The following was written by a friend of mine, Chad. He graciously emailed me a copy of a short essay he wrote. I was floored by its message, and the garden-church imagery regarding racial reconciliation and church unity was nothing short of profound. It is worth the read:
If you drive thirty miles north on interstate 85 out of Durham you will come to a small, quaint town known as Oxford. “Small and quaint” is synonymous with the town’s distinction of not having a Super Wal-Mart but humbly displays the older, smaller version. Leaving Oxford on highway 15 heading north you will pass many farms, mostly tobacco, and cozy little townships who’s only boast is a gas station with the best short order cooks in the county that will make you a mean cheeseburger while you fill your tank. If you keep heading north until you would bet your life you are either in Virginia or at the very least mapping new frontier you will find a cozy, white, country church that would make Norman Rockwell sigh. The church is called Marrow’s Chapel United Methodist Church and I am her pastor.
If you were to visit Marrow’s Chapel on a Sunday morning there are two things that might immediately stand out to you. First, you might be surprised by the number of people who gather in the middle of nowhere to worship God. On any given Sunday there may be as few as 80 and as many as 120 packed into this little country church. Furthermore, you would see that a large number of them are young families with children, causing us to revamp our nursery and children’s areas to make enough room for everyone. The second thing that might stand out to you is that 100% of the families you see are white. This may not be so surprising given the area in which we live. Four miles down the road is the black church – same denomination, same white, cozy, country exterior – and every bit as segregated as ours.
Since I have begun serving here at Marrow’s Chapel I have slowly, subversively if you will, been trying to help the good people here cast a new vision for themselves as a church, one that more accurately captures the rich tapestry that is the Kingdom of God. In short, I envision a church where “all nations” come together to worship the one true God who is still in the business of reconciling and restoring his children. Through opening my eyes to the function of land in the Old Testament, [I have received] what I think are the necessary tools, or, more importantly, a biblical and practical model to work from that will help bring this vision to a reality. It will require some hard work and some sweat but by getting back to some long forgotten or ignored basics I think we will see healing not only in our relationships but in the land this rural church calls home.
To get back to the beginning I look to the biblical account of our origins where we first get a glimpse into our purpose on God’s good earth. Genesis 2:15 sees man’s God- given duty and essential task to be in the garden to “till and keep” the land. Both Norman Wirzba and Ellen Davis note how the verbs to “till” and “keep” are best rendered as “serving” and “preserving” and “observing.” This is significant if for no other reason than to remind us that the land is not ours to “till” for mere gain but we are to work it out of service to the land, not for ourselves. Noticing that it is not good for the man to be alone in his service to the land, God fashions another for him, a woman. There is much said today about how woman was formed from man and similarities between the two are often emphasized, and for good reasons. However, it should not be missed that while the fellow care-taker of the land is similar to Adam the new member of the garden is not the same as Adam. Why didn’t God just duplicate what God had already done and make another Adam? Would that not have provided some companionship as well as adequate help in the preserving of the land? It would if the God we serve is primarily utilitarian in nature. However, if we learn nothing else from this story it may be simply stated that in the garden we have been placed to serve, God likes variety.
Sitting in a restaurant with a group of church members just the other day I shared with them that in order for Marrow’s Chapel to become the church everyone hopes it to become (i.e. a growing, vibrant church and a full-time charge) it will need to be open to every and all persons within our community. One parishioner asked, innocently and honestly, where all the different races of people came from if all of us came from the same parents, Adam and Eve? Deciding that Chick-Fil-A was not the place to launch into a discussion on human origins and the mythic quality of Genesis, I offered to her the above truth that God is a lover of variety. When God made trees why didn’t he make just one kind? Why not fill the world with only daffodils? Why must there be so many types of fish? The answer proved helpful and even excited this small group to consider that the variety which God loves is sorely lacking in the pews of our church.
This love of variety is not limited to Genesis but found throughout scripture. One reading I found helpful in formulating this line of thought was William Brown’s The Ethos of the Cosmos. Brown draws some wonderful insights from Isaiah 41:17-20 pertaining to the taxonomy of community or the way in which God will revive and restore the land and people. God will do this by putting in the wilderness the “cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive” and setting in the desert the “cypress, the plane and the pine together” (Isa. 41:19). Brown observes that these 7 species of trees from different parts of the world with various climate needs brings forth a “forest of remarkable biodiversity. Yahweh intends to plant seven distinguishable varieties of trees, all coexisting in the transformed wasteland.” The diversity of trees, however, are but a prelude to what God desires to do amongst his people. The compiler of third Isaiah picks up on this vision in 56:1-8 and expresses Yahweh’s intended goal. The foreigner and eunuch will not be allowed to say, “I am just a dry tree” (Isa. 56:3) but they shall all be joined to the Lord and to the Lord’s peoples and the house of the Lord shall be called a “house of prayer for all peoples” (56:7) for it is the Lord who gathers not only the outcasts of Israel but “will gather others to them besides those already gathered” (56:8). It is this reconstitution, this diversity among the peoples, which will “make them joyful in my house of prayer” (56:7). Brown concludes, “The biodiversity of the garden reflects the ethnic diversity of the community.”
Initially I intended to write a sermon as part of this essay, one that would capture what I have learned and how I wish to convey it to my congregation. However, I find (and I doubt I am alone on this) that sermons without some robust biblical theology and practical relevance backing them are impotent. Thus, demonstrating the theology and the practicality from where the sermon will spring I believe is far more instructive. Having shown the biblical foundation for my sermon above, I will now briefly detail the practical dimension.
I was very inspired hearing the story of Anatoth Community Garden. What I saw as I watched this church begin to take seriously their service to the land and how they can teach people to be connected to creation in ways they had not considered before was inspiring. I saw people of all races coming together to sweat side by side, working for a common goal and being reminded that all of this is God’s, and therefore so are each of them. I began to imagine what such a garden in my own community might look like and how it might bring people together who otherwise do not inter-mingle and how it could begin to sow seeds of reconciliation and eventually the reconstitution of God’s people in the church. In other words, I began to wonder if a Garden might sprout a Church.
It was a Garden in Genesis that was the seed bed for God’s people, the beginning of what would become a church. It was Isaiah who linked together the diversity of the garden, particularly trees, and wished to reconstitute community in the same way. And not insignificant, it was in a garden that the resurrected Christ was first seen (John 19:41).
Since hearing the story of Anatoth Community Garden I have begun planning a similar endeavor for us at Marrow’s Chapel. I am convinced that in order for Marrow’s Chapel to become the vibrant, growing church it desires to be and in order for it to properly reflect the Kingdom of God through a diversity of people living in community it will have its genesis in a garden.
The sermon I wish to preach cannot yet be written because we have not yet begun the work of tilling and keeping the land. It is not until the good people of this community can sweat together side by side; seeing with their own eyes that the work of their hands produced such a variety of life in one field – it is then that a sermon exhorting God’s people to reconstitute itself based on the same diversity will find its mark. It is my prayer that out of a garden will spring a church, a house of prayer for all peoples.
Thanks for the blessing, Chad!
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