Learn to grow a garden! Become a patient gardener like the Lord!

After I moved to Macon, Georgia, I planted my first garden.  I had never planted a garden before.  But the neighbor told me that that previous owner had a wonderful garden for many years.  I again replied that I had never planted a garden before. I didn't know what to do, but I was interested. So my neighbor said, first you need to dig up the grass that had grown where the garden was and till the ground to prepare the soil. 

Well there was a another neighbor, Mr. Smith who had a huge garden nearby.  I told him of my tentative plans to plant a garden.  He said he would come over and help me till up the garden area.  Sure enough, a few days later, Mr. Smith, showed up with a rototiller in the back of his pickup truck.  A rototiller is built with an engine like a lawnmower, but instead rolling on wheel with a blade swirling to cut grass, it has wheels of blades to cut into the soil. So instead of pushing it like a lawnmower, it pulls you as it's blade are cutting into the ground.  You then walk behind as it cuts rows and rows of earth until you are finished cutting out a garden area.

An hour later, with the ground was all tilled up, I asked Mr. Smith what he would suggest planting in the garden.  He replied, "tomatoes, corn, beans, peas, carrots, cucumbers, pumpkins and whatever vegetables that I wanted."  I needed to figure out how of many rows of each vegetables I wanted and then go to the seed store and buy the right amount of seeds for each row that I wanted to plant.  But he did suggest that I plant small tomato plants - not  tomato seeds, because it would take to long to start the tomatoes from seed.   He offered me  some small tomato plants that he grew in his greenhouse during the winter that he would give me to plant. I happily agreed.

Sure enough the next weekend, Mr. Smith showed up in his pickup truck with seven tomato plants, post hole diggers and a load of rich soil.  Mr. Smith showed me how to use the post hole digger to dig out a hole the size of a 50 gallon drum in the hard, red Georgia clay.  That was for one tomato plant.  Then went back and forth, digging out the  other six holes. We then used shovels to shovel out rich soil from the back of the pickup truck into the wheel barrows, then rolled the wheel barrows to the garden and poured new soil into each large hole.  We then planted each of the seven tomato plants.  Finally, we put chicken wire cages around each whole.  The chicken wire cages were as big as the holes, about like a fifty gallon drum.  They made the tomato plants look so small.  I asked Mr. Smith why we had put up such large chick wire cages.  He said that the tomato plant would  grow into a large bush that would eventually fill up that large cage.  I said okay, but I didn't really believe him. Of course, I had never planted a garden before. I thanked him for all his help with this hard work.

After planting all the other seeds and watering the garden each day for a week, I started to see little shoots coming up out of the ground.  Beside tomatoes, I had planted a row of corn, beans along the fence,  peas, carrots and a half of row of cucumbers and pumpkins each.  I spent at least an hour a day pulling up weeds between the plants and watering each day for weeks.

Amazingly, the tomato plants filled up the large cages. All except one.  It remained small.  When the plants were ripe, we ate a lot of big red "better boy" tomatoes, fresh beans, crisp cucumbers and sweet corn.  The corn was called "How sweet it is, corn" was so tasty and sweet that I would pick it, husk it right in the garden and eat it like candy.  The truth is that due to all my hard work of tilling the soil, planting, watering and weeding, the vegetables tasted like the best vegetables in the world to me.  As I gave away dozens of tomatoes and cucumbers to my friends, I felt I was giving away bars of gold.

But the one tomato plant never really grew well.  I thought about ripping it out of the ground.  But if gardening had taught me one thing, it was patience. 

So in the gospel today, when the master tells the gardener, "See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on
this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be
wasting the soil?' I understand the gardener's reply, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year,
until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next
year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"

I understand that the gardener has tilled and shoveled, watered and weeded this garden for months.  While the master may want quick results, the gardener knows how much work it took to grow his garden.  The gardener knows that one must be patient.  The gardener knows that with a little more care, a little more fertilizer and a little more time, he may be able to save the plant that is not producing.

Of course, this story is not necessarily about a gardener and his plants.  It is not just about Mr. Smith, who could see why we needed to dig 50 gallon holes and pour in new soil for each small tomato plant.  It is not just about a smart gardener, who knew that a good tomato plant could fill a large chicken wire cage. 

This story is about a God who is like a gardener, who knows that with a little patience and some tender loving care, that the non-producing plant can become as big and beautiful plant as it should be.  So the patient-gardener God is going to give us another chance and another chance to grow - to be all we can be. 

The patient God knows that we have something that the plants don't have - free will.  In fact, God gave us free will.  We are not planted in one spot.  Rather we are free to move about the country. The patient-gardener God also knows that we will make mistakes with our free will, but hopefully - with age and experience - we will make better decisions as we grow older and become more mature.  Just like the three year old fig tree, the patient-gardener God will give us another season - with a little more nurturing - to see if we will become the mature man or woman that we are meant to be.

So I pray, that we - who have all made mistakes in our lives, will learn and grow from our mistakes.  I pray that we will use this season of Lent to grow and mature to become patient-gardeners who bear good fruit.  Amen.

Father Mike  3/6/10  St. George's Church