Embrace Your Call and Birth Your Holy Longings!
Mother's Day 2006. Scripture text: John 15: 1 - 8
By guest speaker Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Bochonok, Assoc/LSSC
At First United Methodist Church, Bremerton, WA (USA)

Happy Mothers Day! Meister Eckhart, a famous 13th century mystic and theologian taught, "We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born..." Holy longings need birthing to avoid living superficial lives. But how do we birth those sacred yearnings? Today's gospel reading brings some answers, inviting us into God's soul garden, where God-seekers from all walks of life can experience renewal, rebirth and rejuvenation.

"One is closer to God's heart in the garden than anywhere else in the world." Even with limited to nil gardening experience, today's gospel passage has something for everyone desiring to live close to God's heart in the garden of life.

Calling All Souls.

The more I linger in the garden, the more I appreciate gardening spirituality and wisdom. There's something miraculous about it. Many gardeners joke about how their garden is their church - it gets them on their knees and they contribute money and effort in hopes of establishing stupendously beautiful, productive and inspirational gardens. We are created to be soul gardeners. Perhaps it's embedded deep within our DNA.

Submit to Divine Pruning

What does Jesus have to say about soul gardening? There are few gospel passages better known and beloved, yet least understood in the entire New Testament than John 15. This chapter is both profound and perplexing as Jesus intensively teaches his disciples about soul gardening before he is betrayed, arrested and crucified.

Perhaps some Old Testament background is helpful. The grapevine metaphor in Jewish scripture clearly meant the people of Israel and God as their vinegrower. As vinegrower, God carefully tends the vines and soil with specialized care, burning and destroying unfruitful and diseased branches. Generally speaking, the ancient people were often at fault and those biblical examples referred to divine judgment.

Jesus brings a radical new interpretation to this biblical metaphor. As the sinless one, he alone is the true and authentic divine vine. As believers, we are his branches. As his followers, divine pruning is essential for spiritual cleansing, transformation and vigor, even if such pruning literally cuts branches back to their bare stems to produce a higher yield of healthier fruit.

In the New Testament, pruning is a symbol of a godly life. Fruitfulness represents character virtues resulting from the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. These virtues include love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22). God creates us for good works through our life with Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:10).

Pruning is the kindest cut of all for God always has our best interests at heart. Sometimes divine pruning comes through other people. Be open to those possibilities. Just the other day, my spiritual director lovingly pruned me rather vigorously as she questioned me about my spiritual life. Her genuine concern is for me to live my fullest potential in God and not live a superficial life. Another spiritual friend always asks how my prayer life is.

What about you? How is your spiritual life? Accountability is never easy, but is necessary to fully embrace God's call to birth holy longings. Do you wish for a meaningful life in God? Do you yearn to live your fullest potential in God? If so, ask God for divine pruning and be accountable. Embrace your call and your holy longings will be birthed in the process.

But how, you ask, do we get there?

Abide in God

Begin by daily abiding in God. One of my fondest childhood memories is of my maternal grandmother, faithfully tending her tomato vines. She tended to her spiritual life with the same love and careful attention she gave to those prolific tomatoes.

Living into her nineties, Grandma Gunderson's favorite saying was "One day at a time, dear Lord, one day at a time." She should know, for life gave her some hard knocks. Shortly after immigrating to this country, she and my grandfather lost their first child on Christmas day. Together they survived the Great Depression, outlived all their children and numerous friends and family members, enduring many hard times in a foreign country during their seventy-two years of marriage, weathering many a crisis and storm.

How did they do it? What was the secret to their spiritual strength in the midst of adversity and difficulties? Their spiritual resiliency came from a lifetime of attending church and actively participating in the life of their spiritual community, helping however and whenever they could, even when it wasn't convenient, cheap or easy.

When in seminary during the late '80's, I learned the deeper source of their spiritual power as I lived with my maternal grandparents and my parents, as my mother struggled with an incurable form of cancer. For several years, we lived in one household, caring for each other in less than optimal circumstances. Every night I assisted my mother with her bedtime care and then my grandparents, for my grandfather was bedridden from multiple strokes.

