Like a Mustard Seed

Posted on June 16, 2024 by Greg Johnston

Like a Mustard Seed

00:00 / 11:29

Sermon — June 16, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

I love the middle of June. For me, it’s the time when the world feels most vibrant, especially on a day when it’s 72 degrees with a light breeze, like today, and the wind is rustling through the leaves. Those leaves blow me away. They’re as green as the altar hangings. Greener, in fact, almost a truer kind of green that makes the sogginess of spring feel like it’s finally paid off. June is a time of transformation and growth. The school year is coming to an end, and summer vacation is beginning, and you can see it in the faces of the children on the street. The days are as long as they’re going to get, and you can hear it in the songs of the birds in the morning. The days are warm and bright, and all around Charlestown, on streets wide and narrow, utility trucks have sprouted up to jackhammer and to dig round the clock.

Even Jesus has joined in the spirit of the season. For his part, he gives us two parables of growth this Sunday, two images from the natural world to help us understand the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is like a seed, sown in the ground, he says; and the kingdom of God is like the mustard seed, smallest of all the seeds.

There’s a parade today, so that’s all the cute intro you’ll get. Let’s dig right in.

Actually, first, I should say a word about what these parables are about: the “kingdom of God.” Jesus doesn’t say “God is like a sower, who scatters seed on the ground.” And he doesn’t say that faith is like a mustard seed, which will grow in you—that’s a different parable altogether. (Matthew 17:20, Luke 13:19) These parables aren’t about you, or Jesus, or God, but “the kingdom of God,” and for Jesus, this is almost a technical term. It’s the main thing that Jesus teaches about. He isn’t here to tell us what to do, or even to tell us how to deepen our spiritual lives. He’s here to tell us something about “the kingdom of God.”

This “kingdom” is not a place—it’s more of a situation, or a state of reality. It’s the kingship of God, it’s the idea of God becoming king, and no one else. The people of Israel had been ruled in the past by famous kings, by David and Solomon and all their heirs, but they had gone astray; they were not “good shepherds” of the people. In Jesus’ day, they’d been ruled for hundreds of years by foreign kings, who had no interest in anything but their own power. The prophets had long foretold that there would come a time when God himself would become king, when God would give up on human rulers and come down to shepherd the people. So “the kingdom of God” is a kind of shorthand for what God is doing in this world to bring about God’s vision of justice and peace.

As Jesus begins his ministry, John the Baptist is preaching that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near!” (Mark 1:15) Jesus begins to teach the people what that means. And they’re curious: Will he lead them in a revolutionary war? Will they finally throw the Roman armies out? Will the kingdom of God finally come, with God ruling over the people in splendor and glory? Will there be a parade?

Not exactly.

I want to say three things about these two parables of the kingdom of God:

Thing Number 1: The kingdom grows slowly, on its own schedule, in unobserved and often-unobservable ways. It’s like a seed, sown upon the earth. Day after night, the farmer wakes up, and checks on the seed, and goes to sleep, (4:27) but nothing that the farmer does affects its growth, especially in the days before modern fertilizers and irrigation, when it was all just up to the soil and the rain. The farmer can’t even see the change: the seed sprouts and grows, but it’s down there in the dirt, and it’s not until it sprouts up that the farmer knows it’s growing at all. The earth “produces of itself,” our translation somewhat awkwardly says: Mark says in Greek that the earth bears fruit automátē, “automatically,” and I like that. (4:28) Whatever God’s doing in the world, it’s happening in its own way and on its own time, and we can barely even see it growing, let alone do anything to hurry it along.

And yet—and here’s Thing Number 2—things only happen slowly until they happen all at once. Night turns to day, and day turns to night; the farmer goes to sleep, and rises again, as the seed slowly grows into a plant: the stalk, the head, the grain, then BANG! The sickle comes out. (4:29) There’s nothing for the farmer to do, day after day until field of grain is ripe, and then there’s more work than there’s time, because the harvest has come. It’s like the parable of the leaven, when Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like a little yeast mixed into some flour. The dough rises slowly, for a while, and then when it’s ready, it goes into the oven. God acts in the world through slow, steady preparation—then sudden transformation.

