The weeds keep growing. The grass continues to sprout up through the cracks in the asphalt. It is summer now and the growing season is here. My family lives in a house with a yard in the city. Throughout the growing season, the struggle for supremacy rages on. The things my wife and I want to grow must be encouraged, nurtured and cared for, while the plants we wish would go away continue their courageous persistence. The weeds need no encouragement. They persist despite my attempts to obliterate them. It is a matter of perspective.
Outside the city, I wouldn't give a second thought to the plants that I call weeds when they grow in my yard. In the country, they simply are. It is their environment and I gaze out across the landscape and call it beautiful.
But now, I am back home. Outside the battle rages on. There are weeds growing up through the cracks in the driveway. The grass along the fence needs to be trimmed. There are vines that keep climbing the fence and ivy that climbs the brick of our home. The ivy seeks the cracks in the brick and mortar and will send its tendrils into the fissures to cling, to hold on and to continue until it can cover the whole house, if I allow it. It's part of living under the curse.
According to the first book of the Bible, Genesis, Adam and Eve were put in the Garden of Eden to tend it. (Gen. 2:15) After the first couple rebelled against God's authority, physical and spiritual death entered into the formerly perfect world and with that came this pronouncement from God, "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; and to dust you will return." (Gen. 3:17-19)
Although I am not a farmer, both my parents came from farming families. I haven't toiled in the fields to produce crops, but have seen relatives who did and in a small way, I can identify with them. I do know the toil of working in the yard. As said before, the desirable plants require much care, while the plants we call weeds, would take over, given the opportunity. The weeds aren't evil or even merely bad. They simply offend my (and my society's) sense of aesthetics.
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Several things come to mind as I think about these growing contradictions. Jesus described himself as the vine and his followers as the branches. The early church was considered a weed. Those in opposition did all they could to stamp out the early church. Jesus did not fit the expectations of the religious leaders of his day. He certainly wasn't the liberating warrior king who would drive the Romans out of Jerusalem. He did not fit the stereotype of a Pharisee. He upset the status quo, by not fitting the expectations. He was summarily dealt with. They tried him on false charges and executed him. BUT... The roots of the vine went far deeper than they could reach with their attempt to kill it. From before the foundation of the world was laid, Jesus was. Just like so many of the plants that I try to kill, this one had deep roots. And it came back.
We have a rose bush that won't die. Who would want a rose to die? We do. It grows beneath our mailbox and entwines the box with its thorny branches. It produces far more thorns than blossoms and what blossoms there are last for only a short time and are of poor quality. The postman is not fond of it. Year after year, we prune it down to the ground. Year after year it grows back seemingly stronger than before. This year we cut it off below ground level. Only time will tell if the roots are strong enough to bring it back.
The roots of the Christian faith run deep. Throughout the Old Testament are the roots of the coming Messiah (Hebrew) or Christ (Greek). The roots are the promises of a deliverer made by God to the human race. They are the prophecies which pointed to the coming Christ. At the time of Jesus crucifixion, his followers were disillusioned. They ran. They hid. One of Jesus' closest associates, Peter the fisherman, denied even knowing Him. Then, when it appeared that Christianity was dead (it hadn't even been given the name Christianity, yet), a tender sprout shot forth. Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared to His followers.
In the book of Matthew, Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches." (Matthew 13:31,32) Strengthened by the appearance of the resurrected Christ, the followers of Jesus began to boldly tell others of Him. They testified that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. Others believed. Peter, the very guy who had denied and cursed that he did not know Jesus to protect himself, began preaching boldly about Jesus and the resurrection. He did it in the very city where Jesus had been tried and crucified.
This is a pretty gutsy move. Peter had been wholly convinced of the deity of Christ and was willing to risk life and limb to tell others about Jesus. They told about how the Prophets of the Hebrews foretold of Jesus and of his resurrection from the dead. They healed a 40-year-old cripple. The result? On one day, 5000 or more believed and Peter was thrown into jail.
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"They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand. The next day the rulers, elders and teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. Annas the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander and the other men of the high priest's family. They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: 'By what power or what name did you do this?' Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: 'Rulers and elders of the people! If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is`the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.' "
"When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say."
