Unseen Possibility
and Growth
In fourth grade, my class read The Secret Garden together. Everyday, we’d sit in a circle and the teacher would read several pages. It became my favorite part of the school day, rivalling even recess. The thought astonishes me today—that I would have been transfixed by the story of a garden. Where I’m living now, there are a couple of raised beds in the backyard, but I’ve left them untouched. Gardening is not a hobby that I’ve learned to enjoy.
Why, I wonder, was I so fascinated by this book? I remember that in the spring of my fourth-grade year, I was so inspired by the story, that I asked for a little plot of the back yard in which to grow something. My mom happily obliged. Day after day, I would wander by that patch of ground to see if anything had happened. Slowly but surely, a plant did emerge. And not by my power. I was hardly doing anything.
I wonder, in fact, if that were not the root of my fascination with The Secret Garden. Beneath the story of a garden, is the story of unseen possibility and growth. Beneath the story of shrubs and flowers, is the story of an unseen energy, an unseen spirit. The “secret garden” becomes a metaphor for the secret power and possibility of love. Not only do the plants in the garden grow, but the children in the story, who each have a tragic background, come alive in a new way. The children come to refer to the unseen energy and power of the garden as “magic.” But Mrs. Sowerby, a motherly, salt-of-the-earth figure in the story, refers to it simply as “the Good Thing.” “I never knowed it by that name [magic] but what does th’ name matter? I warrant they call it a different name i’ France an’ a different one i’ Germany. Th’ same thing as set th’ seeds swellin’ an’ th’ sun shinin’ made thee a well lad an’ it’s th’ Good Thing. It isn’t like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names. Th’ Big Good Thing doesn’t stop to worrit, bless thee. It goes on makin’ worlds by th’ million—worlds like us. Never thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it.”
“Save Us! … Give Us
Success!”
Today’s scripture is a familiar one. We read the same story every year on this Sunday, Palm Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem ahead of the Passover festival, and a crowd lines the road and cheers him, with leafy branches and shouts of praise. But the shouts of praise are interesting. They’re not the spontaneous exclamations of inspired individuals. They are quotations drawn from Israel’s prayerbook, the Psalms. In fact, it is quite possible that they are sung, that the crowd are not just shouting their praise, they’re singing it.
The psalm that they are singing appears to be Psalm 118, which in Jewish tradition is sung at the conclusion of the Passover meal. It is, therefore, a song that would have been on the people’s mind as they prepare for the Passover feast. Of course, it would have had a special meaning for the followers of Jesus. “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” would refer not to some nameless savior in the future, but to the man in front their eyes, Jesus.
“Hosanna” means “save us, please.” It comes from the very same root that Jesus’ name comes from. In the Hebrew, you can hear the resonance. “Hoshi’a” and “Yeshua” (Jesus) come from the root word yasha, which means “to save.” The crowd are calling for Jesus to do what his name says he will do. In the song that they are singing (if it is indeed Psalm 118), the cry for salvation is expanded into a plea for success: “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!” (Ps 118:25). It’s a small detail, maybe, but a significant one, in my thinking. Do we not often ourselves conflate salvation with success, rescue with what we want? When the crowd moves on to sing, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David,” I hear echoes of a tribal battle cry, a partisan proclamation, “Make us great again, and our enemies small.”
Just Resentments Waiting
to Happen
The recovery community has a helpful adage, “Expectations are just resentments waiting to happen.” To be clear, expectations are different from hope. Hope is not so definite, so controlling. It does not prescribe what happens next, but only trusts in the possibility of goodness, the possibility of growth. In my view, the story of Palm Sunday is not about hope, but about great expectations. Expectations that will be dashed and ground to disappointment, expectations that will fester into resentment and resignation. The crowd that cries, “Hosanna,” will in several days cry, “Crucify him.”
It seems, in fact, that every expectation is reversed in Holy Week. All of the kingly, messianic symbols sit askew on Jesus. He processes in, not on a war horse, but on a beast of burden. He will wear not a crown of jewels, but of a crown of thorns. People will proclaim him king (“hail, king of the Jews!”), but in a mocking tone accompanied with spitting and hitting. He will be high and lifted up, but on a cross. Most kingdoms begin with the deaths of their enemies (as was the case in this nation), but his kingdom will begin with the death of the king.