And what a transformation it is. That’s Thing Number 3: When God starts working in the world or in our lives, we can’t begin to imagine what’s coming on the other side. The mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds—not really, but whatever—but the shrub that grows is big. And this is a testament to the scale of what God can do. But the parable of the mustard seed isn’t just about God making something big from something very, very small. The shrub and the seed aren’t just different in quantity; they’re different in kind.

Who could look at a tiny mustard seed and picture the entire plant? Who could look at an acorn or a little whirligig and imagine the oak or the maple? Take a look at one of those trees outside, towering and green, and try to imagine its whole growth. And then run the process in reverse: If all you had were seeds, would you really be able to imagine those towering trees, with their bright green leaves?

We live in a world of seeds, just beginning to grow. And we can only begin to imagine what they will become. All around us, in our neighborhoods, in our families, in our own lives, the kingdom of God is growing like a seed. Whatever change God is bringing about, it’s going to come slowly, slowly, slowly—then all at once.

You might not notice it right now. The mustard seed, after all, is very small. And if you’re wondering how small, well… I don’t usually go in for gimmicky props in my preaching, but “for everything there is a season.” And all around this church I’ve hidden a dozen mustard seeds. And I’ve left a couple little bowls, on the way out the two doors, for you to take one home.

And your homework is this—It has two parts:

Keep your eyes open for the mustard seeds of the kingdom that are scattered around this church, and scattered around your life. Keep your eyes open for the actual mustard seeds, or Brian’s going to be very confused. But pay attention, too, to the changes you see in yourself, or in the people around you, and start to ask: Is this a seed of something God is doing? How will I know it’s sprouted and is ready to harvest?
Take a seed home. And try to keep track of it. And when you lose it, as you inevitably will, remind yourself that this is exactly the point; that the seeds of the kingdom of God are small, and easy to lose track of, but they are nevertheless there.

“For you have made [us] glad by your acts, O Lord,
and [we] shout for joy because of the works of your hands.”
(Psalm 92:4)

Amen.

Free Will

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Greg Johnston

Free Will

00:00 / 11:55

Sermon — June 9, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Have you ever heard the one about the college undergrad who wanders into a debate about the nature of free will?

So, a group of philosophy professors is meeting for their monthly faculty lunch. And they’re arguing about free will. Do we, as human beings, have control over our actions, or are they just the result of physical or biological processes beyond our control?

“Look, people are responsible for their actions,” one professor says over lunch. “Yes, of course they’re shaped by their experiences of the past. But we know that mature human beings make choices all the time between right and wrong. We have free will, and we’re responsible for what we do with it.”

“Oh, come on!” says the second one. “We can’t just work off intuition. Psychology clearly show that our brains make decisions for us before we’ve even consciously realized it, and then we come up with the rationalizations after. Our wills aren’t free at all; our actions are just the result of biology. Empirical science shows that free will is an illusion.”

“Science?” asks the third. “You want to talk about science? Don’t you know anything about how the advent of quantum physics has opened our eyes to a non-deterministic model of causality!?” Things are really heating up.

Just then, a sophomore who’s wandered into the room pipes up. “I’m not so sure about free will. I walked in here, and I saw your lunch buffet, and— I know it was wrong, and I knew I shouldn’t do it, but, well… I just couldn’t stop myself. I ate all the cookies.”

From the Christian theological perspective, at least, there are really two different questions about free will: “Do we have free will?” as in, are the choices we make totally determined by some outside thing, by biology or physics or even by God, or are they under our control? But there’s another question, too— “Do we have free will?” as in, “When we make a decision, whether that’s really an individual choice or determined by some outside force—can we actually follow through?” Are our wills free? Or are they somehow in chains?

