sermon or compost? (or sermon ON compost?)

Next week I am preaching in chapel at Alma Mater University, something I haven't done since my senior year some thirteen years ago. It turns out that the nerves do not improve with time.

Campus Ministry has this very green-y theme on spirituality and sustainability, with a monthly focus on biodiversity and compassion. It's a very cool theme, but I have to admit that I had NO IDEA where to go with that when they first brought it up. (This is the problem with being a Lectionary Preacher. You have no idea what to do when you ask, "what's the scripture for the day?" and the person responds, "Oh, you can choose your own." It's like leaping off a cliff.)

Eventually, I remembered a poem I had read some years ago about compost. The text of the whole poem, which will be printed in the chapel bulletin, is below the sermon.

And yea, though it is only Thursday, and though I could have been working on a few other things before this sermon, I actually finished it. I think. So, because I have some advance time for feedback - a rarity - I thought I'd publish it here and see if it makes sense.

I don't do sermon titles, by the way. Sorry.

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A few years ago, I was converted to the ways of composting. I’ve never been much of a gardener, but my mother assured me that composting was the secret to success. It’s easy, she said. Choose a spot for your compost pile; maybe even get one of those fancy black plastic compost bins that the county gives out once in awhile. Put it in a spot that doesn’t get a lot of sun, on top of some wire mesh so you don’t get rats. Dump some dry leaves in the bottom, and then start adding all your food scraps. No oil, no meat, no dairy, she said, but everything else is fair game: orange peels, carrot shavings, coffee grounds, egg shells, apple cores.

So we did this. We set up our fancy black compost bin in the right spot, with our rat-proof mesh on the bottom. We put in the leaves, and then we started adding food scraps. Day after day, we’d throw them in and imagine that, in the spring, we would open the bottom of the bin and out would burst this dark, loamy, rich soil, the kind that grew tomatoes the size of your head and corn as high as an elephant’s eye.

So imagine my dismay when I opened the bin some weeks later, hoping to catch my first glance of soil, and instead all I caught was a horrible smell of rotting food, something akin to oranges that have been sitting out in the sun for weeks stirred with a cup of coffee you left on the counter three months ago, with just a hint of rotten banana. What was this? This was supposed to be easy. What had gone wrong? What do I do? Step one: call my mom.

She gave us some tips for successful composting, but the most important tip can be summed up in one word: worms. We had none of them and apparently, this is a composting disaster. Because it turns out that the worms do most of the work in your compost pile, chewing through the scraps to make them into good soil. Without the worms, what you basically have is a pile of rotting food. Add worms, you get dirt. We got some worms.

Which made me think of the book of Jonah. I realize this is probably not most people’s first reaction to the word “worms,” but being a pastor and therefore sort of a bible nerd, it is what I thought.

You remember Jonah. Maybe from your youth, since it’s a popular children’s lesson. From the Veggie Tales movie or, if you are slightly older, from flannel boards in Sunday School. Jonah is called by God to preach to the people of Nineveh, a city in Assyria. “Their wickedness is great before me,” says God to Jonah, so Jonah is go and warn them to change their evil ways lest the Lord bring a calamity upon them.

This is a problem, however, because the Assyrians in general are known for their brutal ways, and they are historically enemies of Israel. In today’s terms, let’s say that a presidential candidate who suggested diplomatic talks with Assyria would be scorned, to say the least. But nevertheless, despite Assyria’s reputation, God sends Jonah to Nineveh.

So Jonah, being a stand-up courageous guy, promptly gets on the next boat to Tarshish, which is like being told to go to New York and buying a bus ticket for Los Angeles instead. Unfortunately for Jonah, once the ship is at sea, it runs into a terrible storm, and the sailors on board figure someone on this boat must have really angered the gods. They cast lots to see who the offender is and, naturally, the lot falls to Jonah. So Jonah offers to walk the plank, figuring that the sea will quiet down once he’s at the bottom of it, not to mention the fact that diving off the ship will take care of any chance he might have to go to Nineveh.

Here comes the Sunday School part: Jonah is swallowed by a great fish, which transports him straight to dry land and spits him out onto the shore. One more time, God tells Jonah to head to Nineveh, and this time Jonah does it, though with a rather heavy heart. Jonah walks all over the city shouting, “forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown! Change your ways or perish!” And here’s the amazing part of the story – not the fish part, that’s interesting, but the amazing part is this: that the people of Nineveh actually do change their ways, and repent of their evil. The transformation is so complete that the king commands even the livestock to be clothed in sackcloth, and repent of any evil cow deeds they might have committed. Such as methane gas, I suppose.

