I am having a hard time with the amaryllis bulbs we’ve started at home.
My dad taught me the old saying, “Don’t dawdle, amaryllis,” and now I know that feeling well. One bulb has only yesterday shown slight, ever so slight, growth. It’s actually our second bulb, a replacement for one that sat inert for weeks before we banished it to the yard waste, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. This new bulb is green, I’ll give it that. It shows promise. On Friday Andrew bought one more bulb, complete with a new blade of green shooting up from the center. I run the gas fireplace and turn the heat up to the high sixties, hoping for the best.
I am fairly sure these two bulbs will work out, and we will have glorious red or white blossoms, maybe around New Year’s. But it is an exercise in patience, skillful patience, a kind of active listening, creative waiting, conscious watching. Don’t overwater the bulbs! That command has been drilled into my mind. And so I don’t overwater them, or even water them at all, even though it feels like that would be a productive and attentive thing to do. Andrew always knows far more about growing things than I do, so I sit on my hands and wait.
Jesus likes plants. Perhaps even now, Jesus is interested in the amaryllis bulbs at my house, which, after all, are works of creation. Jesus is the Word of God that speaks all creation into existence, so our amaryllis bulbs are...well...they’re within his jurisdiction. But when Jesus was first in human form among us, he was fascinated most often not by green plants, but by their seeds. He told stories about, and compared important things to, seeds: seeds go into a dark place, they die, they break open, they draw nutrients from the soil, and they rise in vigorous life.
Jesus is also preoccupied by fig trees. He watches them. He tastes their fruit. He feels his feelings when they don’t bear fruit. Today he once again points to the fig tree, telling us that the fig tree is our teacher, particularly when we are waiting and watching for something important to happen.
Given his preoccupation with seeds and fig trees, it seems that if I want to know more about Jesus, it would be a good idea to talk to a farmer about farming. So I spoke with Renée Ziemann. Many of you know her, and her family, here at Grace.
Renée knows a lot about working with plants, but she also knows about today’s Gospel passage, and she knows about Advent, this short season of long waiting, this dark season of blinding light, this time when the earth sleeps but we are told to stay awake.
I asked Renée about her plants.
She tends a delightfully diverse array of plants, including marionberries, blueberries, raspberries, asparagus, currants, and even kiwi. She cares for some forty chickens, but her farm focuses primarily on plants, not animals. Like Jesus, Renée simply loves plants. She likes spending time with them, learning their ways, growing in knowledge and wisdom as she works with them.
Renée spends much of the winter focusing on the perennials she grows. “Every year,” she says, “I watch the plants more than I watch the calendar.” She knows when it is time to do something not because it’s St. Nicholas Day or Presidents Day, but because the plants themselves are telling her it is time. Renée does a lot of work in the winter, even though her farm appears dormant. “You have to prune things, and tie things up,” she says, watching carefully to be sure not to do important tasks too early, before the plants have had a chance to deliver all their nutrients to the roots.
In the spring, Renée feels deep relief when the bees arrive, a step in the process that reminds her how little overall control she has over her farm, despite all her hard work and patient attention. And then, as the sun and warmth return, so do the bugs, determined to eat her fruit. Through the whole year round, Renée is faced with countless moments of decision: “Do I fight for this particular thing, or do I let it go?”
“From the fig tree learn its lesson,” Jesus says. Notice again how he points to plants as our teachers. Renée looks to the perennials on her farm to learn their lessons, and to know what she must do for life to flourish there. Jesus, in turn, teaches us that we need to pay attention, stay awake, watch, and listen, to know what we need to know, and do what we must do, for our future, and the world’s future.
God is coming to us right now, from that future.
We are not all that different from those who first heard Jesus preach about green and growing things. We look around us and see a world in massive turmoil. We contemplate our own mortality and wonder how all of this will turn out. What will last, and what will pass away? Like Renée waiting powerlessly for the bees to arrive, we wonder when God will be visible, when or if we will know beyond doubt that God is acting, God is moving, God is making sense of all the catastrophe and loss, and God is also making sense of all the beauty and splendor of life that flourishes around us.
Today we begin once again a seasonal cycle of life, death, and resurrected life. We begin a circle that has no beginning. We end a circle that has no end. The calendar is less instructive to us than the evidence of God’s work right in front of us, right between us. Perhaps if we stay awake and look and listen, we can begin to see relationships being restored. We can begin to hear or feel God prodding us to do the hard work of reconciliation. We can notice how the advent of God’s Word is arriving even now. If we strain our eyes and hold still, we can see it.
If we open our eyes wide enough, we can see the Incarnation, the bright dawning of justice and peace, the presence of Christ himself in our neighbor, in the stranger, in our community, within our own hearts. The fruit trees teach us how to see, and how to notice. They open our eyes. But they demand patience, a willingness to stay awake and work hard, but also to wait, and to understand that, like a farmer waiting for the bees to return, we are not in full control of anything.
Come, and share in keeping the watch, through all these dark nights, so that we do not miss the arrival of the Incarnate One among us.
The amaryllis shoot is ever so delicate and tiny. But there it is, edging up. Look closely. Can you see it?
***
Preached on the First Sunday of Advent, Year B, November 29, 2020, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Isaiah 64:1-9 | Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18 | 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 | Mark 13:24-37
Photo: one of our amaryllis bulbs.