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In Process

In Process

June 1, 2008

Text: 1 John 3:1-3

1 John 3:1-3

3:1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 3 And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

NRSV

Behold, the bonsai.

The Japanese word “bonsai” literally means, “a plant in a tray, or pot.”

You might not have known this, but my parents made a living raising Bonsai trees in Poplar Bluff. Each year we planted a bonsai orchard. That’s hard work, because seeds for these little trees are, well, really little. It’s worth the work, though, because they develop quickly—they don’t have too far to grow. We harvested them each year, and sold them to the Wohlgemuth family. They had a tiny little saw mill, and made little bonsai doll houses out of them.

Truth, or big fat lie?

Of course, big fat lie.

Look at these two plants. They’re both junipers.

This juniper [the bonsai] is a San Jose juniper. Grows in the mountains of California. Left in the wild, it could grow 60, 80 feet high, but look at how delicate and beautiful it is.

This other plant is also a juniper [the shrub], but it doesn’t quite have the same shape, does it? Left alone, it could grow in all sorts of direction.

How does one juniper become a bonsai, and the other just a leafy shrub or tree?

Glenn Pauley, a member of our congregation and also a member of the Bonsai Society of Greater St. Louis, told me the secret. This is his bonsai, and it’s about 80 years old.

Glenn cares for it with the proper watering, nutrients, and cultivation. But the most important thing he does is pruning the branches. This tree became beautiful, strong, healthy because of constant trimming. Instead of growing wild, and without shape, it grew into an enduring work of art.

Can you make the connection between the art of bonsai and the art of shaping your soul?

How often we think of the painful things that happen to us as evil and destructive. Those difficult times try us, beat us down, demoralize and depress us.

But what would happen if we began thinking of those times as “pruning” events? What would happen if we saw those events as things that can make us stronger? That can make us call on new resources? That can make us claw our roots deeper into the soil, seeking nutrients?

I’m sure the bonsai tree, feeling the clippers, doesn’t say, “Oh boy, I’m being pruned again!” And we, when we hurt, don’t say that either. But for both tree and human, the touch of the clippers ultimately serves to shape, strengthen, and make more beautiful our souls.

Sometimes those pruning events are tragedies that happen totally outside our control, and we think we can never recover. A bad diagnosis. The loss of a job. An accident.

If you brought the pain of such an event with you into this place today, know this: the Good News for you is that life awaits you beyond the tragedy. The Good News is that tenderly, with the care of a bonsai master, the Holy Spirit, is shaping your soul in the midst of your pain.

The Spirit didn’t cause the pain. Pain is the price we have to pay for the privilege of being human. BUT…the Spirit will not let the pain stop you from becoming the person God’s dreamed you to be. And somehow, whatever might have happened to you, will serve to open you to life in a deeper, more beautiful way.

The late Erma Bombeck, in her Mother’s Day column of 1995, made this point when she talked about mothers who went through probably THE most painful event in the human experience: the loss of a child. She wrote:

“The longer I live, the more convinced I become that surviving changes us. After the bitterness, the anger, the guilt and the despair are tempered by time, we look at life differently.

“While I was writing my book I Want to Grow Hair. I Want to Grow Up. I Want to Go to Boise, I talked with mothers who had lost a child to cancer. Every single one said death gave their lives new meaning and purpose. And who do you think prepared them for the rough, lonely road they had to travel? Their dying child. They pointed their mothers toward the future and told them to keep going. The children already had accepted what their mothers were fighting to reject.”

Even in the unthinkable, the hand of the Master tenderly shapes the soul.

Sometimes the pruning events are things we bring on ourselves.

You might have brought with you today the pain that comes from an accidental slip of the tongue. A repeated failure. A moral shortcoming that’s embedded deep in your soul.

After a while, we sort of give up on ourselves being any different. We throw up our hands and say, “Well, this is just the way I am.” We think we’re a bunch of set-in-concrete characteristics that are indelibly imprinted upon our DNA. We tell ourselves things like, “I’m such a failure…I’m so impatient…I’m such a procrastinator…”

But we’re not like this. We’re not a bag of static stuff. We’re spiritual creatures “in process”—a process of being shaped, pruned into something beautiful—something God has imagined for us. God sees the bonsai in the shrub. Can we?

Martin Luther, the great reformer, put it best:

This life, therefore, is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on. This is not the goal but it is the right road. At present, everything does not gleam and sparkle, but everything is being cleansed.
— Martin Luther, quoted by Rueben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck in A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People (Upper Room, 1990).

When you get down on yourself; when you fail: you’re feeling the touch of the pruning shears. It hurts to face your shortcomings, openly and without defense. But if you’re open to learning and growing through them, then the Spirit will do the amazing for you: One day you’ll look in the mirror and not see a failure, but a beautiful child of God. [Let me let you in on a secret—when I look at you, that’s who I see!]

Prepare for communion today by daring to remember the pruning times in your life—whether those times were when something happened to you, or something you brought on yourself.

Those are the times when a plan failed, a dream died, a hope vanished. Those are the times a relationship ended without closure or understanding. Those are the times when anxiety or depression enveloped you like a cocoon from which you couldn’t free yourself.

Imagine such times. Bring them up here with you. And dare start to be thankful for them. Dare understand that God is working through them, FOR YOU. Using them to smooth out the rough edges, cut off the dead areas, so you may grow more beautiful.

Communion is an appropriate sacrament for this, don’t you think?

When Jesus instituted that Last Supper, he was facing a pruning event. The cross—what bad people do to good people. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to be the victim of our violence. BUT…he was faithful. He said, “Father, I trust you, no matter what.”

The result?

The crucified Jesus was transformed into the risen Christ.

For all who believe in the redeeming power of the Father, remember this. Through what you encounter, you will be transformed.

The dark of the cross will be eclipsed by the light of the opened tomb.

The broken heart will heal stronger.

The confused mind will gain clarity

The lonely soul will experience more intimate companionship.

Believe the Gospel this morning.

God DOES see the bonsai in us, when we only see the shrub.

Some of us with our AARP cards will remember the comedy team of George Burns and Gracie Allen. They were stars in vaudeville, radio, and TV. In real life they enjoyed a loving marriage for almost forty years, until death took Gracie from George.

Before she died, knowing that her soul mate would be devastated, she wrote him a letter. Trying to help with the grief he would feel, she ended the note this way: “Never place a period where God has placed a comma ... Love, Gracie.”

He took her words to heart. He felt the pain and loneliness her death caused. But it shaped him, and he found the ability to live again. He went on to star in movies, and kept entertaining until he passed on at the young age of 100.

[[—Dave Shackle, “God is still speaking,” September 15, 2002, Liberation UCC Web Site, Liberationucc.com/services/sermons.]]

When you come up for Communion today, you are affirming that God is ALWAYS in the business of placing commas in your life.