"So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and then conferred together. 'What are we going to do with these men?' they asked. 'Everybody living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name.' Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, 'Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.'" (Acts 4:2-20)
The Religious leaders saw this new preaching as a weed. It was something they wanted to stop from spreading, but they couldn't stop the apostles from telling others. Some died for their faith. Stephen was the first recorded martyr. He was stoned to death for proclaiming Jesus as Lord. One of those who stood by while Stephen was stoned to death was a man named Saul. Saul had great zeal for Judaism and became well known as a persecutor of the early church.
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The fluffy tufts on a dandelion float like tiny parachutes on the wind, planting their seeds wherever they land. The original plant would appear to be dead. The yellow blossom has 'died' and turned to white fluff and blown away, but again, anyone who has battled dandelions by hand knows that the only way to be rid of the dandelion is to deal with the roots. The myriad seeds are now taking root somewhere else, in an effort to turn a field yellow and white. It happened this way with Saul and his zeal to stamp out this weed, called Christianity.
"And Saul was there, giving approval to his death. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison. Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went." (Acts 8:1-4) As if Saul had blown the fluff from the head of a dandelion in an attempt to keep it from blooming again, the seeds were scattered to the four winds. Rather than suppressing the gospel of Christ, Paul had spread it. The most ironic twist was yet to come.
"Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' 'Who are you, Lord?' Saul asked. 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. 'Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.' (Acts 9:1-6) From this point on, Saul's life was changed. His encounter with the risen Lord turned Saul from a primary opponent of followers of Jesus, to a primary advocate of the faith. He even changed his name and became known as Paul. (Some denominations would call him Saint Paul, but we'll just refer to him as he's referred to in scripture, Paul) It took time for other believers to trust him. He was quite notorious and some feared that the news of his conversion might be a trick. However, history shows that Paul's conversion was sincere, as he became the most prolific writer of the New Testament.
Persecution to the faith didn't end with the last page of the New Testament. The Romans were staunchly opposed to Christ. According to The National Geographic Society's Greece & Rome, "Many Romans looked on Christians as heretic Jews who sacrificed children and longed for the end of the world when their god - an agitator executed in Jerusalem during Tiberius' reign - would return. Their secretiveness and refusal to pay lip service to Rome's gods angered usually tolerant Romans. So crowds gleefully watched when Christians, tarred and staked, were set ablaze to light one of Nero's lawn parties." Then, of course, there were also the famous lion feedings in colosseum. Persecution has continued over the centuries and by no means relaxed in the 20th Century. To read more or become informed about current Christian martyrdom, please visit Voice of the Martyrs.
All this to say, the roots of Christianity run deeper than any persecution can go in the effort to silence the faith. The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it. Persecution doesn't stop the spread of Christianity, it spreads it.
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When I look at dandelions in the wild, I see them as something beautiful. It is when they encroach on my ideas of what should be in my yard that I become disturbed. The claims of Christ are like this. They seek to have claim on our lives. The truth, as personified by Christ, seeks to overcome falsehood, as wild flowers seek to take over a field or my yard. This is discomforting. The claims of Christ run contrary to our nature. If we are to belong to Christ, however, we must yield to his desires for what ought to be in our life. It is through his root system that our lives are transformed into something far more beautiful than we would have by trying to cultivate only what we like in our lives. (Or another way to look at it, is the vine illustration that Jesus himself used. We need to be grafted onto the vine that will supply all our spiritual needs.) The gospel of Christ is something wild. It is not tame.
From walking into some churches, you might think that Christians are a bunch of hothouse flowers. The atmosphere can be stuffy and stifling, but this is not the life that is in Christ. Jesus said, "I came that they might have life; and have it abundantly."
The seeds of the gospel are continually floating about, looking for a place to take root. We can manage to keep the gospel from taking root in our lives by poisoning the soil of our souls or simply by hardness of heart, a soil that will not receive seed.
Like floating fluffs of dandelion or thistle down, the gospel of Jesus seeks the good soil of receptive hearts to transform lives into gardens of wild flowers.
Kesha Klarensovich
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