As a kid I spent a good deal of time around creek banks and exploring the woods around our house. I’d get these annoying prickly burrs that would attach themselves to my clothes. Before arriving home I’d have to sit down and take the time to deliberately pluck each of the burrs off my socks.
Whatever these plants around the woods and creek banks were they had a remarkable way of reproducing themselves. Each of these burrs is actually a seed from that plant. The tiny spikes allowed them to inconveniently attach themselves to my socks and they’d hitchhike on any animal’s coat without asking permission. These seeds would drop off in another place and produce a new plant.
Let’s think about this for a moment…
Seemingly without even trying these plants have a remarkable ability to live and re-produce themselves. They didn’t gather around a big conference table, drink a bunch of coffee and discuss a power point presentation on growth strategy. They’re just being themselves! Simply by being the plant they were created to be they re-produce their kind all over the place.
This memory resurfaced for me after recently spending time with my friend, Alan, a Jewish rabbi, who over the years of our relationship has opened my eyes to the importance of seeds from the perspective of the scriptures.
From the beginning of the creation story apparently seeds are a big deal to God. In Genesis the author spills a good deal of ink to say this,
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.”
Seeds that produce fruit that produce seeds that produce more fruit – God calls this very natural, quiet, and generative way of being, good. The creation story in Genesis also helps us see that we – the human race - are seeds made in God’s image. We are daughters and sons – “seeds” of the good and loving God. We don’t create it, achieve it, or eventually work our way up to attain it. The Divine Image is intrinsically and naturally planted within each of us.
Living the resurrection - the new growth - of Christ’s peace and love ultimately is a matter of being our true selves. Richard Rohr says, “A preoccupation with the False Self gets in the way of experiencing and knowing this reality. The False Self is an imaginary self that thinks it’s separate; it is the self that I think I am. The False Self is what has to die so your True Self can live.”
To reflect on the very nature of this seemingly pointless plant that leaves burrs on our socks helps me recognize just how complicated we tend to make God. Just like this plant, God is trying to give away more of God in every moment of presence. And yet, we create barriers, doctrinal hoops, legalistic constraints, and so many complex hurdles to the very natural process of receiving and giving away God.
Similar to the plant with the prickly burrs sometimes I see the resurrection life most clearly in my homeless friends living on the streets. They simply have nothing other than who they are today and so they freely give away the resources they possess to other poor folks so that they can keep on living. It’s all so easy to overlook and very humbling when our eyes actually do lay hold of it.
The resurrection life is all right here right now often being expressed in the most culturally irrelevant of ways. What does it mean to live the resurrection and to experience and give away the living Christ for us today? It seems it has everything to do with the ridiculous simplicity of being our naked and true self just as I we were created to be. Maybe we’re trying too hard. There’s nothing all that eye-catching or sensational about it. It’s about seeing the seeds – the generative image of God within us. In this season with all its focus on resurrection may we recognize it and enjoy it to the point where we can’t help but give it away.
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