Ordinary 11
June 18, 2006

Not the Purdue Way
by Donald Hoffman


Mark 4:26-32



"Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?"

If Mistress Mary is honest she has to reply, "I don't know!"



I spent a lot of time in Indiana preaching to 
farmers, practically in the shadow of Purdue 
University. How could even Jesus have predicted 
something like Purdue?  (In case you don't know, 
Purdue University is to your typical agricultural 
college, like high school is to third grade!) A 
Purdue graduate is definitely expected to know 
how the garden grows. And if you don't know, or 
if you didn't graduate from Purdue, you can 
always call the county agent and find out. Oh, by 
the way, I'm using Purdue University as my 
example, first, because I've been on campus and 
know a tiny bit about it, and second, because I 
don't dare use Washington State!



In my thirteen years of living in Indiana, I 
learned a whole new vocabulary. Words like 
"herbicide," "insecticide," "premix," tank-mix." 
Phrases like "one-pass incorporation," "reduced 
tillage option." In Jesus' parable he hardly uses 
a word over two syllables. How is he going to 
impress people who play the futures market and 
drive tractors that cost more than their houses? 
You'd better believe they know how their gardens 
grow.



If there is anything that makes America the 
breadbasket of the world, it is the belief that 
we can make it happen, when and where and how we 
want it to happen. And here Jesus is saying, 
"Just throw some seed into the field and go to 
bed. You don't really know what makes it grow." 
This is certainly not the Purdue way!



Now even though I did spend time in Indiana, I 
never attended Purdue University. But still, I 
grew up with my own ideas on how to make that 
garden grow. Elbow grease. Hard work. Put your 
shoulder to the wheel. Stick to the job. Never 
give up! Swing that hoe! Spray those aphids! Get 
some callouses on your knees and dirt under your 
fingernails.



       And if your lettuce goes to seed

       Try, try again!



I was raised on The Little Engine That Could. And 
so were most of you. I think I can. I think I 
can. I think I can. If I psych myself up as hard 
as I can, and if I work as hard as I can, I Will 
Succeed! That's the American Way!



So naturally I've got it in my head that if only 
you folks had a little more self-discipline Š 
Well, all right. Me, too! If we all had a little 
more discipline, if we would just buckle down and 
work a little harder, if we would just pray a 
little harder, we could evangelize the world, we 
could end poverty, we could win the war on drugs, 
we could stop men from battering their wives and 
children, we could Š (You fill in the blank.)



And the same thing goes for my devotional life. 
And the same thing goes for my diet. If I would 
just pray harder, I would succeed. If I would 
just count calories more carefully, I would 
succeed.

And here Jesus says, "You don't even know how it works!"



Do you know what? He's right. We don't know how 
it works! Oh, I'll admit that a Purdue graduate 
will grow more corn per acre than a backwoodsman 
of a hundred years ago, but that doesn't mean any 
of us really knows how that seed becomes a 
cornstalk. We just know some tricks. Mistress 
Mary, quite contrary, how does that garden grow?



And when we get away from agriculture and move 
into the areas of faith or self-improvement or 
almost any other part of life, we know even less. 
The Purdue way of throwing science at it doesn't 
work. And the American way of trying harder 
doesn't work.



Let's take dieting, for example, a subject not so 
near and dear to my heart, but one which my 
doctor tells me is important.



Every year at least one, usually more than one, 
scientific dieting book makes the best-seller 
list. These authors are making millions. The 
cottage cheese diet, and the grapefruit diet, and 
the low-fat diet, and the low-carbohydrate diet. 
Everybody wants to buy the latest diet book.



I'm thinking of writing one myself. The only 
trick is to think of something no one else has 
tried. We have lots of rabbits around our house, 
so naturally we have lots of bunny by-products. 
Hmmmm.



"The Twelve-Day Rabbit Raisin Diet Plan." With 
lots of scientific-looking graphs and human 
interest before-and-after stories. Six months 
later we'd follow up with "The Rabbit Raisin 
Cookbook". Do you think it would sell? It's scary 
to think so, but it probably would.



Every year millions of people go on diets. Again. 
And they try harder. And a few of them actually 
lose weight, for a while. But only one out of a 
thousand takes it off and keeps it off. The only 
people who are successfully dieting are anorexics.



