Sermons
A little over ten years ago now, I saw something that would not allow me to experience the Creation account from Scripture quite the same ever again. I never thought that would happen because of a two-minute advertisement on television. But, of course, it was from the most expensive night of the year for companies so financially engrossed in such a viral business, as hundreds of millions of people watch around the world to see which professional football team would reign victorious at the conclusion of yet another season on the gridiron. And so, Dodge aired something rather unique in the grand scheme of the usual lineup of commercials: some of which make us laugh, some that offer a new perspective on the world, some we wish to forget, some…we don’t know exactly what to make of them, no matter the exorbitant amount spent in producing them. Nevertheless, as their lineup of trucks were interspersed amidst the 120 seconds, everything else about that briefest of time, would never allow me to experience the Creation account the same.
Amidst an initial crackling sound, almost creating this audio feeling of reaching back into a dusty corner room storing older recordings; there emerged a voice that might just encapsulate Americana itself. Paul Harvey originally spoke these words decades before to a Future Farmers of America Convention, but it would end up pulling at America’s and at heartstrings around the globe several years ago, with his nearly holy addendum to the long-cherished Creation story. A portion of which, went like this:
And on the eighth day, God looked down on [the] paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So, God made a farmer.
God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So, God made a farmer…
God said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain’n from ‘tractor back,’ put in another seventy-two hours.” So, God made a farmer…
God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners.
Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church. Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life ‘doing what dad does.’” So, God made a farmer.
Yes, Paul Harvey’s poem hits a little closer to home being the son of a farmer, to be sure, but it also provides an interesting connection to this Holy Trinity Sunday. This day that can perhaps entice us to dive into some rather intricate details that may be slightly above our mortal pay grade. How exactly can God be three persons and yet one God? Who among the trio shaped the plants and animals and humanity, or was it a Divine team effort? Who of the Holy Trinity continues to shape specific parts of our lives today, or is it all the above all the time? It can be a bit complex, to say the least.
Growing up on a farm, I recognized over and over and over again, the whole bringing sources of nourishment from the ground is rather complex, to say the least. It isn’t quite as simple as just dropping a seed in the ground, and hope for the best. There are so…many…details…to master, and when it does not work out to human satisfaction, as it often doesn’t for any farmer, you still have to keep on trying anyway, as if your family and the world depend on you. And such mind-boggling complexity and seemingly overwhelming pressure sometimes leads not-cut-out-for-that me and plenty of others to find futures elsewhere, because not all of us are shaped by God to be farmers, to put it rather mildly.
Nevertheless, on this Holy Trinity Sunday, as we are invited to consider and also marvel over many complexities about this wondrous God and our all-around, sometimes complicated, journey of faith even amidst a breath-taking paradise; through it all, we are still blessed with the heart-warming assurance that God shapes us not to have to figure out every…single…detail. Instead, God sets us free to bring our own precious form of tenderness and compassion and dedication, as described in Harvey’s eighth day treasure, to life. But on this Sabbath day, and all our days, we cling to the Gospel that continues to majestically captivate us: that, when God looks around, God insists we are, somehow, someway, still very good in the Divine eyes: more than good enough to be worthy of the entire Trinity’s ministry of creating and loving and sustaining and forgiving and dying and rising to live with us now and forevermore. And for that Greatest News for us all, we most certainly give thanks to God, indeed! Amen!
Image: The Farm at Prophetstown (homeofpurdue.com)