The Apostle Paul famously wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15) You may know the feeling. Our cookie-eating student certainly does. It’s what Martin Luther called, somewhat ominously, The Bondage of the Will, the fact that the human will is, in some sense, constrained; that there’s some gap between our conscious decision-making processes, and the things we actually do. And I think this is the more relevant question about free will. With all due respect to our philosophical friends, few people are bothered day to day about whether their decisions are predetermined by biology or physics or not; but many people struggle with the inadequacy of their willpower to carry out those decisions.

It’s a pattern that dates back all the way to the beginning of humankind, to this foundational story of Adam and Eve in the Garden. They had free will, and they gave it away. They received the command from God never to eat the fruit of the tree that stood in the middle of the Garden. But they ate it, anyway.

They try to pass the blame along. Both Adam and Eve try to claim that they didn’t have free will, that their actions had some cause outside themselves. “The woman whom you gave me,” says Adam, trying to pin the blame not only on Eve but on God, “she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” (Gen. 3:12) Then God turns to Eve: Don’t look at me! she seems to say. “The serpent tricked me, and I ate!” (Gen. 3:13)

It’s not a very good defense. God entrusted them with the freedom to choose, but told them not to eat the fruit, but they did it anyway, and so God put enmity between the serpent in the Garden and the woman, and between their descendants. And this sounds just about right, because here we are, all these generations later, still struggling against our demons.

You often find Jesus battling demons, too. That’s not just a cute segue from one reading to the next. Much of Jesus’ time, in his early ministry, especially in this early Gospel of Mark, is spent casting out demons of one kind or another. Before he even begins teaching the disciples anything, in the third chapter of the Gospel of Mark, here he is, so renowned for his demon-fighting skills that people have begun to speculate. Is he a demon himself? Or at least, demon-possessed? Is he a sorcerer who calls on one dark power to defeat another?

Not at all, Jesus replies. “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.” (Mark 3:23-24) To use evil to cast out evil would only weaken itself.

Jesus isn’t evil, or using evil powers. I assume we can all agree on that.

But Jesus continues with an interesting image, that’s a little less obvious: “No one can enter the Strong One’s house,” he says, “and plunder his property, without first tying up the Strong One; then indeed the house can be plundered.” (Mark 3:27) Of all the metaphors we have for who Jesus is and what Jesus does, this has to be one of the strangest: Jesus Christ, Burglar.

Here’s one way to understand what Jesus means: The house is the world in which we live. The Strong One is the spiritual force of evil, violence, and despair that Jews and Christians have sometimes personified as Satan or the serpent. Jesus’ ultimate battle is not with any of the smaller forces of evil, the demons that afflicted people in their lives. Jesus first needs to confront the great power, the Strong One himself, and tie him up; and when that power is bound, then the property in the house can be plundered; when the Strong One is held captive, then we can be freed.

This is, ultimately, the story of Jesus’ life, and of his journey toward the Cross. Jesus is headed toward a struggle against all the powers that hold us down, against the power of Death itself. And we live now, as always, in the in-between time, when Jesus’ victory has begun, but is not yet complete; when the Strong One has been bound, but we’re not yet fully free.

And so we have the ability to love. We have the ability to will and to work for the good. But our wills are not yet completely free to do what’s right, as perfectly as we might want.

So there’s the bad news: the human will isn’t free. We will never reach the place of perfect self-control, in which our conscious decisions and our actions are always perfectly aligned. We’ll never even reach the place in which our decisions or our values are exactly what they should be. We’ll never quite love God with our whole hearts. It’s unlikely that we’ll love our neighbors as ourselves; that bar can be very high, depending on the neighbor. We’ll come here, again and again, with the need to confess our smaller sins, our gossip or apathy, our harsh words or our imperfect compassion—and sometimes even bigger ones.

But that’s good news, too: the human will isn’t free. If you find yourself, coming here, again and again, just as imperfect as the week before— It’s not just you. And I don’t mean that to pass along the blame (“The woman whom you gave me, she gave me the fruit!”) I mean it as an antidote to shame. There’s no shame in being an imperfect person, in having imperfect control over your will. That’s not an individual flaw. That’s the human condition. And everyone else faces that struggle, too.