Yet every year, also, there are fat people who 
lose weight. Not people who are dieting. Not 
people with a fatal disease. Ordinary people who 
lose weight. And they don't know why. And their 
doctor doesn't know why. It isn't science. It 
isn't hard work. It's not the Purdue way. It's 
not the American way. Just somehow it happens.



It also happens that the Bible book stores are 
full of how-to-win-people-to-Christ books, and 
how-to-improve-your-prayer-life books. People buy 
them by the thousands. And they work the same 
way. Which is to say, they don't. Because it 
doesn't appear that you can improve your 
relationship to God by throwing science at it. 
And you can't bring God's Kingdom into the world 
by trying harder. It just happens, and the people 
it happens to are as surprised as anyone else.



I have a friend who woke up from a stupor induced 
by both alcohol and hard drugs together, and 
found himself turning to God. He was all by 
himself in terms of human company, so there was 
no one there to teach him the five-finger 
exercise or the four spiritual laws. No one to 
ask him, "If you were to die tonight, where would 
you spend eternity?" Not even a Gideon Bible. He 
says it was almost like standing outside himself 
and watching something happening inside himself. 
He didn't know what was going on until it 
happened. And when it was over, he wasn't an 
addict, he was a Christian.



I have another friend who grew up in a family 
completely uninterested in God or Christ or 
church. She decided at the age of ten that she 
would start going to church. Almost drove her 
family crazy. She ended up, by accident, at a 
Disciples church, and not one of our model 
churches we like to show off. No, this was a 
dysfunctional church that has since closed its 
doors. There is no way to explain it, but she 
became a committed Christian, and has remained so 
her entire life.



C. S. Lewis once said that when he got on a bus 
one day he wasn't a Christian, but when he got 
off it he was, and he wasn't sure how it happened.



Do you think maybe we try too hard? If the doctor 
says to take one pill a day, surely taking two a 
day will work even faster. If the book says water 
the cactus four times a year, why not water it 
every day and see how big it grows? If we put 
nine women on the project, do you think we could 
get a baby in one month? Do we maybe try too 
hard? Are we beating our heads against God's 
brick wall?



Maybe we're not supposed to get out there and 
lick our weight in wildcats (and for "wildcats" 
you can substitute "calories" or "sins;" it 
doesn't matter). Maybe we're not supposed to make 
things happen but to celebrate the happening. 
Maybe our prayers are not for twisting God's arm, 
or even offering God a helping hand, but to offer 
God a hand of applause. Relax, and pray, to get 
in touch with God's plan for your life. To be in 
touch, but not to tinker.



One new image we have learned from schools like 
Purdue is to look at a seed as a blueprint for 
growth. (Apparently that's not completely true, 
but it makes a good image.) Think of a seed as a 
plan for the future. Think of a seed as a 
computer program made of a wonder substance 
called DNA, a computer program that somehow 
stores an image of the mature plant along with 
instructions on how to reach that maturity. At 
the present time we don't know how to put as much 
information into a ten-pound book as God can put 
into a tiny mustard seed. But somehow, in ways we 
don't understand, that seed can sprout and grow 
and produce branches sturdy enough for birds to 
nest in. Do you really think you understand how 
it works?



On the day you were baptized, a seed started 
growing inside you. A seed that had a blueprint 
or a program for your future. It's not called 
DNA. It is called the Holy Spirit. You can accept 
that seed or deny it. You can submit or fight 
against it. You can be a whole person, complete 
and everything God meant you to be; or you can be 
split down the middle, two persons in one body, 
at war with one another.



It is prayer that puts you in touch with that 
seed and allows the two sides to merge. Not hard, 
wrestling prayer. Not hours each day wearing 
calluses on your knees. Simple prayer ... to be 
in contact with God's secret seed. Prayer puts 
you in touch with the real you. Prayer lets you 
talk to the person you're going to be.



A few years ago there was an idea going around 
that your plants would grow better if you talked 
nicely to them. If the Holy Spirit is growing 
fruit inside you -- Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, 
Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, 
Self-control -- then your secret garden is bathed 
in the sunlight of God's love and watered by 
God's tears,  ... and waiting for a little 
conversation.



I know it's not scientific. And no, it's not 
trying very hard. It's not the Purdue way, and 
it's not the American way. It's God's way! Prayer 
is a way to get acquainted with God. And prayer 
is a way to get acquainted with the real you. 
Right now that seed is growing. And who knows 
what it will produce?

(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)
Creston Christian Church, Creston, Washington, USA