Nov 8, 2009 - The Barn-Builder and Manure

11.8.09

The Barn Builder and Manure
Rev. Annie Arnoldy

Luke 12:13-21
Luke 13: 6-9

Did you ever imagine you would hear a sermon about manure?!  Manure is not even something most of us think about very often.  What is manure, if not garbage?  The smell is enough to tell you the whole story.  I never knew manure's glories until I visited the working farm at Heifer Ranch in Arkansas.  The first time I went was five years ago, and then I went again this past summer on our youth mission trip.  At Heifer Ranch, they utilize everything an animal gives ... including manure.  They use it in their compost piles all over the ranch to create rich new soil to plant and nurture vegetables and trees with.  There is lots of land at the ranch, but they keep their bunnies and goats, chickens and pigs in grazing pens so that they can collect all their droppings.  It all gets mixed in with organic matter like leaves, grass, sticks, and edible waste like egg shells, coffee grinds, veggie and fruit scraps.  After being turned and cooked by the sun, new soil is created to give vitamins and minerals back to the plants and soil.  Manure is part of a truly amazing process. 

This parable of manure that is before us this morning is one that Jesus told without any incident triggering a lesson, without any real context that we know of.  He is with the disciples somewhere in Samaritan country, a place where they were not readily welcomed, and he shares this story.  Now, in my mind, I always get Jesus' voice mixed-up with the voices of the characters he uses in his parables.  This story contains the voice of a man, a landowner, and his gardener.  The landowner says, "chop it down," but the gardener says, "let me use some manure first." 

Parables themselves are not a straightforward teaching method.  Jesus does not teach by saying, "here are all the right answers."  Jesus uses the energy parables create to bring us from the sidelines of Christianity into the game (Peterson 65).  Eugene Peterson, author of the biblical paraphrase The Message, says in his book Tell it Slant:
    
        Jesus is not a word in a book to be read and studied.  He is not a word to be discussed.  Jesus is the 'Word made flesh.'  He is the living Word, a live voice, God's Word that took on human form and lived in an actual country....  In order to respond rightly to this voice, this Word-made-flesh, we must listen and answer in our actual neighborhoods, while eating meals of tuna casserole and spinach salad, and in the company of people who know us and whose names we know.  ... In [that] process we recognize how significant Jesus' parables are in keeping our language involved and participatory - not a language about but a language with - getting us in on and keeping us alert in acts of justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God (67-68).

Another concept I think it's really important to talk about before really stepping in it this morning is one that first caught my attention a few years ago.  It surfaced recently in the curriculum for the class Dream.Think.Be.Do, when Marcus Borg is interviewed about thinking theologically.  He offers a way of thinking through biblical stories that neither negates their truth, nor simplifies our beliefs.  He says that when we are children, we learn with "pre-critical naivete."  We believe the stories we are told, we like to hear about big ideas and far out concepts.  It is the stage before thinking through on our own if something is plausible or factual or real.  The next stage, which usually happens in the teenage years, is "critical thinking."  This is the stage we are probably all most familiar with -- the places where science asks for facts and we need proof if we are going to believe.  Critical thinking is prized by the adult community of professionals.  One must examine every angle and hunt down the facts before spreading the value of any particular concept.  It's actually the concept that gets us in the most trouble with our faith.  You may remember back to parenting teenagers and realizing when they began thinking critically is when they began questioning everything, including your methods of parenting!  Isn't there a stage in every teenager's mind where their parents just get dumber and dumber as they get smarter and smarter?  Critical thinking is what helps us reflect on our actions and make good decisions.  It is what allows for disagreeing peaceably with your neighbor.  BUT, did you know there is a phase after critical thinking that can help free up all the places you get "stuck" with biblical stories, the place where you wonder, "did that really happen?"?  It is called "post-critical naivete."  This stage of thinking allows for a return to the original innocence that allowed you to believe in Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden and Jesus' walking on water.  This is not to say we just gloss over our facts and findings if something proves to be inaccurate.  It is to say that because none of us were there at the time, we will choose to read the stories of our faith and see the powerful lessons and meaning that comes with seeing through the eyes of faith, to uncover meaning in the midst of the questions.

In our normal examination of our lives through the scriptures, I bet none of you have given much thought to the manure story.  Or, perhaps, you have always seen it as the story where an unusually harsh verdict is given to a poor fig tree that just can't seem to produce fruit: chop it down!  Doesn't it seem a lot like our answers to problems today?  If something is broken, get rid of it.  If someone offends us, cut them out.  If a problem arises, solve it quick.  This is the world we live in.  "The Manure Story interrupts our noisy, aggressive problem-solving mission.  In a quiet voice the parable says, 'Hold on, not so fast.  Wait a minute.  Give me some more time.  Let me put some manure on this tree.'  Manure is not a quick fix.  It has no immediate results -- it is going to take a long time to see if it makes any difference" (Peterson 69).  As I mentioned earlier, we usually think of manure as garbage - it's smelly, it's waste material, it's hazardous.  "But the observant and wise know that this apparently dead and despised waste is teeming with life -- enzymes, numerous microorganisms.  It's the stuff of resurrection" (70). 

