Being Cultivated by God

Sermon for 5.15.11 - 4th Lord's Day of Easter

Today is the third week in a five-week series on five practices that are essential parts of fruitful Christian living , based on the works of United Methodist Bishop Robert Schnase. Many of us are reading Forty Days for Fruitful Living (today’s Day 21). The five practices are Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-Taking Mission and Service, and Extravagant Generosity. It’s through developing these practices that we make space for God’s grace in our lives, which enables us to live fruitful lives that share God’s grace. As a church, these five practices structure Faith’s plan for discipleship in its mission to “love into the kingdom all God’s children through intentional discipleship, worship, and service.” Today, we focus on Intentional Faith Development.

If Radical Hospitality is about saying, “Yes” to God, and Passionate Worship is about loving God in return (and thereby being transformed), then Intentional Faith Development is the set of practices through which we present ourselves to God with the purpose of growing and changing. What is clear throughout Schnase’s work with the Five Practices is that as humans, and specifically as followers of Christ, we are called to grow and change, and that growth in God’s grace requires intentional practices: like becoming an athlete or musician, we must continually practice in order to grow and change; or, like the family needing to visit an elderly aunt, who needed more intentionality to share love well. We treaded lightly around these themes of change, practice, and intentionality last week when we looked at how God changes us little by little through the practice of worship week after week and year after year.

The Apostle Paul, in his Letter to the Philippians, assumes the need for change in the passage read today. Just before our passage began, he says that he wants to know Christ, to be made righteous by God’s grace, and live into the resurrection through Jesus. Then he opens today’s passage saying, “Not that I’ve already…reached [this] goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own (v.12). Paul assumes a progression in life from sinfulness to holiness, from separation from God to intimate connection to God. This idea of pressing on suggests intentionality: Paul is doing things to come closer to God’s goal for him. He’s inviting God to change him.

Yet, let’s be honest here. How many of us like change? How many of you got up this morning and readied yourselves for worship saying, Boy, I wonder how God is going to change me today? Now, I personally like change and find it exciting, but I recognize that I’m not in the majority here. I suspect there are many here who do not like change. I suspect there are also many here who think, I don’t need to change. Honestly, sometimes it’s easier to convince ourselves that we’re just fine how we are and that God is done changing us.

As I was pondering this idea of change and our reluctance to change, God showed me something while I was preparing my garden. I think I mostly garden because I love fresh cucumbers. So, I planted cucumber seeds in hope that they will grow into cucumber plants that will eventually fill my belly with cucumbers. But we don’t get to cucumbers right away. First, there’s cleaning up the garden plot and cultivating, then the growth of vines and flowers, and finally, with the intentional care of weeding and watering we get cucumbers. Each stage of growth is growth by definition: the first sprouts, the vines, the flowers, and finally the cucumbers. The ultimate purpose for all that growth, though, is the end result of produce for eating. But, the first thing that had to happen was cultivating – breaking up the soil and preparing it for growth.

Our lives are not unlike those cucumber plants. God created us to be fruitful. The fruit God desires to grow in our lives is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal5.22). But, we cannot jump right to the fruitfulness. Things have to happen first. We have to be cultivated, broken up and prepared, for fruitful growth and change. We have to be changed. And eventually, with much care, weeding and watering, we will begin to bear fruit. Sometimes that fruit is just the growth: vines that prevent other weeds from growing, or flowers that add color to the garden. But eventually, the fruit is the ultimate fruit of sharing God’s grace with others in a way that provides sustenance for ourselves and others.

If we are like cucumber plants, created to bear fruit, then the question for us today is, “In what setting does transformation and growth happen? In what setting and through what practices does God most cultivate us?”

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrew Christians shows us the setting through which God cultivates us: living in intentional community with others. He invites the community of Hebrew Christians to “draw near to God” through spurring “one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together…but encouraging one another…” (v.22a, 24-25a). What the writer of Hebrews knows is that it is through regularly meeting together with other Christians we grow more fruitful and closer to God.

The practice of Intentional Faith Development is founded upon this idea of meeting together with others regularly for growth. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, knew this when he organized early Methodist societies into small groups so people could “watch after one another in love” (Schnase, 71). Many in this congregation have found participating in a regular a small group to be a very fruitful practice. Perhaps it’s a Sunday School class, or the Mom’s Bible Study on Tuesdays, or the women’s Monday night study. Maybe it has been the United Methodist Women or Men’s groups. Or, maybe you haven’t found a group, or you once had a group but now do not.

What seems to be clear from the Hebrews passage is that meeting together regularly in small groups is a vital and essential practice for Christian living and growth. To be fruitful, to grow, we must present ourselves to God through small groups to be cultivated, weeded, watered, and encouraged. Paul echoes the importance of relationships for growth when he tells the Philippians to “join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us” (v.17). Through small groups and intentional relationships, we learn from others how to follow God more fully. If we choose to live in isolation, we have few examples to help us grow and no one to watch over us in love. Further, by attempting to live out our faiths in isolation, we rob others of the benefit of our experience, insight, and faith as examples.

Participating in a small group might sound scary, but it’s not really. You don’t have to be a spiritual saint or Bible expert to participate or start one. You just have to have a desire to grow closer to God and become more fruitful. God will provide all that’s needed. God transforms us through small groups. All we have to do is keep showing up and presenting ourselves to God to be cultivated. God cultivates us as soil for growth. God transforms us for fruitful living.

It’s like Paul says, we must press on toward the goal. When Paul says, “press on” what he’s saying is that he’s making intentional decisions to follow God and pursue God’s goals for him in Christ. He is “straining toward what is ahead” (v.13). Maybe you’re like me and you keep a calendar of everything you have to do for the day or week. If so, you could think about intentional faith development as keeping an appointment with Jesus. Through a small group studies, prayer groups, or regular service activity groups, we keep an appointment with Jesus so that God can continue to grow, change, and transform us.

It’s like my cucumbers. I have little hope of them growing and bearing fruit if I don’t keep a regular appointment with them that involves watering, weeding, and perhaps fertilizing. If I don’t do these things, I don’t give the plants anything to work with, to grow from. The same is true for our faith lives. If we have no plans or intentional practices for growth in relationship with God, we’re not giving God much to work with.

But God gives us all we need to grow closer to God and to live fruitful lives. God has given us the church – a community of faithful people formed for the sole purpose of helping people grow closer to God, live fruitfully, and experience the grace of God. Through the waters of baptism, God has claimed us as God’s own, and through our relationships, especially in small groups, God transforms us so that we can draw close to God. The Letter to the Hebrews encourages us saying that we have assurance that we can draw near to God because Jesus has drawn near to us and is always faithful in his promise to be present with us. Jesus connects us to God, and the way we grow in that connection is through intentional practices with other people. God cultivates our hearts and souls through intentional practices, so that we can draw close to God and live fruitfully.

Finally, Paul says in Philippians that we can make righteousness, fruitfulness, and connection with God our goal because Jesus has made us his own. Jesus has claimed us through our baptisms, and through his baptism, life, death, and resurrection. Therefore, we can live into Jesus’ goal of fruitfulness and connection to God. God enables us to grow and be fruitful. God transforms us for fruitful living. And the setting through which God most cultivates us for fruitfulness is small groups. If you're currently participating in a small group for the purpose of spurring each other on in love, keep up the good work. If you're interested in joining or starting a group, I'd be glad to help you. For God is waiting for the invitation, the appointment to begin more actively cultivating you for fruitfulness.