Our Own, Personal, Secret Garden?
I was delighted to hear Pastor Tim refer to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett last Sunday. I was not acquainted with this story growing up, but my wife knew it and read it out loud to our two daughters as they grew up. So I got to hear it as an adult.
The story centers around a girl named Mary who is sickly and unwell but discovers a secret garden where she is so filled with the joie d’vivre that she becomes healthy. She then meets a sickly boy named Colin who is depressed and bedridden. He can’t believe that he can gain health or vitality as Mary did. But Mary is relentless in forcing him up and out and into activity. She shares her secret garden with him and lo and behold, he in fact finds health and vitality after all.
But Mary is relentless. Not only that she is quite unsympathetic, obnoxious sometimes, never taking no for an answer, and always poking and prodding Colin into further action. Her message to the unwell Colin was (my paraphrase) “Oh, get over yourself and do as you’re told.” She is quite pushy, very insistent, and is more stubborn and determined to get Colin up than Colin is determined to stay put. It is a battle of wills that Colin, much to his own happiness, loses.
And the brilliant part about using this story in a sermon is that Pastor Tim clearly intended us to see young Mary, the eleven or twelve year old cousin of Colin, as a type of Christ, the Christ-figure of the story. Tim seemed to be suggesting that Jesus pushes us to expand when we contract. That he is capable of forcing himself upon us when we become frightened and make the wrong choices based on a scared-to-death view of ourselves, of the world, and of God - that maybe Jesus doesn’t give up on us when we give up on ourselves and maybe he pushes and pulls and prods us toward spiritual health and freedom and usefulness and productivity.
I think Tim hinted at all that. And that’s good because we really, really need to be pursued and helped. Because truth-to-tell we are all spiritually like Colin, we are not at all like Mary, no matter who we think we are. We are Colin not Mary. Jesus is Mary.
Generosity, compassion, gratitude. Those are the themes of this series. Who among us doesn’t know we should be more generous? Who among us does not believe we could use a little (or a lot) more compassion? Which one of us can say we are filled with gratitude and thankfulness all the time?
Nobody, that’s who.
It is like the great commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Who among us has ever managed that kind of a spiritual state of mind for more than two seconds, consecutively? Hmm? (Don’t lie to me, this is the Gospel Crank you’re talking to).
Where are we going to get the gumption to do, be, or have any of these things - generosity, compassion, gratitude? From within ourselves? Should we do a gut check and tap into our secret stash of will-power and make ourselves behave in these ways? C’mon now, everybody, grab those spiritual boot straps and PULL!
Doesn’t work? Maybe just fake it then. Put on a happy face.
Or does the power, is the source, does the force come from somewhere else, or from someone else or from somewhere outside of us?
If we are all Colins (and we are, don’t argue with me on this one), is there a Mary who will come and get us and show us who we are in her world? Is there a rescuer who will not believe in our version of ourselves, but show us a new version to believe in?
Is there?
The Gospel Crank
