On an unseasonably warm day in March, I planted a bunch of seeds: lettuce, carrots, spinach, Swiss chard, arugula, and kale. After a few weeks I saw lettuce poking up, and some carrots, a bunch of chard. And then they disappeared. Maybe slugs got them, or voles. Our call to worship today talked about planting in tears and harvesting in joy. I planted in joy and experienced the heartbreak later. But the season is just getting started. It is still time to plant seeds.
Speaking of planting seeds, raise your hand if you attended one of the 1300 Hands Off protest events happening around the country yesterday. I’ll say more about how this is planting seeds in a moment. I know some of you are physically not able to do this sort of event anymore, and for others this just isn’t your thing, but notice that Prospect had a good turnout. Dave Mampel was there dressed as a clown. Cora and Frank Trujillo, Suzanne Anderson and her friends, Suzanne Fry, Jerry Sams, Patsy Severson, Jane Doggett, (Kathy Mahan?). The weather was perfect for a day outside. So many people were packing onto buses that the buses filled to capacity and had to stop letting people on. People on the buses were festive, with their signs and t-shirts. When I got to Seattle Center, there were musicians playing, some singing protest songs. There were police just standing around, ready for anything but I’m sure hoping it all stayed peaceful. There were information tables about all sorts of organizations doing good work to defend democracy.
And there were signs.
I always love looking at people’s homemade signs. Here is just a sampling of the messages:
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
What would Robin Hood do?
Who would Jesus disappear?
Tariffying times
Porsche = fast, Ferrari = faster, Tesla = fascist
I wish a woman had as many rights as a gun.
Resist like it’s 1938 Germany.
Cleanup on aisle 47.
The arc of the moral universe will not bend itself toward justice. We must help it.
Sorry, no cheap eggs but the deportations are free.
Congress: Get a spine!
Evil feeds on fear—be not afraid. (Where have we heard that before? “Be not afraid” starts every conversation between God or angels and humans.)
Addressing the current administration: IKEA has better cabinets than you.
Explaining what DOGE stands for: Diabolical Oligarchs Gaslighting Everyone.
We may be peaceful, but we are pissed.
The road to fascism is lined with people telling you to stop overreacting.
Since this event was called “Hands Off,” there were lots of signs picking up on that theme:
Hands off Medicare, hands off Medicaid, hands off education, hands off Social Security, immigrants, DEI, LGBTQ, free speech, cancer research, books, personal data, courts, libraries, public lands, veterans, NATO.
Here’s a longer one, which said it was a quote from T. Snyder’s “On Tyranny”:
To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.
If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so.
If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.
The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
People of all ages, shapes, sizes, and mobility levels turned out. A three-year-old boy near us was making his own art on poster board. A group of folks in wheelchairs hung out and talked. There were lots of flags: Ukrainian flags, Palestinian flags, US flags, sometimes upside down. There were messages in sidewalk chalk. There was an art area for kids. There was a band, and later someone singing and playing guitar. There were bicycles and scooters weaving through the crowd.
And there were speakers. Suzanne Fry, Patsy, Jerry, and I, who were standing together, couldn’t see the stage and couldn’t always hear the speakers. But one was Pramila Jayapal, who said, “Be strike ready and street ready.” The young man who followed her was Charles Douglas III of Common Power. He spoke about those who fought for civil rights 50 years ago at the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma on Bloody Sunday. He said, “This is not the beginning or the end of tyranny. We fight because it’s our turn to fight.”
We fight because it’s our turn to fight. In every age, there are authoritarian rulers who oppress the people. In Jesus’ day, he fought the Roman occupation and the Jews who went along with it. Paul, who we also read this morning, established churches around the Mediterranean, preaching the Good News everywhere, was often persecuted and imprisoned for doing so, and ultimately was killed. Jesus and Paul fought because it was their turn to fight, and they did not shy away because the work was dangerous. Jesus’ friend Mary sees where his fight will take him and makes the loving, costly gift of anointing his feet with nard and drying them with her hair. So tender.
If you look at the sidebar on the front of your bulletin, you will see a quote from Isaiah 43. For those of you on Zoom who do not have bulletins, here’s what I want to lift up: God says, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. The past is past. We don’t have it anymore. All we ever have is the present, the right now, and the opportunity to prepare for the future we want to see. Paul says something similar: “[T]his one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
This is what Jesus was doing: preparing for the road ahead. God promises to make a way in the wilderness, to provide water in the desert, but it’s still going to be wilderness. It’s still going to be desert. Uncharted territory, challenging, scary, dangerous. But God will be there.
One sign that you often see at rallies says, “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” Friends, it is time for us to be planting seeds for the future we want to live into. We may be planting with our tears, as we read in our call to worship, which came from Psalm 126. We may plant in fear, or grief, or frustration, or despair. But let us plant together. Let us refuse to be divided or cowed. Let us plant seeds of justice, love, hope, community, diversity, equality, inclusion, antiracism, . . . and joy.
I mentioned earlier that I planted lettuce, carrots, chard, spinach, and kale, and they all seem to have gotten munched by slugs or voles or something that found them tasty. But the arugula is growing. Whatever ate the other things doesn’t like the tangy taste of arugula—or garlic, or onions. I may grow a lot of arugula, garlic, and onions.
And perhaps the more vulnerable crops could grow if I surrounded them with onions.
That’s how we get through this. We plant seeds, and the stronger plants protect the ones more susceptible to attack. We stick together so that the whole garden can thrive.
God says, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Let us practice looking for where God is doing a new thing—where God is planting seeds that may need our protection and care to survive and thrive. Yesterday it felt that the God-energy was doing a new thing in Hands Off protests all over the country. Congress and big business and the courts may be cowed by the executive branch’s authoritarian orders, but we US citizens do not have to be. When we band together, we can insist on love of neighbor.
May we plant seeds, even with our tears so that we may harvest with shouts of joy. Amen.