But there’s even better news than that, and it’s this: We’re not facing that struggle alone. The Holy Spirit is with you, in all the decisions and all the actions of daily life, strengthening you, helping you grow toward a more consistent and a more compassionate kind of love; pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you in those decisions and in those actions, when you need God’s help. Jesus has already gone before you, to bind up the Strong One so that you can be free, even if imperfectly so. And God is beckoning you forward, inviting you into a renewed and restored life, raising you up just as Jesus was raised (2 Cor. 4:14). So “do not lose heart,” as Paul says. “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed, day by day.” Amen.

The Gospel of Mark

Posted on June 4, 2024 by Greg Johnston

Savvy readers may know that our readings in worship follow a cycle called the “Revised Common Lectionary,” which tries to read through much of the Bible over the course of three years of Sunday mornings. Each year is assigned a different gospel: Year A is Matthew, Year B is Mark, and Year C is Luke.

Even savvier readers may notice that this leaves out John, and indeed the Gospel of John doesn’t have its own dedicated year in the lectionary; instead, bits of John are squeezed into the holiday seasons of every year, and John also features prominently in the year of Mark, which is otherwise the shortest gospel.

All of which is to say: Given that we’ll be spending most of the rest of 2024 reading through the Gospel of Mark (with the exception of a long excursus through John 6 in late summer), I thought I’d say a few words about the gospel as a whole right now, as a way of framing what we’ll be reading for the next few months.

People often call the Gospel of Mark “a passion story with an introduction,” and this is about half true. Mark is the shortest of the four gospel stories in our New Testament canon, and so its story of the Passion takes up relatively more of the text than in the others: Jesus’ ministry in Galilee occupies chapters 1-9, his ministry in Judea chapter 10, and then the story of his trial, crucifixion, and death chapters 11-15. Mark lacks much of the teaching material you’ll find in Jesus’ sermons in Matthew and Luke, and even the familiar stories of Jesus’ birth and childhood—in Mark, Jesus emerges fully grown, travels around Galilee for a year, and then goes to die.

In the early centuries of the church, Mark was often seen as “lacking” in some way, a book that was canonical and inspired but essentially an abbreviation of Matthew, with much of Jesus’ teaching taken out. Modern scholars tend to reverse the story of those two books; while ancient authors tended to believe that Matthew was written first, and abbreviated into Mark, modern scholars typically believe Mark to have been the earliest of the gospels, to which additional material was added and rearranged to form the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

In any case, the Gospel of Mark is worth reading on its own. It confronts the reader with the immediacy of the gospel. “Immediately,” in fact, is Mark-the-Narrator’s favorite word: in the first chapter alone, Jesus is baptized, and upon emerging from the water “immediately he saw the heavens being torn open… and the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” (Mark 1:10, 12) He calls Simon and Andrew and “immediately they left their nets and followed him,” and at the next boat down the beach he sees James and John “and immediately he called them.” (Mark 1:18, 20) If Mark were a movie, it would be an action movie, all quick cuts and special effects.

And about those special effects. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus is a preacher: he gives sermons full of parables and stories. In John, he’s an esoteric teacher, unveiling theological truths. In Mark, Jesus is Jesus Christ, Demon-Fighter. Of course, Jesus does all of these things in all of the gospels, and many more things besides, but the inclusion of different quantities of material from each category gives each gospel a distinct feel.

Andrew McGowan, a scholar of the early church and priest (and my former seminary dean!), writes:

We may be put off by the symbolic language of the demonic, or miss the point by imagining it refers to arcane supernatural matters far from our experience. In the world of the Gospels the forces of good and evil are both metaphysical and concrete; they are manifest in disease, oppression, and suffering of all kinds…

Jesus has not really begun teaching yet. This was not the basis of the movement around him for Mark, because teaching is something that Jesus only subsequently does (see chapter 4), for and with his followers, to provide formation for the movement he has already begun. The reason people are with him is his demonstrated willingness to name and confront the powers of evil, both as manifested supernaturally and in the political structures of the day—if indeed it is right to separate these at all. His movement is coalescing.

