Still, it’s not an easy thing. Life and death contend with each other during the season of growth. The rabbits come here seeking a salad buffet – hence the fencing that guards against their trespasses. The sunlight is needed, but a hot Virginia sun can be overbearing. Then in the spring, there’s the risk of late frosts. And too much rain. Or too little rain. Or the specter of insect infestations – thankfully the cicadas this year pose little threat.

You get the picture – a fruitful harvest does not come easily with various forces of nature competing with each other, sometimes resulting in a modest harvest, and sometimes in the death of no harvest at all, despite our best nurturing efforts.

This ground at our church, again, is a living parable. We are a living parable, too, when we are gathered here. How appropriate that a silver lining of our pandemic season allows us to assemble literally in a place of growth at our feet, under our feet, during this post-Pentecost season of growth in the life of the church. This coinciding is a wondrous thing to me. I love it that we can worship outdoors in this fertile place (even as it will also be a relief to return soon to worshiping again indoors where the weather, the climate is under our control!).

With our garden worshiping assembly in mind, the seeds of God’s word are scattered among us, and within us, as we hear the various scriptural readings proclaimed. Some of that sacred linguistic seed germinates within and among us and sprouts and grows as we are formed in the faith, individually and communally.

This, too, is a mystery. Yet, God gives the growth. In our communal season of harvest, God’s word bears fruit in us, among us (sometimes in spite of us!), as we go in peace to serve the Lord, as we engage in various forms of neighbor love in our neighborhoods, our places of work, of learning, of socializing, in short, our wider communities.

Some of that divine fruit of neighbor love emerges literally in the form of the vegetables harvested right here in this garden place to benefit those most in need.
But it’s true, the growing season of life in the church takes time to unfold, to emerge organically. Our life together cannot be rushed. We cannot contrive or confect our growth in ministry and mission as a congregation, no matter how hard we might try. Just as our mortal efforts cannot force a garden to grow, even though we are God’s stewards in helping to nurture the conditions for growth.

Moreover, life and death also contend with each other in Christian community situated in a world of fierce competition. There are innumerable powers and principalities at work that would inhibit our growth and fruit-bearing for the sake of the gospel and for the world. That list of sinful, broken inhibitions is a long one. In your mind’s eye, you can name your own names, situations, and circumstances, and list the ways that human sin inhibits our missional life together.

Yet, here’s the good news: the seed of God’s word abides forever. And the further good news is this: one way or another, God gives the growth. Life and death may truly contend among us and within us, but in Christ, through his death and resurrection, there is a guaranteed harvest of new and redeemed life.

In the case of the garden of our churchly life together, the cross, the tree of life, is firmly planted in our midst, giving new life, and that eternally, to all who are grafted on to that tree.

Or as Paul writes in today’s second reading, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The waters of baptism bring about this new life, this new creation, and make our garden grow, even as our gardeners use the hose connected to the church’s water system to water our “Plot Against Hunger.”

Indeed, this holy ground has in this current season been the place of baptism – namely, of Alex Norwood Hedberg – and this garden place has received the sprinkling of the water of baptismal remembrance and thanksgiving on the Day of Pentecost.

Such is our life and our share in the dominion of God, the sacred garden, the holy vineyard. Right here. In this place, on our church grounds.

And there is more. Listen again to the brief parable of the mustard seed: “With what can we compare the dominion of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” (Mark 4:30-32)

The tiny mustard seed, it’s barely a dark speck in the palm of your hand. And yet it contains the full potentiality of what it is to become, namely, the greatest of all shrubs. The mustard seed contains all of the DNA, all of the genetic material, necessary to grow to its fullest potential. It’s all there, all that’s needed, tiny as the seed may be. It’s a wonder of nature.

When we gather for the sacred meal at Christ’s holy table in our outdoor, garden church, I come into your midst to drop a small piece of lovingly baked bread into the uplifted palms of your hands.

This is not a feast in our usual sense of feasting. It’s a small piece of bread that is not going to satisfy our natural hungers mid-morning when we might be hungering for a full lunch or brunch buffet.

Nor will the amount of wine be that of our usual feastings. Even though the receptacle people choose to bring may be large enough to give a good bit of wine, our disciplined assisting ministers will still offer little more that a few sips.

And yet, in, with, and under a small piece of bread and a taste of wine is the fullness of Christ, all that Christ has to offer us – life, forgiveness, a foretaste of the feast to come, the gift of his very self, his real presence, everything that Christ is, that Christ does.

Enough for us to become what we are, namely, the body of Christ, the church, to be broken for the sake of the world.

This seed of Christ’s corporeal presence is incorporated, ingested, into our very selves, individually and communally, as the words of administration retain the double meaning of “you” in the English language: “the body of Christ, given for you” and the “blood of Christ shed for you” – singular and plural at the same time.

In becoming what we are in this holy meal we are empowered to bear fruit – the fruit of the field, the fruit of the vine – in our gladsome and generous giving of ourselves away to others, extending the hospitality of this table in expansive and inclusive ways to all who hunger and thirst, whoever they may be, our faith active in our love, which ultimately is God’s love in Christ.

So, again, when we do what we do outdoors, in our garden place, and we who are the branches grafted onto Christ the vine, our tree of life, we and this place are living embodiments and enactments of Jesus’ parables of the dominion of God. It’s a wondrous thing, an awesome reality.

And you know what else I like about worshiping outdoors? It’s all completely public. There is no hiding place, enclosed behind the four walls of our church building. We are doing our thing, which is God’s thing, out in public for all the passersby –walking, riding bikes, or in their cars – to see. All the while connecting us literally, physically to the world, back into which we are sent to serve in the loving name of Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.

And now for your reflection and holy conversation at home:

• Simply this, imagine the particular ways in which you and we together in our churchly life, are living, growing, garden parables of God’s dominion in Christ Jesus for the sake of the world.