This week we continue our look at God's creation. God has provided us with beauty and abundance. God has provided us with beautiful and fruitful trees. And God has provided us with the land beneath our feet.
While we opened with a text from Genesis last week, today we find a much different scripture. In the Gospel of Matthew, we find Jesus foretelling his death and resurrection and speaking of the earth in which he will lie for three days (see Matthew 12:28-40).
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At first, this seems like an odd scripture for us to continue our conversation about Creation and our place in it. After all, last week, we took our text from the beginning of creation, from the book of Genesis and the creation of humans and the Garden, as we thought about the trees and forests that are a part of the world that God has placed us in. This week we turn to land, to soil, to the very earth on which we walk, and we find Jesus foreshadowing his death and resurrection.
This twelfth chapter of Matthew sees Jesus and his disciples doing what needs to be done, even as they run afoul of the religious authorities for ignoring certain parts of the religious Law. At the start of the chapter, Jesus’ disciples are hungry, so they gather grains from the field. It happens to be the Sabbath day, so they are chided for working on the Sabbath.
Following this, Jesus entered the synagogue and the Pharisees brought a man with a withered hand to Jesus. They questioned Jesus about whether or not it is lawful to heal someone on the Sabbath, again showing more concern for the Law than for the needs of those around them. Of course, Jesus knows full well what they are doing. After making the point that anyone is allowed to do what is good on the Sabbath, he heals the man.
Jesus then went out amongst the crowds and began to heal all who were in need. At this point, the Pharisees accuse him of being in league with Satan, for who else could command the demons that Jesus is casting out.
Maybe you are beginning to sense a pattern here. The Pharisees cannot believe that one who flaunts the religious Law could possibly be from God. Finally, they demand a sign. If you are truly who you say you are, show us a sign that will prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. But Jesus knows as well as you do at this point that there is nothing he can do that will satisfy them. He has been among them, performing signs and miracles, healing those who are in need. And yet they do not believe. If they do not already believe after all he has already done, what sign could he show them that they would believe?
And so he answers them that they will receive one certain sign, and here he makes his comparison to Jonah. As you may know, Jonah had received a calling from God to go to Nineveh to proclaim God’s judgement on them. Instead, Jonah tried to run away. He boarded a ship bound for a far off shore. But the ship became mired in bad weather, and Jonah eventually wound up in the belly of a great fish for three days, before he was spat back out onto the land. In the same way, Jesus says, the Son of Man will reside in the belly of the earth for three days before coming forth again.
Of course, the Pharisees that are questioning Jesus have no idea what this means, but we can look back and see that he is telling them what sign to watch for. Watch for the one who is buried and rises again. That is the only sign you will receive.
Now I could go on in this vein for a while, but that is not really the focus for us this week. Our focus is on the land, and so we look at what it is that Jesus foretold, the time between his death and his resurrection. We begin our conversation today with the time that Jesus spent in the belly of the earth.
Because Jesus compares this time to the time that Jonah spent in the belly of the fish, that is where we start as well. What do these two things have in common? As I considered this link, my first thought was that both of these things constitute a pause. It is a pause that ultimately brings the person in the story to their destination. It is a necessary pause even as it is an unwelcome one. Who wants to be swallowed by a fish and live three days in its belly? Who wants to die and spend three days in the ground, even if resurrection is on the other side? It reminds me of talking with my boys about some of the spiders and snakes that live around our home. Just because it won’t kill me doesn’t mean I want to get bit.
But even as it may be unwelcome or unwanted, we find that these pauses that Jonah and Jesus experience lead to something greater. For Jonah, his time in the whale gave him the opportunity to grow, to consider what it was he was called to do, and to emerge ready to follow the path placed before him. In the same way, Jesus was planted in the ground, he spent a time in the earth sufficient to overcome death, and then he arose renewed from the land. He rose from the ground with renewed purpose. He rose from the ground ready to complete the task that God had placed before him.
Perhaps now we can begin to make the connection here to the land that God has created. The ground supports us. It is in the soil that we plant our crops and grow our food. Last week, my wife, April, planted some seeds in our garden at home, and within three days some of the seeds had already sprouted, bursting forth from the earth and ready to fulfill their purpose.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus even tells a parable about seeds that sounds eerily similar. He tells how the seed must fall into the ground and die in order to grow into the stalk of wheat. He is using a process that would have been familiar to the agrarian society he was speaking to to make a point about our relationship with God. At the same time, he is also highlighting the importance of the land in that process. The wheat will not grow if it does not go into the soil. The fish may have accomplished what was needed for Jonah, but Jesus had to go into the earth for three days to accomplish what was needed.
So many things grow in the ground. For this reason, the land is important to us. God created the earth on which we walk, the land on which we live, the soil in which we plant our crops. Our lives are intimately tied to the land.
And yet, as with most of our relationships, our relationship with the land is complicated. If you were to ask people where hell is located, most of them would likely point down to the ground. The ground is where we plant our crops, but it is also where we bury our dead. Many people have a fear of going into the ground.
In our mythologies and fairy tales, there are always realms beneath the ground, and they are often sources of danger. For those of you who are familiar with Tolkien, you may recall Gandalf’s search for a path over the mountains so that he would not have to go through the deeps of Moria. He fears what lies under the ground. Even as the ground, the land that we thrive on, provides for us, it can also be a source of fear.
To complicate this relationship with the land even further, our modern day culture tends to drive us away from the land. In many ways, our common notions of status are measured by our distance from the land. We tend to value those members of society or those cultures in our world that are further removed from the land on which we rely, while those that live most closely with the land, from farmers to migrant workers to native cultures, are looked down upon or considered less worthy in our culture.
But Jesus’ words and actions show us that he does not shy away from the land. He spends time among farmers and fishermen. He follows the route that leads him to three days in the earth. He accepts this as part of his ministry. He knows that God created the earth, the land, and made all the things that grow from it. The land is important to us, even if our general culture has lost sight of that at times. This land, that God has provided us, gives us all that we might need. This land that God created provides enough for all of God’s people and creatures.
As I reflected on the topic this week, I was struck by the different ways we talk about land. Sometimes when we speak of the land, we mean the ground, the earth, the soil, the place where we plant our crops and grow our food. But other times we mean a homeland, a country or a nation. We use land as a sign of belonging and security. And sometimes when we talk about land, it is difficult to tell which of these notions we have in mind.
As I thought about this, a song immediately came to mind. Originally written and recorded in the 1940s by Woody Guthrie, this song has been sung by multiple artists over the years. It appears in collections of folk songs and music for kids. “This Land Is Your Land” is a song that probably all of us are familiar with. Some of us may only know the more common verses, and some of us may know all of them. In this song, Woody talks about how the land unites us together, how the land provides for us. He tells a story of beauty, and he challenges some of the disparities that exist in our world in relation to the land.
As he sings about the land, the meanings wind together, and we can’t always be certain if he is singing of homeland, of nation, or simply the land on which we live and move and depend from day to day. But it is clear that he has an appreciation for the creation that surrounds us, for the bounty that it provides, and for the ways in which we are all united by it.
I invite you to listen to the recording below that blends the voices of Woody and his son, Arlo. As you do, I want you to think about the land that God has created. I want you to think about the land that God has placed you on. And I want you to remember the importance of this land for you, for me, and for all of God’s children that we share this world with.