You could almost think of the Gospel of Mark as the inspiration for the storytelling genre of the video game or fantasy series. Starting from his home town, Jesus battles against a series of bosses, each one tougher than the last, as he continues along his quest. The story proceeds in a series of episodes, one struggle immediately following another. But this series of adventures isn’t merely the “introduction” to the passion story: it’s a series of battles in the same war.

Jesus’ ultimate enemy is not the Pharisees. It’s not the Herodians. It’s not even the Romans. Jesus’ ultimate enemy is death itself, and every small stand he takes along the way is a stand against some part of the forces of power, evil, and death in this world.

In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus is accused of using the power of Satan to cast out demons; surely only someone could battle demons so effectively by channeling the power of an even greater demon! Jesus replies, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” Evil is his enemy, not his tool. And then he continues: “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed, the house can be plundered.” (Mark 3:27)

We live in the “strong man’s house.” We live in a world in which the powers of evil and death hold sway. And yet we also live in a world after Jesus’ death and resurrection, a world in which the Strong One has been tied up; dangerous, still, but on the way to defeat.

You may be accustomed to hearing the Gospels and listening for Jesus to teach you or to tell you something, to offer some spiritual wisdom that you might be able to apply to you life. If that’s the case, then over the next few months as we listen to Jesus’ words but hear a lot about his deeds, I’d invite you to consider: What is Jesus doing in the story this week? What is Jesus battling against? What aspect of the Strong One, the power of evil that rules this world, is Jesus “tying up” this week? And if it’s tied up, then — How am I being set free?

The Sabbath was Made for Humankind

Posted on June 2, 2024 by Greg Johnston

The Sabbath was Made for Humankind

00:00 / 15:06

Sermon — June 2, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

“Let’s go, my beloved, to meet the bride,” one 16^th-century Hebrew hymn begins, “Let’s welcome the face of Shabbat. To greet Shabbat let’s go, let’s be gone, for she is the wellspring of blessing… Shake yourself free, rise from the dust, dress in your garments of splendor, my people.” And to this day, in synagogues all around the world, this song is sung on Friday at dusk, to welcome the arrival of the Sabbath day of rest on Saturday. The hymn captures the joy of a day of rest at the end of a long week of work. Who among us has wanted to sing, on a Friday afternoon, “Shake yourself free, rise from the dust!” It’s a liturgical TGIF, literally.

It reminds me of something my friend Meg used to say, more informally. Meg was doing a master’s degree in Jewish Studies when I was in seminary, and we ended up taking a bunch of classes together, including one with a discussion section that met early Friday afternoon, just a few hours before Shabbat began. I remember Meg leaving class one day as exams loomed over us and we were all studying hard, and saying goodbye—not with the traditional Shabbat Shalom, “Have a peaceful Shabbat,” but with a hopeful and joyous phrase that I will never forget: “Shabbat sh’almost!” Thank God it’s Friday.

But keeping the Sabbath isn’t always pure joy. I think of the story of the Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell, whose story is told in the movie Chariots of Fire. Going into the 1924 Olympics, Liddell was favored to win the 100 meter dash. But he ultimately refused to run because the heats for the 100 were being held on a Sunday, and as a good Scottish Presbyterian, he refused to violate the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy for something so frivolous as a footrace. The story has a happy ending—Liddell ended up winning the 400m race in Paris—but it’s a good example of the burden that observing the Sabbath can be in a world that doesn’t expect it.

You might think that we live in the best of both worlds. In our culture, many of us get two days off from work at the end of the week, not just one. We should have twice the TGIF joy as a 16^th-century Jewish hymn writer. And at the same time, the days of wet-blanket Puritan restrictions are behind us. Shops and restaurants are open on Sundays. No one will scold you if they see you having fun on the Lord’s Day. And yet—I think we desperately need the Sabbath more than ever, these days.