“Give Us Control”
There is an extremely prescient, prophetic line hidden in Psalm 118, the song of praise that the crowd sings on Palm Sunday: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22). We’ve been talking this Lent about the rejections that Jesus endures en route to the cross. Well, in a single line, this song tells the story of our rejection of Jesus. The builders have a plan. A blueprint. A vision for the building. They see a stone that doesn’t fit, and so they throw it away. Reject it. And yet it is this very stone that will become the cornerstone of their salvation.
I believe this single line tells a universal story. We humans are like builders. Which means we have our plans, blueprints, tools. We want to be in control. In control of ourselves, in control of others, in control of the circumstances around us. Is this not the prayer we hear in Psalm 118? “O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!” Give us control.
Building Vs. Growing
But as I ponder this line—“the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone”—as I turn it over in my heart, I become aware of its oddity, its strangeness. When Jesus talks about the kingdom, he uses a very different metaphor. He repeatedly talks about sowing and growing. This agricultural metaphor harbors a host of suggestions about the kingdom. Chief among them is the suggestion that we are not in control of the kingdom. We are not its builders. We do not have the master plan. As Jesus says in one of his parables, “[The farmer] would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how” (Mark 4:27).
Elsewhere Jesus talks about the kingdom as something we receive, whether as little children who trustingly receive a gift from their parent, or as a person who receives an invitation to enter a banquet. Again, it is clear, the kingdom is not something we build. Rather, it is already here, sometimes as small as a seed. Our duty is not to build it or construct it, but to trust in its growth and to receive it as though it were already among us, as Jesus says it is.
What We Need:
The Unseen Power of Love
I think back to how The Secret Garden captivated me as a fourth grader. The secret, unseen energy and growth and possibility that was bigger than me, bigger than my control, was not a threat but in fact good news. It was, as Mrs. Sowerby called it, “the Big Good Thing.” The irony of Palm Sunday is the irony that what we want is often the opposite of what we need. We want control, we want to be builders. But the cornerstone of God’s salvation is the opposite. It is trust and dependency, care and nurture. God is love, not power.
For much of Lent, I’ve referred to Jesus’ brokenness, which, admittedly, can risk giving the wrong impression. I do not think Jesus is helpless. Rather I think Jesus is infinitely helped by the Spirit of God who dwells within him. I think Jesus’ brokenness is in fact his greatest strength. I think it shows us a very different kind of power than the one we want, than the one that we cry for when we cry, “O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!” Jesus’ brokenness is the poverty of spirit, the need, that draws him into the care and nurture of God, which is the Big Good Thing, the unseen energy and growth and possibility that brings life from death, that turns a single grain of wheat into much fruit, that renews the face of creation.
In the Lenten Bible Study small group, we talked recently about the symbolic significance of gardens in the Bible. Whatever else they are, they are also reminders of that original goodness and intimacy that we humans enjoyed with God. Is it a coincidence that Jesus’ metaphors of seeds and growth present God’s kingdom as a garden?
This Palm Sunday, as Jesus enters Jerusalem and the crowd dreams of control and fantasizes about its blueprints for success finally realized, I’m thinking it may be worthwhile for me to pause and ponder the difference between what I want and what I need. It may be worthwhile to ponder how Jesus disappoints my expectations, how my expectations may even become resentments and resignation. But if I ponder this, I hope I do not stop there. For the good news is that the stone I reject, is in fact my salvation. This seemingly powerless man Jesus, in fact bears witness to an extraordinary power, the Big Good Thing. I may take a page from Jesus’ book, and look for God’s kingdom right here, not as something I build, but as seeds growing by the unseen power of love. As the child Mary declares in The Secret Garden, and I think she’s onto the gospel of God’s love here—“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
Prayer
Sometimes we look toward you
With great expectations
Instead of with hope
…
This Palm Sunday,
Help us to distinguish
Between our wants and needs.
Help us to relinquish our blueprints
And instead to marvel
At the growth in our midst,
At the Big Good Thing of love,
Fallen like a grain of wheat
And bearing much fruit.
Amen.
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