Harvest: This Liminal Season

Sermon

It was about this time of year, in July, twenty years ago, when I drove with my mom and my first born, Alex (who was about four), to visit Grandma Jean and Grandpa Archie at their farm in West Texas. The weather was hot, hot, hot! The land was parched. We walked out to one of the fields that sometimes grew cotton, but now it was fallow. The field, surrounded by wire fence, held within it a large patch of red-brown dirt, crevassed and creased with large, dry cracks. I always thought, looking at those cracks, that I could imagine them opening up and just swallowing us; they were so big. Stout weeds grew up on some places. Alex took a long look at it, and in his piping, preschool voice said, “Nice garden!”

I still smile when I think of it, because it seemed his words were less about what was really there, what we could see, and more about his own interior, sunny view.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

What are we harvesting? It’s helpful to look at harvest in at least two ways: there is the outer harvest, what we see around us, our community, our outer world. But there is also the harvest of our inner life, our spiritual center. The scripture, and Jesus’ life, speaks to both.

In Luke, we read about the great crowds following Jesus, begging for healing of disease, of poverty, of being socially cast out. All these centuries later, still our world aches for healing, justice, security, and peace. We have the despair brought on by climate change, gun violence, war, greed, racism, addictions, disease, mental illness… The laborers, the healers, are few in the face of all that needs repair and realignment in this world.

Many laborers for social justice have burned out due to the abundant harvest of the world’s needs. We struggle with the sense that despite our huge efforts over time, still these social ills remain and are growing. Laboring for justice will likely lead to burnout unless there is an inner harvest: peace and trust centered in God.

Since 2019, those social ills have been inflamed by pandemic. And we are not done yet. I recently heard someone describe this season we are in as “liminal time.”

Liminality is the disorientation that occurs when we are betwixt and between. Something has ended, and a new situation not yet begun. Much as we like to think we might be in a “new normal,” things are still sifting out. All of us, in some degree, are in a liminal time.

Televised hearings about the January 6th insurrection, changes in law from the Supreme Court, daily shootings, COVID constantly causing us to postpone, regroup, cancel, or change…

How do we keep from burning out? How do we keep mind and heart together in this liminal time? Well, we must cultivate the garden of our souls.

Today’s passage shows that Jesus (in the tradition of Moses, before him) had a team of seventy or more, sent out in pairs, to do the healing work. They were sustained in their work by the Spirit of God. That was the source of all their power. The spiritual path stays true, no matter the chaos in the world.

God, blossoming in us, is the Way that Jesus taught. There are a couple of key things we can learn from scripture. One is that Jesus took time away, in quiet, to pray. Another is that he built community.

Did you notice that in the work of healing, Jesus sent out the healers two by two? There is power in relationship together. The Spirit flows through us best when we team up. Last week we heard the power of that relationship, vulnerability, and growth with the Reverend Melissa Reed and the Reverend Chris Dela Cruz. It’s for all of us to find the people and groups in our lives that both sustain our spirits and hold us to account.

Recently I was part of an interdenominational webinar that noted that volunteerism in the church is down 65%. We’re not imagining it: it’s more difficult to find nominees for deacon and elder, harder to find servers for coffee hour, harder to find drivers for the bus. If we double down and try to guilt people into service, we violate caring relationship. But when we cultivate our inner harvest of peace and regard for others, the Spirit of God will move us. Our leadership may look different, our activities may change, what church looks like may well change, but God is still with us.

I don’t know about you, but this causes me a little worry. I’ve invested 20 years at Westminster and 32 years in ministry. Being in this season when I can see that things aren’t the same but not yet see what they will be sometimes makes me afraid.

But the fears we face, our disappointments, and anger are an integral part of our spiritual harvest. Rather than escaping them, or numbing our feelings and minds, these negative feelings can be messengers that help us grow and give us insight. As people who hunger to know what is true, feelings of disappointment, fear, irritation, embarrassment, resentment, anger, or jealousy, instead of being bad news, are actually clear moments that teach us where it is we are holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. These messengers show us where we are stuck.

Our music director, Debbie Glaze, has said that “Change is constant, growth is optional.”

Every day we are going to get opportunities to deepen our interior worlds, to develop trust in God, and to learn to truly love and accept, beginning with ourselves. The invitation to harvest the soul is always before us.

Maybe right now you are not able to get out from home much. If so, there are still important ways you can be connected to Westminster and cultivate your spiritual practice. We have livestream worship on Sundays and Monday-through-Thursday noon prayers. In the fall, we continue with hybrid adult education classes. If you want to serve, Westminster can always use more help in making calls to people and connecting. Our deacon parish leaders are doing this.

If you are out in the world, on the forefront of lobbying for justice, consider how to make space in your time and life for contemplative prayer, for spiritual reading, and Bible study.

If you feel helpless in the face of Portland’s homeless problems, consider helping with our food ministries and developing friendships as you serve.

If you need more joy in your life, consider showing up for our monthly swing dances. If you don’t want to dance, come and welcome our neighbors and our community, and collect money at the door. Or come line dancing and make new friends.

If you yearn for meeting with others in book study, support groups, fellowship, let us know. We are going to be training leaders and developing new small groups in the coming year. We grow deeper in trust whenever two or three are gathered together in the Spirit of Christ.

The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart said:

“Now God creates all things but does not stop creating. God forever creates and forever begins to create…” This is our cosmic invitation to grow and grow and grow!

This moment is our teacher. We have one another to help us grow and learn from the moment. How is it with your inner harvest? Maybe your heart feels like a parched west Texas field. Or maybe it’s vibrant like the lush harvest of roses in our church parking lot.

In closing I am singing from Isaiah 58:11. “The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places and make your bones strong, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail.”