The origins of the Sabbath stretch back to the beginning of time. On six days, God worked to create the universe; on the seventh day, God rested. And you, too, are to rest, God told the ancient Israelites. Not just the privileged who can afford to take the day of, or the especially devout who want to keep it holy; but everyone: you, your son, your daughter, your ox, your donkey; even the people from foreign lands living among you; even the people you have enslaved will rest, God tells them, because you remember that you were enslaved, and made to work without rest. (Deut. 5:14-15) And the descendants of those Israelites whom Pharaoh had enslaved vowed never again to give up the opportunity to rest.

The Jewish people were considered remarkable in the ancient world, in fact, for the custom of the Sabbath day. Ancient writers commented on this peculiar ethnic custom of taking a day off each work, something no other ancient people did. But the Sabbath was vital to Jewish life. Observing it is not just taking a day off from work. It’s taking a day off from work so that you can be with family, and community, and God. On the Sabbath, the people of God enter an alternate reality. They are free from the hierarchies of the everyday, in which their lives are determined by the boss’s instructions, or by the demands of productivity. And they enter a time of community and presence. “The Sabbath,” the great 20^th-century Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share.”

The Christian relationship to the Sabbath has always been complicated by Jesus’ own complicated relationship to the Sabbath, which is often misunderstood. Consider our two stories in Mark today. It may seem at first glance as if Jesus is rejecting the Sabbath entirely, flagrantly violating the Sabbath commandments. But this is only the case if you assume that the Pharisees are right about what is and isn’t allowed. Jesus’ disciples pluck some grain from the fields to eat; the Pharisees ask, “why are they doing what’s not lawful on the Sabbath?” (Mark 2:24) But this is begging the question. It’s not lawful on the Sabbath to work; but the commandment doesn’t explain what this means. Are the disciples working on the Sabbath? None of them are grain-pluckers by trade. The rabbinic tradition would later codify thirty-nine categories of work that are forbidden on the Sabbath, but in the centuries around Jesus’ life it was all still open for debate.

Could you require your employees to work on the Sabbath? Absolutely not, and Jesus doesn’t say you could. Should you go to the syngagogue, to read and pray on the Sabbath? Yes, and Jesus regularly did. Could you save a person’s life, even if it meant violating one of the other laws? Yes, and any Orthodox rabbi today would tell you that you are in fact commanded to break the Sabbath to save a life. Should you heal someone today who could be healed tomorrow? Well, that was where Jesus and the Pharisees are having their debate.

If you assume that Sabbath observance is narrow and defined, it might seem that Jesus is rejecting it. But if you recognize that the debate over the Sabbath was in fact very broad, it seems clearer that Jesus is just participating in that debate. For Jesus, the emphasis seems to be on the joy of the Sabbath, an invitation from God to rest and be restored, rather than a series of limits to be obeyed. To eat and to be healed are part of that Sabbath restoration and rest.

Plucking a bit of grain when you’re hungry and walking through a field, is not like working for Pharaoh seven days a week. It’s not even quite like working in your own field, if that’s what you do every day. To say to someone, “stretch out your hand,” and to heal them as they do, is not work. Not for Jesus. It’s not something that distracts people from the presence of God, that defiles a holy day. It’s something that points them to God, that shows them God’s miraculous presence in their midst.

“The Sabbath was made for humankind,” Jesus says, “not humankind for the sabbath.” (2:27) And so he embraces the Sabbath principle of rest, that builds up humankind, and he tends to lean in the direction of allowing anything that builds us up, rather than discouraging anything that could be work.

“The Sabbath was made for humankind.” The Sabbath was made for you. God has invited you to cease your work; to lay aside, for one day, the things that others are demanding of you, or that you’re demanding of yourself, and to take time to be with your community or family and with God, in a realm “where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share.”

