Readings: Proper 23, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary
FIRST, SOME GOOD news (I think!) and a personal note to all those who walked with me as I discerned my new calling. Your prayers were and are deeply appreciated and I am now no longer a deacon, at least formally, of the Episcopal Church, though I dare say I’m still a deacon in my heart. After all, there are still many people to feed.
But now, let’s get down to it. This is the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures for today in many of the Protestant churches:
These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare,” (Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7).
Now, I am certain in my heart that my mom (who loved the Hebrew Scriptures and especially the prophets) knew this passage and that it was near to her heart. She certainly knew a folk version of this, the title of today’s essay: she’d often tell me, “Bloom where you are planted, Keith, don’t keep running about. You have to settle.”
She didn’t mean “you have to settle for less,” and certainly didn’t mean that I should allow myself to give anything up — she was fierce in her hope for all of us and for the world, and for the role of action and energy in the world — but instead in the sense of “settling down,” in becoming rooted. For her, place was important as was family. She’d spent time moving around and she was pretty much over it. For her, living in a suburb in Chicago was plenty good enough, thank you. But maybe even more, she meant know those around you and especially family, love them and protect them, and keep them near.
But she also gardened. She’d plant all sorts of things, and most famously of all, her dreaded rhubarb. (I may have told you all this story before, but it’s one that really helped shape me and the person I am. Forgive me if I’m repeating myself.)
Why dreaded? Well, like our sour little local blackberries, rhubarb spreads deep and puts its roots deep into the earth. She usually approved of such plants. She had little time for annuals. “Why annuals? You have to dig them up and plant them again the next year. Who has time for that?” Who, indeed?
And this is why I came home from high school one day and found my mom deep in a 4-foot pit she’d dug out of the earth. Mom was covered in dirt, tip to toe. “These damn things! They spread for miles around, they have roots that go down to China, and just exactly how many things can you make with this stuff?”
Her rhubarb pie was the talk of that summer, and the summer after that, but that darned rhubarb — the more she harvested it, the faster and deeper it grew. My dad had begun to worry that the rhubarb would damage the foundations of the house, and he was probably right. Anyway, he nagged her one time too many, and she decided to solve the problem. “Out it goes,” she said.
And the neighbors started to turn down her pie in that third summer. I mean, there’s only so much rhubarb pie one can eat. One neighbor was a single father, and he used to yell at his kids, “EAT IT, JUST CHOKE IT!” night after night. I’m pretty sure my mom’s rhubarb pie was part of the problem. It’s a glorious summer treat, especially with vanilla ice cream, but Lordie, it was sweet, and a little went a very long way.
Well, as far as Mom was concerned, problems were made to be solved, so she started making rhubarb bread. Unfortunately for her, rhubarb bread basically tastes exactly like rhubarb pie, and she became the victim of the neighborhood’s jaded tastes.
In about three weeks that third summer, people began refusing to come to their doors when she came bearing goodies. “No,” I heard one neighbor shriek, “No, Peg, no more rhubarb!”
Between my dad complaining about foundations and the neighbors getting increasingly testy with her, she took action. It took another three summers — that stuff just would not die — but she finally got it all out.
But while she did appreciate deep roots for plants and for people, she also worked for the good of her family and for the neighborhood.
The people now of Babylon needed to hear this. They needed to plant deep and grow where they were at. And that’s what God meant in that passage from Jeremiah. Go deep, and if you have to, go even deeper to correct errors, or to get back home.
Those first two summers, Mom couldn’t keep up with the orders and requests, but when she had to, she started digging away. So did the people who had been carted off to Babylon. They needed to blossom too, and so do the people who are coming to our shores and borders now. They need a safe place to live, and God told the Jewish people over and over again, “welcome the stranger, feed them, shelter them.”
So we need to do today as the world begins to become more and more scary as time goes on. It’s our job to be like my mom. Dig deep, people of God, and then dig deeper.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Previously a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, Dr. Keith Dorwick is a lay person continuing his walk with God as he moves deeper into the community at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Port Angeles.
