Pain in the Grass
Mark 6:39
Then He commanded them to make them all sit down in groups on the green grass.
These words were from the mouth of Jesus right before he fed the 5,000. I recall my good friend Andrew delivering a sermon several years ago where he noted the "green" reference. It is one of the few sermons of his I recall with an almost You-Tube like clarity. I vividly remember his voice, his intonation, his pace, what he looked like when he said it. The only other time I remember a sermon statement of Andrew's verbatim was his talk on sex where he said if we wanted to "supercharge your wedding night" don't kiss until then. Andrew wasn't being a Legalist...he just wanted what was best for us.
I happened to mention to Andrew in an email about a year ago (he is pastor in California now) the "green" reference. It was odd I remembered, odder that I mentioned it, oddest yet after he replied back.
He responded amused...a member of his church and he had gotten in a recent discussion about how the "green" in this verse really did not mean much. Andrew took the position that every word in the Bible is meaningful and God put it there for a purpose. The member thought it was a throw-away word. Thus, Andrew won that debate with the help of me on the East Coast. Don't know why I would remember Andrew emphasizing the "green" part of the verse. Don't know why God would mention the "green" part of the verse.
Here are some ideas...Judea is a dry land. Green grass is probably not that plentiful. Israel is more like Arizona where peoples' front yards are rocks and stones with a few scraggly trees and bushes around. So, green grass could be an allusion to a lushness, verdant, a blessed place where a body of water was close by that moistened the ground. It is a good place to stage a miracle...it is all green and comfy, Eden-like. Cool water might be trickling by, to go with the bread (ever eat bread just by itself?). The location was kind of like dinner being served on greens.
God joins to spiritual to the practical; the water and the bread. Water suggests repentance and Baptism, Bread is Christ's body, the Blood was still yet to come. Reminds me of a couple of weeks ago before Communion. I swallowed my gum in preparation for Communion and the gum got lodged in my throat. I had to wait until the wine and the bread, to try and get the gum down too. It didn't work. I am not chewing gum in church anymore.
Green grass has been a lot on my mind recently. I have begun my yearly campaign to make our front yard as green and thick as my neighbors. I don't care about the back...it can be the Dustbowl. My neighbor two doors down has grass that is greener on the coldest day of winter than ours is on the sunniest day of June. I call his yard the Barry Bonds Balco Labs yard...he has to be using illegal steroidal supplements for grass. His yard flexes its muscles and kicks grass in my face..."C'mon girly man, trying to match this." My wife loves his yard and sighs in admiration.
The dude down the street, lets call him A-Rod (A-Roid) went to Penn State University for Landscape Architecture. Now, c'mon, he's a professional! It is not a fair fight. There should be a disclaimer on his yard that his results "are not typical" like those weight-loss ads in magazines. Another neighbor, has his son sweep (yes sweep) his yard with a push broom. It is like a grass carpet with no gaps. Makes me long for the days when I lived in Columbia where if you mowed the grass at least once a month you were way ahead of half the neighborhood from this one act alone. Kind of like if your Appalachian West Virginia girlfriend has half her teeth, she's a freaking beauty queen. Why is hard to be funny without being demeaning, cruel, dismissive, or sarcastic? A proof for the Fall.
I used to live in West Virginia so I can make fun of it. Kind of like a Pollack (er, someone of Polish descent) telling a Polish joke. My mom tells me that she started itchin' to move from West Virginia when I came home from kindergarten one day and asked, "Ma, what's for lunch?" with a Bluegrass twang. She wasn't from West Virginia...as an Army brat, she had traveled the world. West Virginia might as well been the dark side of the moon to her. Then, my dad got canned from his job through an early Napoleonic-like winter/his Chemical Refinery Plant freezing up like a block of ice/his own Teutonic-style of management which got harsher along with the unexpected early winter. He was a desperate man fighting the frozen furies. So, my dad got a new job and we moved to Pa. God used it for my good (maybe not my Dad's, though)
It turned out to be a fortuitous event for me educationally. If we had remained in West Virginia (as backward as it was..,we need to be honest, West Virginia was backwards in the 1960's...it seemed like my Catholic Sunday School was run like the Gulag), my learning disabilities would have never been diagnosed and addressed. I was on track for a lifetime of being the nice but dumb "D" student in the back of the class, who gets passed along because it I would have tried and the teacher would have taken pity on me. As it was, when we came to Pa. we settled in the wealthiest district in the state which had both the professional capacity and the money to get me psychologically tested (after my mom raised a firestorm...soon after me being called "retarded" by my first grade teacher Miss/Mrs. Farley...what a nasty woman. Why such people ever become teachers is beyond me. Perhaps to inflict pain and suffering). I guess that is one of the events of my life that gives me a passion for the field of Educational Psychology.
Anyway, in my Mountville neighborhood, I am part of the slow class. Never thought I would get so stressed about the grass. It is like a middle-aged man counting his head's hairs in the drain and pouring gobs of Rogaine on his scalp. My yard has male pattern baldness and comb-overs! Yes, I am green with envy. One bright spot, ironically, is one of our next neighbor has an even worse lawn than me. Sean, if you are reading this, I know that you will dispute this. Perhaps we can have the "lawn gods" in our neighborhood render a decision about whose lawn is better.
I am resigned to trying to get my yard up to snuff and not succeeding. I figure loving my neighbors, even if they are lawn gods, is the proper things to do. Plus, a neighbor down the way is selling the house and I don't want hurt her chances by reverting to Columbia lawn care.
Since my neighbors keep their yards in great shape, I should at least try and compete and keep up like the fat kid in gym class running the mile. Maybe they will take pity on me...and give me a "D."