Embracing the Sabbath today is not about going back to some imagined golden age, where everyone spent a day together in rest and prayer. We’ll probably never return to a world in which shops and restaurants are closed on Sundays, so retail and service workers can have a the day off, too. And in fact, we’re moving in the other direction. It’s hard to get that Sabbath rest when your work can buzz at you from your project, any time. And whether you have paid work or not, we all have “work” from which we need to rest, housework and volunteer work and the thousand small chores that we feel like we should do, and it’s hard to assert our freedom from them.

But Sabbath is good. Rest is good. And so, I want to invite you to think: What is your Sabbath time, and how can you observe it and keep it holy? Maybe for you it’s on Sunday morning, here, or on Saturday some time. Maybe it’s Friday family movie night, where you can order takeout and watch the same four movies over and over again. Maybe it’s the Wednesday-morning walking group where you have some time to reconnect with friends. Maybe it really is a day, a full day where you can put down the phone, and turn off the TV, and be present with the people around you. Or maybe for you, the Sabbath is a place, where you can go during the week and simply be, and not do. But in the end, the Sabbath is really an alternate reality, a way of being in which you are free to stop for a while and rest.

Wherever the Sabbath is, whenever the Sabbath is, God made it for you. And God’s inviting you to accept it. It can be very hard to unplug, to put down the list of todos, to stop working and let yourself rest. But if you can find that Sabbath place in your life, if you can “shake yourself free, [and] rise from the dust,” you just might find you look forward to it more than anything else, and when it approaches, you find yourself thinking: Shabbat sh’almost! The Sabbath is almost here.

Garden Update

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Greg Johnston

Many of you know that we’re in the midst of a process to renovate and improve the Garden, especially focusing on making the Garden a more accessible community space: widening and restoring some of the paths so they are accessible, broadening some of the paved areas in which we gather for food and conversation, adding lighting along the pathways, and gently grading the lower section of the Garden so that it forms an accessible ramp up to the upper section, rather than the sunken step (and giant puddle!) currently between the two sections. This work is being funded by a $150,000 Community Preservation Act grant.

This month, our Vestry approved a bid from one of three contractors who submitted proposals. The total cost will be well within the estimate, allowing the full cost of the project to be covered by the CPA grant. (The grant only covers accessibility and lighting, not any additional planting.) The exact timeline of the construction process has not been determined yet, but work should begin this summer.

So this week, I thought it would be fun to share a few reflections, memories, and especially photographs from the Garden’s past, as we prepare for the Garden’s future.

Around this time every year, the Wolcott Cutler Memorial Garden behind St. John’s is transformed into a sanctuary of its own. During the winter and early spring, the Garden is bare and brown, like everything, and often cut off from the world by puddles or snow. But during the spring and in the summer, it becomes an urban oasis. I often sit in the Garden to read or to write a sermon during the warmer months, and sometimes find myself absorbed by the world around me instead. The breeze rustles the leaves high above me, the shade and the cool walls of the church dispel the summer heat, the birds sign hymns all around, and—wait, have I already read this page?

And at the same time, the Garden is a wonderful community meeting place, where people from St. John’s and all of Charlestown come together: for lemonade hours and cookouts, for Monday night AA meetings and the Monday afternoon Turn It Around, Jr. youth group, for Charlestown Mothers’ Association New Moms’ groups and for Charlestown Nursery School nature exploration.

These two uses have always been a part of what was originally called the Forest Garden when it was envisioned by the Rev. Wolcutt Cutler, and later renamed the Cutler Memorial Garden in his memory. The Rev. Mr. Cutler, as you may know, was an avid photographer, and his photographs document some of the early life of the Garden: I thought I’d share some of my favorites below, along with some modern companions!

I share these pictures, the Rev. Cutler’s and mine, with deep gratitude for his vision and for the generations of volunteers who built the Forest Garden and have maintained it for generations, and especially for those members of our church who continue to keep it in such beautiful condition, and to work to improve it, today.