When I was young Grandma Maxine came to visit.
She taught us two things on that visit. One was how to spit watermelon seeds. We were eating watermelon, the four boys, out on the back lawn, and she asked, do you know how to spit watermelon seeds? No. Well, let me teach you. She lined us up at the edge of the lawn. Just past it was a place my father had put down rich soil for a new garden. We ate - and got the seeds into our mouths - and we spat.
The seeds launched out into the new soil beyond the lawn's edge - and disappeared. But six weeks later - watermelon. First the vines, then the melons.
The other thing she taught me was the Lord's Prayer. It took a little longer for that to bear fruit.
When bedtime came she was going to put us to bed but first, she said,
you must say your prayers. I'd seen Disney cartoons, and movies I
suppose, and seen pictures of children kneeling by their beds, so I knew
how to kneel and put my hands together - but I had no idea what to say.
So then and there Grandma Maxine taught me the Lord's Prayer.
Jesus took his disciples aside and began to teach them what was going to happen. The Son of Man must die and be buried. On the third day he will be raised - but this must happen. What good will it do? Why? And he told them, a grain of wheat must die and enter the earth and disappear. Otherwise it remains a single grain - but this way it bears much fruit. So the Son of Man.
By this means he will become bread from heaven, bread for the world. What are we supposed to do? Follow and serve. How? By taking this bread, becoming bread too. By following him in obedience to the Father, not putting ourselves first - dying to self interest - but putting first the kingdom of heaven.
Let us pray the prayer that Jesus taught all of us...
For Wednesday 28 March 2012, ecumenical service, Lent Together, with three congregations, including St Alban's Episcopal and Bethel Lutheran Church at Edmonds Lutheran Church.
Holden Evening Prayer
Now the green blade riseth...
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