The Fifth Sunday in Lent

I was with you just two weeks ago and it is good to be here today. If you were in Church on that third Sunday in Lent, then you know that I’m preaching on the Psalms this season. 

You may also recall that I am enjoying Robert Alter’s translation of the Psalms because he is a superb Hebrew scholar and because that’s the language the Psalms were written in, and because he finds a way to capture the poetry and help us hear the words in new ways. So here is how he translates those last two verses of the Psalm we prayed a few minutes ago, Psalm 126.

Those who sow in tears in glad song will reap.
He walks along and weeps, the bearer of the seed-bag.
He will surely come in with glad song, bearing his sheaves.

A sheaf is a bundle. Perhaps you have heard someone speak of a sheaf of papers. For those for whom poetry is like a second language, what the poet is saying is that grief never gets the last word. Even when we grieve, we imagine the harvest. Joy comes in the morning. We sow seeds of grief, with tears. But we will sing again, shouldering bundles of wheat – because this is God’s desire for us.

Do you believe this?

It’s the Paschal mystery. It’s what we will be entering into again in just a week as we embark on Holy Week. You can’t rush it because life isn’t rushed. If you tell a person who is just got a diagnosis that she has a terminal illness this, it is almost always not helpful. Sometimes we have to hold our tongue. Even at the grave we make our song, but sometimes are alleluias have to be sung in a minor key.

But we can be light and hope for a friend, even when they are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. We can bear witness to the truth that those who sow with tears will come with glad songs, bearing their sheaves because we know how the story ends.

The poet is saying that in the end, love wins. Always. Always, love wins. Even if not on this side of paradise. Good Friday never gets the last word in our lives. Never. We will look into an empty tomb in just a couple of weeks and we will know that good has triumphed over evil and that faith has triumphed over fear. And that love is stronger than hate.

Those who sow in tears in glad song will reap.
He walks along and weeps, the bearer of the seed-bag.
He will surely come in with glad song, bearing his sheaves.

Here is the thing. We trust how the story ends. We trust how our stories will end, by God’s mercy. At least most days. We’ve put our trust in the living God and that God is worthy of our trust. We trust that through the Paschal Mystery which is to say that through Jesus’ death and resurrection, all will be well.

But most days we live in the mess that is in between. We live in the meantime. We sow seeds in tears and yet we wonder when we might shoulder our sheaves. We wait. But we wait in hope. How long, oh Lord?

Some of us here today are right smack dab into Good Friday – in the midst of loss and pain and seemingly in the midst of the powers of this world defeating us. It all feels like too much to bear. We pray for you. We walk with you. We know that life is not easy and most of us have been there but it does you no good to hear how we once felt. We are here to listen to how it feels for you.

A few of us here today may be in that zone, maybe shouldering sheaves – maybe so filled with joy and so very blessed we can barely hold it in. And we shouldn’t. We should not hide our light under a bushel. We love you if that’s where you are and we give thanks to God for the abundant blessings of this life.

But I’ve been a pastor long enough to be fairly certain that most of us are living somewhere in between on this day. We aren’t at the foot of the cross and we aren’t yet to the empty tomb. We are living through a kind of prolonged “Holy Saturday,” if I can say it that way. We have known pain and loss and grief and we do trust that shouldering of sheaves is coming – that joy comes in the morning. But we live in the meantime. We are paused at the comma in this poem.

Those who sow in tears…in glad songs will reap.

The waiting, the silence, sometimes the anxiety are a challenge. Yet it is where we spend a good portion of our lives, I think.

I want to share two images with you – two Facebook memes actually. I like it that here in Southwick I can do that pretty easily. I saw this first meme originally for 2019, but when I went looking I discovered it was an old one redone and I’m not savvy enough to either find the original one or to change this one so you’ll have to go with it.

In fact I think the message is the same – and not just on New Year’s Day. It’s a choice we face every day of every week of every year of our lives. And I think it’s very much in line with the psalm we are looking at today. The meme suggests that (in this case flowers rather than sheaves of wheat) will come. How do we know this? Because we are seed-planters. It’s what we are called to do. God gives the growth. We are in the business, as Christians, of planting seeds. And then this one, as well.

Francis of Assisi was (according to the story) once hoeing a row of vegetables in Assisi. And he was supposedly asked, “if the world were coming to end tomorrow, what would you do?” And Francis said, “I’d like to finish hoeing this row of peas.” I can’t guarantee that happened. But I know it’s true. And it’s true to Franciscan spirituality. We do the work God has given us to do.

So, we’ve been considering a psalm which is really a Biblical poem; a song. I’ve said some things and I’ve offered you two memes – maybe I’ll dare even to call them icons in this context: images worth a thousand words that invite us to go deeper. I want to conclude then with another poem by one of my favorite poets – a pastor and farmer named Wendell Berry. In the “Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” Berry counsels us to “practice resurrection.” Before he gets there he writes these words:

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

My friends in Christ: the good news of Jesus Christ is not complicated. It’s hard, to be sure. It’s hard to live. It’s really hard to live in a world where it feels like we are traveling over rocky ground. It’s hard when we are impatient for peace and justice and reconciliation. But we live in hope. We live in hope because we are seed-planters and seed planters know that the eventually we will sow what we reap. Flowers. And vine-ripe tomatoes. The real deal. And sheaves of wheat for making bread. Daily bread, given from this good earth, gathered and broken and shared.

We live in hope, because we know that what is buried in the earth, even our mortal bodies when that day comes, will be raised by God. We live in the hope of the resurrection and we know that nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Nothing. Not even death.

“This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow.” We trust that God will do the rest.