Part of my grandparents bedtime ritual included very brief evening devotions and prayer. My grandmother would sit on the edge of my grandfather's bed holding his hand. She read aloud from her battered copy of a Billy Graham devotional book and its suggested Bible reading, then prayed aloud for family members, friends, missionaries, world events, and finally, for herself. This is how she abided in God, finding strength and solace through these very simple but profound daily spiritual practices. My grandmother experienced Jesus as the true vine from God. As the branches, there is no viable life separated from the sustaining, nourishing vine whose roots sink deep and secure into the earth. To severe a branch for even a day would be unthinkable. Apart from the vine there is no life source.

Apart from God, we can do nothing. For seekers attracted to Jesus, abiding in Christ is essential for spiritual vitality. Jesus expects nothing less. Be cleansed, pruned and nourished by the words and examples of Christ with the sacred mandate to love deeply, for love forgives many failures. This, I believe, is our universally shared life calling.

Begin with brief daily practices, holy habits of prayer and sacred readings, and practice what you learn with words, thoughts and deeds of kindness, compassion, justice and mercy. Live the talk, walk the talk. You'll be transformed and the world becomes a better place because of your faithful life as a soul gardener.

Birth Your Holy Longings

I encourage you to cultivate the prayer garden already deep in your soul. Consider the example of the common household prayer plant, known for its leaves folding at night, as if in prayer. During the day, the plant's leaves are open and attentive, receptive to light. At night, the leaves lift heavenward in a natural rhythm, as natural as breathing. That kind of heavenly awareness is ours when we pray.

Jesus cultivated the prayer garden in his soul, birthing his holy longings and embracing his divine call because he prayed greatly. Praying with holy boldness, he promises enormous prayer power as we grow and mature in the ways of God. If you wish to better embrace your divine calling, pray. It's the secret to spiritual success. Try it and you can expect great things from God as you attempt great things for God.

Jesus promises we can ask God for anything in the Divine Will, and it will be done. Therefore, disciples should be praying people. An old missionary saying offers a time-tested formula: "Prayer, more prayer, and very special prayer." Never underestimate the power of prayer as a major way of transforming the world, others and ourselves.

Pray for friends and foes alike with the profound love of Christ. Invite the Holy Spirit to guide your conversations with God and take time for holy listening. Sometimes the most powerful insights come to us in silence and stillness. Always remember God can make sense out of a confused prayer, and ask not for lighter burdens but stronger backs. When in doubt, pray. Let holy boldness guide your prayers in the all-powerful name of Jesus Christ.

Summary

Be a soul gardener and submit to divine pruning as needed. Develop holy habits as you abide in God. Birth your holy longings through prayer. Do these things and it will be well with your soul. Do these things and live a meaningful, joyful, spiritually abundant life in God. Garden your soul with the immense love of Christ and may God richly bless you in your holy endeavors.

Closing Prayer

Prune me vigorously, O Divine Vinegrower. Make my life more fruitful for Jesus Christ's sake. Abide in me. Cleanse me by the power of Your sacred Word. Compost the inner debris and all negative, destructive and procrastinating tendencies in my life. Include my bitter disappointments and every hurtful failure from my past. Use these things to make replenishing spiritual compost for my soul. Birth my holy yearnings with abundance, characterized by holy boldness, humility and Divine kindness so readily available through Christ. From this day forward, living or dying, help me live faithfully and joyfully as a disciple of Jesus Christ wherever You may lead. Amen.

Benediction

May your deepest holy longings be birthed; may the peace of Christ deeply indwell your hearts, and in every heart yearning for peace around the world. May the grace, kindness and love of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you and those you love this day and forevermore. Amen.

About the author: Rev. Dr. Sandra Bochonok earned her Doctor of Ministry degree at Wesley Seminary in Washington, DC and Masters of Divinity degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. She studied at the famous ecumenical Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Bethesda, Maryland. Her ministry training includes four units of Clinical Pastoral Education. She facilitates retreats and labyrinth events, provides ecumenical and interfaith pulpit supply and writes spirituality materials for international Internet readers. You may email your comments to her at revsandyb@aol.com.