please him greatly to ponder the deep mystery of a seed waiting, unseen, untended, a seed waiting only for its season to burst forth, an explosion of green and pink, a sure and certain sign of God’s remarkable and continuing and surprising presence within God’s creation.
It is one of my foundational and fundamental convictions about how God works that we should take seriously this little parable of the seed growing secretly. These days you can find any number of authors to describe the coming of God’s rule as a cataclysmic disaster at the end of time, a time of violence and danger for all who do not believe in a particular way. Will there be such a day? Perhaps so, though I dare to hope that it will be marked more by completion and by the triumph of God’s love than by division and the execution of divine judgment.
Yet I cannot help but think that Jesus, in choosing simple metaphors, has in mind a different sort of way in which God’s reign breaks into our life. Perhaps it is as simple as a seed, perhaps a grain of wheat, or maybe a fireweed seed, sitting silently beneath the soil, waiting for the time to be right, for the necessary combination of light and water and soil and temperature that will crack open the husk and let new life emerge. Perhaps God’s rule breaks into our lives not merely once at the end of time in an unspeakable orgy of violence, but rather more often than that, as often as a seed breaks open, and as gently, producing new life where none had been visible before. I think that God is constantly scattering among us and within us the seeds that produce new life, and, when the time is right, the seed bursts forth, and new life comes.
In my last weeks with you as your pastor, the parable of the seed growing secretly, and the possibility of new life to which it points have taken on an even deeper meaning for me than before. In public listening sessions and in private conversations, I hear expressed often a concern about Lake Edge, about what will happen to this congregation. Such worries and fears are inescapable. Changes in pastoral leadership provoke anxiety and worry, and having been through several of them in just a very short time my departure can seem especially worrisome. Anytime we are asked or forced to exchange a known present for an uncertain future, we cannot help but wonder and worry. There are moments when we sit in these pews the way we sat on the porch of Scott’s cabin hoping for rain or a shift in the wind, worried about the possibility of disaster.
But wait! We are a people of faith. A people of faith in God. A people of faith in the God whom Jesus knew intimately and called Father. A people of faith in the God whom Jesus knew and whose work Jesus described as a seed. A seed growing secretly, already planted, simply waiting for its season, for the right combination of necessary factors to crack open the husk and bring new life out of the old. We are a people of faith, who believe in a God who is constantly scattering the seeds of new life, and our task is to trust that the reign of God will burst forth once more, in ways that will be as surprising, and as beautiful and as powerful as fireweed. Our time together as pastor and people is drawing to an end. But the seeds of new life at Lake Edge are already sown, already planted, and the husks are even now breaking open, and in its season will burst forth here new life that astounds and pleases and delights.
To think anything else is to give short shrift to the power of faith in the God whom Jesus knew intimately, whose power to bring new life he compared to a seed growing secretly. Let us be not afraid, but rather wait with expectation for the coming of the reign of God: new life out of sorrow, new hope out of fear, and new purpose out of confusion. The seeds are already planted, within you and among you. May God haste the day when they spring to new life and open new vistas of service and commitment, of healing and hope for each of you and for Lake Edge United Church of Christ. Amen.