Light Lenten Reflections

Week 5

The Quirky Gardener

Gardeners tend to have their quirks, their own funny little ways. There are no real rules for gardening, but there is an informal "best practices" most gardeners choose to follow. Need to improve your soil? Add compost, any organic matter with the exception of meat and dairy products. My grandmother, an avid vegetable gardener and agricultural rebel, would put a winter's worth of sawdust and wood shavings from my grandfather's basement work shop over her sandy soil. Next, she would take a winter's worth of cooking fat and meat drippings she had saved in old coffee cans, warming them enough to liquify the fat, and then sprinkling the liquid over the sawdust in the garden. This produced a productive garden with an amazing crop of tomatoes every year. Want to grow spring lettuce? Buy some seedlings at the local garden center, or start some seeds indoors four weeks before the last frost, carefully hardening the plants off before putting them into the ground. Unless, of course, you are a lazy gardener like me who fails to pull out the last of my crop of lettuce the previous year, always letting a few plants go to seed. These way-past-their-prime lettuce plants will grow to monstrosities three or more feet tall with heads scattering seed all over the fall garden. Come early spring, the soil is dotted with bright green and red lettuce seedlings. I've only to dig them out with the tip of a trowel and plant them within the rabbit-proof fencing for a rapidly growing crop of already hardened off lettuce. Untraditional lettuce gardening, but very efficient.

The Gospel of Matthew* has Jesus telling a story about a quirky gardener, a grower of grapes who owned a vineyard large enough to require laborers to help with the gardening. The gardener-owner of the vineyard went out early in the morning and hired some workers for an agreed upon wage. It was a fair salary, maybe even generous for the long day and the amount of work they would be required to do. These workers were the "early bird gets the worm" type, most likely laying out their vineyard working clothes the night before, getting up early and eating a good breakfast, the type who get to the hiring point ten minutes before the gardener arrives. They'll be good workers, worth the generous wage.

But the gardener could use more workers, and at the third, sixth and ninth hour, he finds unhired workers standing around, doing nothing, at the local hangout in town. He sends them into his vineyard, telling them he will pay them what is fair. Unlike the early birds, these workers were delayed by something, maybe overslept, maybe had some errands to run before showing up for work, maybe had to deal with some family or household emergency. Now that they've been hired, they'll pull their weight in the vineyard and expect some payment for their part-time work.

At the eleventh hour, the gardener comes out to find some unhired workers hanging around. When the gardener questions why they are idle, they say no one has hired them. Despite there being a likely good reason for this, the gardener sends them into his vineyard. These latecomers are most likely the dregs of the workforce. Perhaps they showed up to work at the eleventh hour because they stayed out too late the night before, too hung over to show up any earlier. Maybe they wasted their day doing whatever the first century equivalent of too much screen time was. Maybe some of them fancied themselves as too good for garden work, only to find they failed at the alternative occupations they tried earlier in the day. It is unknown what their work habits were when they entered the vineyard. Perhaps they got caught up in the momentum of the other workers, holding their own with the weeding, tending to the vines. Or perhaps they saw the first hired starting to fade after a long day of hard labor, and their community spirit kicked in, seeing a chance to take up the early birds' jobs with fresh energy. Whatever transpired in the vineyard, when it came time to get paid, the gardener paid first those who were hired last, giving them the same fair, generous wage promised the early birds. When their time came to collect their wages, the early birds grumbled when they didn't get more than the latecomers, spending their time on the pay line thinking about the extra money they would be getting. The gardener, hearing their complaints responds to one of the early birds:

Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? (vs. 13-15)

Did I mention Jesus starts his story with "For the Kingdom of God is like..."? As is probably apparent by now the quirky gardener is The Quirky Gardener a.k.a. God. This Gardener had a quirky choice of workers as well as a quirky pay scale. And the quirky payment makes sense in that the agreed upon wage is eternal life which doesn't lend itself easily to a sliding pay scale. There are no partial portions of eternal life. Once we say yes to the Gardener and enter into His vineyard and commit to be part of His life for the "day", we get to fully participate in His life forever. The Gardener goes out into the town, searches our hangouts, calls to us all – the over achieving early birds, the delayed, distracted later comers, the clueless, unwanted, desparate eleventh hour late, latecomers. In His eyes, no one is too late to the game to be a part of His Kingdom. He wants us all to come into His Vineyard. He even calls us "friend" when we grumble and fail to understand His generous funny little ways. Thank God He's the Quirky Gardener.

Something to Ponder:

Which worker group do you identify with in your relationship with God? Early bird, delayed and distracted late arrival, or the really late to the game eleventh hour hire? What good do you see in the group you identify with? What pitfalls do you see in the same group?

Something to Pray:

Grab a Bible or biblegateway.com. Read Matthew 20:1-16. Note in verse 13 where the gardener/owner calls one of the grumblers "friend". Ask God to show you His friendship for you, even when you are a grumbler, distracted or just plan unwanted anywhere else. Spend some time thanking Him for His generous mercy to you and that He is a quirky gardener with funny little ways that continuouly surprise and bless you.

*Chapter 20

When we don't get what we deserve

That's a real good thing

When we get what we don't deserve

That's a real good thing

– from The Newsboys, Real Good Thing