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The Sermon in 500 Words for the General Public (Rather than Sunday’s Version)

September 20, 2018 By Cam Miller 8 Comments

I sometimes fear the younger generation
will be deprived
of the pleasures of hoeing;
there is no knowing
how many souls have been formed by this
simple exercise…

“Hoeing” by John Updike

I suspect many adult Americans are functionally agnostic when it comes to acts of God. An agnostic, remember, is not an atheist. An atheist says, “no.” An agnostic is someone who does not know, who is undecided, and not compelled to embrace a decision.

I also suspect that many people of faith are hard pressed to emphatically declare a single act of God in the world. I don’t say that as a criticism because there is humility and wisdom that comes with knowing we do not fathom the mind and will of God. In fact, it should be perfectly acceptable to say we don’t know exactly how and where God acts because the core substance of faith includes patience, trust, and humility.

According to the prophet Jesus, God is like the Cosmos upon which is nestled countless spinning orbs, far-flung fiery asteroids, and clusters of life in untold trillions – and all of it with its origins in the teeniest tiniest speck of a molecule (mustard seed parable). In other words, our perspective is too narrow, and the seeds of divine activity too infinitesimal, for us to have a fix on holy activity until it is a faint image in our rearview mirror.

Even so, modern religious talk is full of boasts about what God has done, threats about what God is going to do, and gilded promises about rewards God is going to provide. We hear it with every natural disaster and every cruel human act of mass violence. When people talk about what God is doing and why, I wonder where their patience, trust, and humility went?

I figure that God goes on doing whatever it is God does and, in the meantime, it is our job to hoe.

When we hoe, we don’t get to see the results as we work. In the short term, while we are hoeing, there is nothing to suggest that all our work means anything or will produce anything. The promise of food is far into the future and we cannot see it. We don’t get to know how our hoeing will turn out ahead of time. We just have to hoe one clot of dirt at a time, and keep doing it even though we do not know for certain if anything will come of it.

What we do know, as we break the earth open and our back is burning and our hamstrings are tightening, and red pustules are forming on the web between our thumb and first finger, is that nothing, absolutely nothing, will come of inaction.

As a person of faith, it is not difficult for me to believe that whatever actions God has sewn into the lining of our history, it is ripening all around us. The more difficult act of trust, is in the efficacy of my own hoeing – mine and yours. But then, such is the nature of hoeing and life – we often do not even get to see the results or full effect of our own actions, let alone God’s.

Filed Under: DENIM SPIRIT Tagged With: faith, Hoeing, John Updike

Comments

  1. jrutter1 says

    September 21, 2018 at 5:24 am

    Your reflection on hoeing reminds me a little of a poem Ken Hitch shared the other day. Nothing grows in the trampled “hard places” where we insist that we are right.

    The Place Where We Are Right
    by Yehuda Amichai

    From the place where we are right
    Flowers will never grow
    In the spring.

    The place where we are right
    Is hard and trampled
    Like a yard.

    But doubts and loves
    Dig up the world
    Like a mole, a plow.
    And a whisper will be heard in the place
    Where the ruined
    House once stood.

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      September 21, 2018 at 10:23 pm

      Very nice, I like it a lot. Thanks Joe.

      Reply
  2. Richard [Bing] Sherrill says

    September 21, 2018 at 12:33 pm

    Very good,. In the line of the Romero – Untener – Dearden prayer, adding the more specific meditative activity of hoeing. I like it.
    Bing

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      September 21, 2018 at 10:24 pm

      Actually, the extended “sermon” length version included that prayer! Thanks Bing

      Reply
  3. Andrew Clarkson says

    September 21, 2018 at 9:18 pm

    Cam, this is wonderful. Thanks so much for your insightful perspective.

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      September 21, 2018 at 10:25 pm

      You’re welcome. Just saw your mom, which made my heart sing.

      Reply
  4. Sandra Steigerwald says

    September 21, 2018 at 9:29 pm

    ~patience, trust & humility~

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      September 21, 2018 at 10:25 pm

      Easy to say, harder to practice!

      Reply

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Each of these posts appeared first in The Finger Lakes Times (NY) as an entry in the weekly series, “Denim Spirit.”

 

Sermons, and preaching as an art, are not for dispensing content or proclaiming doctrines and dogma. Like poetry, prose, and music, they are for provoking and inspiring thought, memory, and imagination within those receiving them. Please allow your thoughts to wander as they will in response to what you hear, rather than following along word for word.

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