"God is not in a hurry.  We are repeatedly told to 'wait for the Lord" (72).  This applies to all the questions that are unanswered in our hearts, all the problems that are unsolved in our lives.  The manure you are to put on your life is prayer and patience.  It is stillness and silence.  It is good works and true generosity of spirit.  This is not waste material, although we often treat it as such by saying we just don't have time or we are just not good at it.  This manure will bring a tree back to life and it will bring you back to life. 

Eric and I planted some red Cannas two summers ago.  I now remember where I got them -- at the UMW Bazaar -- because I picked up more this year.  Cannas are beautiful red, tropical-looking flowers that grow tall and remain all summer.  We were preparing our garden and decided to plant four cannas along the backside of the fence.  We picked up some compost out at the dump and were mixing it into our soil as we planted.  We left the big pile of compost at the end of the garden so we could continue to use it as we planted more items throughout the spring.  After all the planting we left the remains of the pile exactly where it was, at the end of the garden.  As summer went along, we forgot that we had planted anything along the backside of the fence and one day this beautiful tropical plant started to emerge.  Then it bloomed an even more beautiful red flower.  One grew to about 12 inches tall, the next one a little taller, the next one a bit taller, and the final one, at the end of the garden, under that pile of compost, grew twice as tall as all the others.  We had no idea the extra pile of compost on top of that soil would cause that much extra growth.  So it is with us.  Our lives were meant to be enriched by compost and manure, the rich slow-working disciplines of our faith.  Do we see immediate results?  No.  Do we usually give up?  Yes.  Can we take it on faith that using the manure will produce twice as much growth?  You bet we can - that's why we have parables.  They are manure.


Here is another one to add as manure to your life.  Someone in the crowd has just asked Jesus to solve his family problem and get him his fair share of an inheritance.  Jesus' reply, to the whole crowd gathered is this, "Protect yourself against the least bit of greed.  Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot."  Something that should be emphasized for us is "the least bit of greed."  You see, Jesus, in discerning what the man was really asking for when seeking justice on his inheritance, saw in the man covetousness.  The parable Jesus shares is about a man who had a great year with an abundance of crop production.  He thinks, "I'll keep this all for myself.  I guess I need bigger barns."  Peterson says, "Nearly all the sins that we get drawn into are packaged as virtues. ... Jesus is not an uncritical prayer-answerer.  He has been through this before.  Those forty days and nights of desert temptation allowed no room for naivete in these matters.  Everything that the devil put before Jesus was wrapped in Scripture packaging.  Jesus was not tempted by the obvious evil but by the apparent good.  He saw through it and stood fast.  And now he sees through this man's so very correct prayer -- and stands fast" (58). 

You may not believe it, but there is no avoiding this condition of wealth.  God is not stingy, God is quite generous.  God does not just give us one tree for shade, but entire forests.  God does not put forth one thing of beauty, but thousands of flowers, and nightly sunsets, and amazing colors in creation.  God does not give just a few stars in the night sky -- God provides millions of stars with endless stories.  And, even with money and material possessions, we have a lot.  There are not just a few stores, but hundreds of places to go to get whatever it is we need.  We generally earn enough to have not just one room to live in, but a whole house filled with rooms to live in.  We have more than we need.  And, we think we need more than we have.  Peterson says, "There is no avoiding the condition of wealth, whether we conceive it as a spiritual blessing from God or the material results of a capitalist economy.  And all the time the greed virus is in our bloodstream.  Sometimes there are enough Scripture antibodies to protect us from infection.  But there are other times when our defenses are lowered and our whole system is fatigued.  We get the fever and runny nose of greed.  It isn't long before we're thinking about building a bigger barn" (62).  

There is a parallel between the first and last commandment.  The first is, "you shall have no other gods before me."  The last is, "you shall not covet."  Peterson says, "The first commandment establishes our lives before God in undiluted worship so that we can love him without compromise.  The last commandment protects our friends and neighbors from being depersonalized into objects of greed, things that we can love without loving them.  ... The parable of the barn builder is an expose of greed: using what we have to get more instead of giving away more; using our position or goods as a means for getting impersonal power rather than giving away love" (63). 

The very next verses in Luke's gospel, Peterson points out, say this: "What I'm trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God's giving" (64).  In wealth, we lose our basic sense of neediness, God-neediness: "In our preoccupation with bigger barns, we forget about asking for bread for our friend.  But as this story sinks into our imagination, making plans for building a huge barn suddenly seems like pretty small potatoes compared to asking for three loaves of bread for a friend" (64). 

Blaine and I were reminded by our Bishop at our Clergy Retreat that the practice, the actual doing, is what is important.  We need to practice being Christians before we get to see all the connections and blessings that are put forth in scripture.  Let us practice being manure, the slow-working, but constant companion to dirt, that helps all around it to flourish. 

Amen.




This sermon series uses Eugene Peterson's book, Tell it Slant: a conversation on the language of Jesus in his stories and prayers