In one small church in one small village in a sparsely populated county of Virginia, some visitors came yesterday . . . and not just any visitors . . . visitors from . . . The Garden Club of Monterey! Women with fashionable homes and lovely grounds, women with a love of beauty and an appreciation for the hard work that taming God’s beauty requires . . . and they came in droves . . . white gloves at the ready, alert to find fault, to see a crack in any sidewalk, a weed in any bed . . . or so I imagined as I urged everyone on to get ready, the Garden Club is coming, the Garden Club is coming . . . you would have thought they were an invading army and I was a warning Paul Revere.

    To my own surprise and immense relief, they were not here to ‘invade’, but to see and to share and rejoice . . . the ladies of the Garden Club and their visitors were wonderful guests and appreciative of all everyone had done to make them welcome. And there wasn’t a white glove in sight!

    But last night, in one house in one small village in a sparsely populated county of Virginia, one pastor slept very well indeed, knowing that The Garden Club had come and had gone . . . the Tour was over . . . and I was happy. Happy to see them come . . . and happy to see them go . . .

    Because, you see, for the last ten days or so, there has been a flurry of activity at the church and the manse . . . Don Gibson painted, Devon sanded and painted doors, Dave Lightner fixed our electrical problem, Lucille and Jean and Laura and Sarah cleaned and organized and painted, Don Hower tended the gardens, my mother weeded and swept and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, Benny laid tile for the hearth, Kathy Puffenbarger cleaned and mopped and vacuumed, Shannon delivered the new park benches, Rich trimmed and pruned trees and hedges, put up a new towel rack, Bev kept the books and got folks paid, Larry Smith mowed and helped Don paint . . . and Wes played his guitar, Laura prepared the bulletin, Tiffany talked about the mission trip, Lucille and Joy played the piano, and you came and worshiped, because Sunday comes every week, Garden Club or no Garden Club.

    Jesus’ gardening parable and the visitation of the Garden Club left me with three thoughts:

    On this Sunday, when we are challenged to celebrate our smallness (this being small church Sunday), we read about the sower who flings out seeds as if there were enough to go around, as if there were no end of seeds, as if there were thousands upon thousands to call upon at any given moment . . .

    On this Sunday of celebrating smallness, we read about seeds which flourish and seeds which don’t. And we’re tempted to think of ourselves as the not-flourishing seeds and to indulge in a little sentimental remembering of better times, or even self-pity for our smallness . . . we aren’t as many as we used to be . . . we aren’t as young a congregation as we once were . . . the devil birds . . . death . . . indifference . . . far away places . . . other churches . . . keep taking our seeds away . . . and they’re OUR seeds . . .

    Isn’t that our temptation? To think of the seeds as the people of the church, the talent, the growth, the harvest, as ours?

    But what if God is the sower, God’s word is the seed and we’re just . . . the ground?

    What does ground DO? Not much as far as I can tell. Ground doesn’t renew itself. Ground doesn’t weed itself. Ground doesn’t plow itself, doesn’t throw the rocks out of itself. Ground just lays there . . . being ground.

    It’s not especially flattering to think of ourselves as a plot of dirt . . . sorry, Don – soil. Here’s the thing . . . the traditional way of understanding this parable is to mistake ourselves for either the seed Word of God or even for our sower God.

    We are neither . . . we are merely . . . dirt . . . but in a good way . . . we are the ground in which Creator God has chosen to plant beauty and truth, goodness and holiness . . . wonder and awe . . . being the ground is knowing the joy of being . . . just being . . . and it is amazing . . .

    Being dirt in God’s kingdom is a good thing indeed . . .

    And as God’s dirt, we’re doing just fine . . .

    Remember that laundry list of folks who pitched in this past week? Well, in a church of less than 70 members, in ten days’ time, we accomplished quite a lot. But this flurry of activity isn’t the usual us. Who we are is something I’ve been thinking a lot about, especially since the community service last week at the fire house, when Chris preached about our call as Christians to service, to be the servants Christ would have us be.

    At first, I confess, my thoughts went to all that we aren’t, all that we can’t be because we are so small and face it, not as young as we once were . . . we can’t send a mission team to Guatemala . . . we can’t build someone a new house . . . we can’t make a big splash in the pond of God’s mission work around the world . . . but then I remembered who we are and what we already do . . . and here’s the thing . . .

    Be the Servant God Wants You To Be sermons are great, but it’s awfully easy to get trapped into the defeated thinking that we’re just never quite good enough.

    But that is not what our extravagant seed-wasting God wants for us; indeed, this God has already given us so much more than we could ever have dreamed would be possible . . .

    For You, my friends, already are the servants God wants you to be.

    What’s different often in a small church in the country, I suspect, is that your servant work often isn’t done in a church group . . . it’s done in the usual way of life around here . . . when there’s a need, you meet it . . .

    Without much fuss, with little notice, you just do what needs doing . . .

    And so a cat gets watched for months when her owner is away . . .

    Neighbors who can’t tend their yards find their trees trimmed and fences mended . . .

    Someone who has to travel for medical care or to visit a loved one, gets a ride . . . and a listening ear . . .

    The house-bound are visited . . .

    Phone calls to check to make sure you made it home ok are made . . .

    Tomatoes and onions and berries and all the bounty of garden and forest are shared . . .

    Medical emergencies in the middle of the night or day are answered . . .

    Driving by, waves are exchanged and happiness is shared just in seeing each other again . . .

    Servants of God . . . small and all . . . you’re doing just fine . . .

    Rejoice that God has placed you here . . . rejoice that God has given you a heart to hear your neighbor’s need and to say ‘yes’ to that need . . . rejoice that you are dirt, good, rich, full in the garden kingdom of God . . . dirt . . .

    Finally, and most of all, when you remember this parable of the sower and the seed, remember that God’s grace is a bountiful, extravagant thing . . .

    Isaiah 55.10-11 says of God’s word, "Yes, as the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do."

    Just like the rain and snow which feed the hungry dirt, just so God’s word feeds us . . . and God’s will is fulfilled . . . in us . . .

    Preacher and writer Barbara Brown Taylor asks what if Jesus’ parable is "not about us at all but about the sower? What if it is not about our own successes and failures and birds and rocks and thorns but about the extravagance of a sower who flings seed everywhere, wastes it with holy abandon...confident that there is enough seed to go around, that there is plenty, and that when the harvest comes in at last it will fill every barn in the neighborhood to the rafters?"

    The Garden Club has come and gone . . . but in the words of April Oursler Armstrong, "In a city park in London, in the sprawling mechanized farms of the American Middle West, in a backyard garden of a window box there is still a seed and a sower." –April Oursler Armstrong, p. 238, Imaging the Word, Vol. 2.

    Being a patch of dirt in the kingdom of God, even a small patch, is a wonder– grace-filled, seed growing and seed throwing thing [FLING SEEDS]. Let us rejoice. Amen.