Hey, I'll take it!
Then He commanded them to make them all sit down in groups on the green grass.
These words were from the mouth of Jesus right before he fed the 5,000. I recall my good friend Andrew delivering a sermon several years ago where he noted the "green" reference. It is one of the few sermons of his I recall with an almost You-Tube like clarity. I vividly remember his voice, his intonation, his pace, what he looked like when he said it. The only other time I remember a sermon statement of Andrew's verbatim was his talk on sex where he said if we wanted to "supercharge your wedding night" don't kiss until then. Andrew wasn't being a Legalist...he just wanted what was best for us.
I happened to mention to Andrew in an email about a year ago (he is pastor in California now) the "green" reference. It was odd I remembered, odder that I mentioned it, oddest yet after he replied back.
He responded amused...a member of his church and he had gotten in a recent discussion about how the "green" in this verse really did not mean much. Andrew took the position that every word in the Bible is meaningful and God put it there for a purpose. The member thought it was a throw-away word. Thus, Andrew won that debate with the help of me on the East Coast. Don't know why I would remember Andrew emphasizing the "green" part of the verse. Don't know why God would mention the "green" part of the verse.
Here are some ideas...Judea is a dry land. Green grass is probably not that plentiful. Israel is more like Arizona where peoples' front yards are rocks and stones with a few scraggly trees and bushes around. So, green grass could be an allusion to a lushness, verdant, a blessed place where a body of water was close by that moistened the ground. It is a good place to stage a miracle...it is all green and comfy, Eden-like. Cool water might be trickling by, to go with the bread (ever eat bread just by itself?). The location was kind of like dinner being served on greens.
God joins to spiritual to the practical; the water and the bread. Water suggests repentance and Baptism, Bread is Christ's body, the Blood was still yet to come. Reminds me of a couple of weeks ago before Communion. I swallowed my gum in preparation for Communion and the gum got lodged in my throat. I had to wait until the wine and the bread, to try and get the gum down too. It didn't work. I am not chewing gum in church anymore.
Green grass has been a lot on my mind recently. I have begun my yearly campaign to make our front yard as green and thick as my neighbors. I don't care about the back...it can be the Dustbowl. My neighbor two doors down has grass that is greener on the coldest day of winter than ours is on the sunniest day of June. I call his yard the Barry Bonds Balco Labs yard...he has to be using illegal steroidal supplements for grass. His yard flexes its muscles and kicks grass in my face..."C'mon girly man, trying to match this." My wife loves his yard and sighs in admiration.
The dude down the street, lets call him A-Rod (A-Roid) went to Penn State University for Landscape Architecture. Now, c'mon, he's a professional! It is not a fair fight. There should be a disclaimer on his yard that his results "are not typical" like those weight-loss ads in magazines. Another neighbor, has his son sweep (yes sweep) his yard with a push broom. It is like a grass carpet with no gaps. Makes me long for the days when I lived in Columbia where if you mowed the grass at least once a month you were way ahead of half the neighborhood from this one act alone. Kind of like if your Appalachian West Virginia girlfriend has half her teeth, she's a freaking beauty queen. Why is hard to be funny without being demeaning, cruel, dismissive, or sarcastic? A proof for the Fall.
I used to live in West Virginia so I can make fun of it. Kind of like a Pollack (er, someone of Polish descent) telling a Polish joke. My mom tells me that she started itchin' to move from West Virginia when I came home from kindergarten one day and asked, "Ma, what's for lunch?" with a Bluegrass twang. She wasn't from West Virginia...as an Army brat, she had traveled the world. West Virginia might as well been the dark side of the moon to her. Then, my dad got canned from his job through an early Napoleonic-like winter/his Chemical Refinery Plant freezing up like a block of ice/his own Teutonic-style of management which got harsher along with the unexpected early winter. He was a desperate man fighting the frozen furies. So, my dad got a new job and we moved to Pa. God used it for my good (maybe not my Dad's, though)
It turned out to be a fortuitous event for me educationally. If we had remained in West Virginia (as backward as it was..,we need to be honest, West Virginia was backwards in the 1960's...it seemed like my Catholic Sunday School was run like the Gulag), my learning disabilities would have never been diagnosed and addressed. I was on track for a lifetime of being the nice but dumb "D" student in the back of the class, who gets passed along because it I would have tried and the teacher would have taken pity on me. As it was, when we came to Pa. we settled in the wealthiest district in the state which had both the professional capacity and the money to get me psychologically tested (after my mom raised a firestorm...soon after me being called "retarded" by my first grade teacher Miss/Mrs. Farley...what a nasty woman. Why such people ever become teachers is beyond me. Perhaps to inflict pain and suffering). I guess that is one of the events of my life that gives me a passion for the field of Educational Psychology.
Anyway, in my Mountville neighborhood, I am part of the slow class. Never thought I would get so stressed about the grass. It is like a middle-aged man counting his head's hairs in the drain and pouring gobs of Rogaine on his scalp. My yard has male pattern baldness and comb-overs! Yes, I am green with envy. One bright spot, ironically, is one of our next neighbor has an even worse lawn than me. Sean, if you are reading this, I know that you will dispute this. Perhaps we can have the "lawn gods" in our neighborhood render a decision about whose lawn is better.
I am resigned to trying to get my yard up to snuff and not succeeding. I figure loving my neighbors, even if they are lawn gods, is the proper things to do. Plus, a neighbor down the way is selling the house and I don't want hurt her chances by reverting to Columbia lawn care.
Since my neighbors keep their yards in great shape, I should at least try and compete and keep up like the fat kid in gym class running the mile. Maybe they will take pity on me...and give me a "D."
Hey, I'll take it!
Comments