consider the sunflowers

Last week’s lectionary passage is one of my favorites. Here’s what I had to say on Sunday.

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Right after Ginger and I got back from our trip to Durham last month, we noticed a plant that had sprung up along our back fence line. It was not there because we planted it, but since it had taken the energy to grow and it wasn’t hurting anything, we left it alone, allowing it to grow along with the volunteer cherry tomatoes along the barn wall and the squash vine that is growing in one of our flower beds.

We are quite good at growing things we didn’t plant it seems.

We’re not good at identifying plants, as a rule. When we got back from the Cape earlier this week, we were delighted to find that the giant mystery plant was a sunflower, now in full bloom. When I realized that, I was really glad we had let it grow. As I sat down to write this sermon, I couldn’t help to paraphrase our passage:

Consider the sunflowers and how beautifully they grow. They don’t exhaust themselves with work or wear themselves out spinning thread. But I tell you not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed as well as one of these flowers.

Right before Jesus talked about the flowers and the birds and what they understood about the generous economy of God that is often lost on us humans, he had replied rather sternly to a man who asked Jesus to tell his brother to share their inheritance. He first said that he had no intention of playing referee between the two siblings and then he told a parable about a rich man who brought in such a big harvest that he couldn’t store it all. Instead of sharing it, he tore down his barns and built bigger ones so he could hoard his wealth and make sure he would be rich for years to come. In the parable, God came to the man and said, “You’re going to die tonight. Now what happens to all that you have hoarded?”

Then Jesus turned to his followers and said, “Therefore, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will have to wear. Life is more than food and your body is more than clothing. Pay attention to the birds, consider the sunflowers . . .”

Jesus knew he wasn’t talking to rich people. He knew they worked for a daily or weekly wage—fishers, farm hands, manual laborers. None of them would have had the chance to think about building bigger barns so they could hoard their wealth. How did he expect to be taken seriously when he said, be more like the flowers and birds and don’t be afraid?

The answer is in the way he described the economy of God.

Over the past months, I have used that translation—economy—of what is most often rendered as the kingdom of God. I have done so for a couple of reasons, the main one being that kingdom is an outdated metaphor that is difficult to make come to life. The other is that an economy is a system of relationships. The oldest root of the word means “household management,” so we might say an economy is system of taking care of each other, at least from a theological sense. Over centuries of empire, the word has come to mean an exchange of goods and has gone from being relational to transactional.

With that in mind, let’s go back to the garden. We are learning more and more about the interrelatedness of plants and animals, whether we are talking about the mycorrhizal networks of fungi in the soil that transport nutrients between plants even across great distances, or the ways bees and birds foster plant growth. The reason that sunflower is growing on our fence line is probably because a bird fed on one of last summer’s flowers and then dropped the seed in our yard. That is the heart of the economy of God: everything lives together, works together, thrives together.

Jesus’ point wasn’t just for us to learn from the birds and flowers, but to realize we are a part of them. Humans are not managers or owners of other created beings, even though that’s the system we have set up, we are on the same level as the crows and lilies, squash vines, and sunflowers. We are built to share and support whatever life is around us, not hoarding for later but making sure everyone has what they need now because all of us, from plants to people, are only here for a short time. In the parable, God told the rich man he was going to die that night, then Jesus talked about the lily and said, “This is God’s greenery that is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire.

So when Jesus gets to the part where he said, “Don’t be afraid,” he is not rattling off some greeting card platitude, but he is saying in the face of all that is beautiful and temporary (including us), choose trust instead of fear. Look around at the creation you are a part of and be overcome by the generosity of God rather than be worn down by the human economy of perceived scarcity.

Everyone he was talking to had bills to pay and mouths to feed. Jesus wasn’t telling them to pretend that wasn’t true. He was telling them—and us—to be aware of what matters most because, he said, where our treasure is our heart will be as well. Another way to say that is Jesus said that the treasures closest to our hearts are those we can actually clarify in a way that another person gets what we mean and can sense that it matters a great deal. If we want to know what matters most to us, look and what (and who) we hang on to.

I had coffee Friday morning with a friend in Guilford who works for Connecticut Food Share. Her entire job is to make connections between Dollar General Stores and food banks or pantries so that Dollar General can donate the food they can’t use instead of throwing it in the dumpster. There is enough food involved that it is worth Connecticut Food Share to support a full-time job. And it’s kind of a human version of a sunflower on the fence line. Someone had the generosity of imagination to make the necessary connections for fewer people to go hungry.

We are like the lilies and the crows and the sunflowers. We are all part of the integrated, connected web, not just of humanity, but of all creation. That is the world God delights in giving us. That is the treasure that should capture our hearts. Amen.

Peace,
Milton