Transcript
“And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Please be seated.
I know I have talked about my backyard a number of times. It is still one of my favorite spots in all of Hampton. In fact, Friday morning, just before I sat down to start my sermon, I was outside enjoying the sun and the green and the outdoor space that is exclusively mine — and the small dog’s too, but definitely not the squirrels’ now, because of said small dog.
Anyway, I have a small raised-bed garden and some containers. The containers have herbs — basil, sage, rosemary, parsley, oregano — and peppers, serrano and purple Thai. And the raised bed has tomato plants and a couple of other vegetables. In the spring, right around Mother’s Day, I planted everything: five different tomato plants, a cucumber plant, a zucchini plant, and an eggplant.
The cucumber thrived. So many cucumbers. The zucchini produced three very large zucchini, and that was it. The eggplant only had one vegetable, the size of a softball — that went really well with mozzarella and basil on the grill. The tomato plants, though, well, they really didn’t do much. I mean, sure, I would see some green tomatoes start to form, but I think those pesky squirrels were getting to them before me.
Occasionally something would turn red and I would have one tomato sandwich. Everyone else had an abundance of tomatoes. In fact, my parents and my neighbors and friends were bringing me tomatoes from their gardens, because even though I had so many plants, I had no tomatoes. And then the weather started to turn. The leaves started to brown, and all of a sudden, I have tomatoes.
I have absolutely no idea how or why, but I have tomatoes. I have cherry tomatoes and Roma tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes — big tomatoes the size of softballs, and little tomatoes the size of marbles. For whatever reason, my tomatoes are apparently fall tomatoes. I didn’t even know that was a thing. During the summer, though, while I lamented my lack of garden tomatoes, I got a lot of gardening advice from those friends and neighbors and my dad.
“Be sure to fertilize.” So I found tomato fertilizer. “Be sure to water.” So I bought more hoses and bigger watering cans and even one of those timers for the faucet. “Be sure to prune.” So I bought special scissors just for pruning. And yet I had to wait. Still, even in the waiting, I gave my tomato plants so much love.
Because after all, isn’t that what love is? Giving of ourselves — our time, our resources, our energy, our attention? Thomas Aquinas — an Italian Dominican friar and priest and a medieval theologian — defines love as velle bonum alicui: to will the good of the other. And to actively, structurally, sacrificially orient your will — the very nature of who you are and what you want — toward the flourishing of another person.
Or, in my case this summer, toward my tomato plants. Love isn’t just something you say; it is an action. It is a decision, a choice. Loving others is a choice that we have to make over and over again, deciding that someone else’s good is our priority. So when Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus isn’t talking about a mushy, saccharine, Hallmark kind of love. Jesus is talking about a real, true, unconditional love that leads to the betterment of all, according to God’s will. In the case of my garden, that included fertilizer and water and time and attention. In the case of my neighbor, as Jesus calls them, that includes putting aside my pride and offering all of myself, first to God and then to everyone else.
In the case of St. John’s Church, that includes recognizing the roots that connect us to the 416 years that came before us. It includes offering the leaves — our works and wisdom given to the life of the church today. It includes cultivating the fruit — the impact of who we are and what we do within the parish, within the community, around the world.
And it includes the next step: the promise to give ourselves, our works and wisdom, and our money, our treasure, for the love of God and the flourishing of our neighbors. In a little bit, during communion, you’ll be invited to bring your pledge card forward. I know many of you have already turned in pledge cards — thank you, for those of you who have. For those of you who brought yours today, you will come forward at communion, and just before you kneel to receive Jesus in the form of a wafer, you will give your own offering, from God to God: a written statement of “I promise to love God and to love my neighbor as myself” through the life and ministries of St. John’s Church.
A pledge card isn’t simply a financial commitment. It is a tangible promise to participate. It is a covenant to acknowledge and honor God and our neighbors. It is a statement of love, a commitment to actively, structurally, sacrificially orient our wills to the flourishing of others through the thriving roots, leaves, and fruit of St. John’s Church, Elizabeth City Parish. Your pledge to be part of this community is how we continue to grow, how we continue to thrive — through all our ministries happening now and imagined for the future, through our visioning of who God is calling us to be as St. John’s Church, and through our willingness to be St. John’s Church: a tangible representation of the love we have for God and for our neighbors and for ourselves. Going back to my tomato plants: I could have just put them in the ground and then walked away. I could have simply said “good luck” and not offered any of myself to the process of helping them flourish. I could have skipped the fertilizer and those bamboo trellises that I made, and the watering. But I chose to nourish those plants, in the same way I chose to nurture my relationship with God in this community.
Remember how I said I bought a bigger watering can?
Well, you get to use it too. Because if we plan to grow bigger and stronger roots, if we want more leaves and branches, if we want more fruit, then we need to offer ourselves, like the water any tree or tomato plant needs to thrive. Giving of ourselves is a way of expressing our love through willingness to serve, and our pledge cards are a tangible expression of that willingness, that commitment — just as a watering can is a tangible expression of the willingness to give so that a tree can thrive. Today, let us celebrate the love we have for God and for our neighbors and for ourselves — which, as Jesus says, are the greatest commandments. Let us celebrate the love we have by honoring the one who gives us the absolute, unconditional love: God.
This is a chance for us to celebrate the abundance that God gives to us. Let us respond with love, and let our pledge cards — our commitment to give money, works, and wisdom — help spread that love, steward that love, in the world around us, through the ministries of St. John’s Church, Elizabeth City Parish. Amen.