And what of Jonah? Jonah is the most successful prophet in Israel’s history. In fact, he is the only prophet who ever got people to do what he said. No one else even came close to this level of success, and how does Jonah react? That’s what we read this morning. “But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.” For Jonah, the only silver lining of preaching to Nineveh was the satisfaction of watching the whole evil, disgusting, enemy city get wiped off the map by God. Jonah never actually wanted to succeed: he just wanted to watch his enemies suffer. It is one of the most central, beloved confessions Israel has: the Lord our God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love – and Jonah hurls that reputation against God in his fit of anger. “This is why I never wanted to go!” he yelled at God. “Because I know you are GRACIOUS and MERCIFUL and ABOUNDING IN STUPID STEADFAST LOVE and I HATE THAT!” And Jonah goes off to pout.

So God appointed a bush, a shrub, to grow up and shade Jonah, which makes Jonah happy. And then, at dawn the next day, when Jonah is still sitting there hoping that God will smite Nineveh any minute now, God appoints a worm to eat the bush, so that it withers. You’ve been wondering where I was going with this, right? Worms.

In Jonah’s case, it’s a worm God chooses to teach about compassion. “You care so deeply about this shrub you didn’t even plant,” says God, “and you think I should not care about a whole city full of people? Not to mention the livestock?”

In the case of my compost, it’s worms that transform a pile of rotten food into good, rich soil – it’s worms that turn the past into the future. The poem you have printed in your bulletin puts it this way: “Soon enough, we’ll shove wheelbarrows of dark October compost and watch the dry dirt bulge, mulch of worms and beetles making of debris a kingdom.”

There’s another way to translate God’s choosing a worm to teach Jonah: “God appointed a worm,” my version says, but you could also translate it this way: “God ordained a worm.” Which is either really good news or really bad news for ordained pastors, depending on your perspective, but that’s beside the point.

All of us come with piles of things we would rather ignore, cover up, walk away from. Families that hurt us. Friends that turned out not to be friends at all. Reputations we no longer want to carry. Perhaps you come to this place entirely sure of who you are and what you are doing here, and what comes next; and perhaps you are here with no real idea of who you are, or who you are supposed to be, or what you are going to do once this particular adventure is over. Your pile may be filled with confidence, or fear; with failure, or success, or all the times you simply didn’t try at all. We come with grudges, and frustrations, and self-centeredness, and laziness. We come with tears we have cried and tears we have caused, with our hopes and fears in a time which encourages both.

Should we not attend to these things, if we shove them into corners of our minds and try to forget them, be unwilling to stir them up and let some light in, they will become nothing more than rottenness, and trust me: the smell of that isn’t good.

But God ordains worms. God does the work of churning, of chewing through our pasts, of turning our decay into good soil, so that a new future can be planted. God gives us courage to be worms, to tumble and churn what we would otherwise be afraid to confront. We may even be worms for each other, one way of tending to the needs of the saints; and others may be worms for us.

For God is indeed gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, making of our debris a kingdom, turning rottenness and decay into compost, into good soil, into new life. We will sing it in just a moment – and you thought there weren’t any hymns about composting, didn’t you? – in the water and the witness, in the breaking of the bread, in the waiting arms of Jesus who is risen from the dead; God has made a new beginning from the ashes of our past; in the losing and the winning we hold fast.

It’s the secret of good compost, in one word: worms. Making rich soil, new life. Christ saves us from decay we’re destined for, says the poet. And we respond, may it be so. Amen.


October Compost, by Walt McDonald

Leaf rakes go back, go back and trees give up
more leaves than roots can use. Pack down
the pounds of locust leaves, the aspen gold
and fat catalpa bark. All summer we stacked
the pantry, hauled bushels of ears to neighbors
and the town’s food bank. Now come the geese
from Canada, fields with loud flocks
pecking grain and corn. Our yard’s a compost.
Bring out pitchforks and garden hose, turn
barrels of garbage for the garden, tumble,
churn it like sauerkraut steamy and damp.
All seasons whisper resurrection.
I need this gray decay. Since March,
I’ve wrestled bales of barbed wire,
bossed the herds, but fall brings cattle trucks.
Runt calves and old cows ride to slaughter.
Fall feeds the soil, and harvest saves
the stalks as silage to make cold cattle fat.
Fall saves migrating geese from freezing,
leads us to spring, tilling the earth
till springer cows give birth.
Christ saves us from decay
we’re destined for. Soon enough, we’ll shove
wheelbarrows of dark October compost
and watch the dry dirt bulge, mulch of worms
and beetles making of debris a kingdom.
Come, shirtsleeve months, come
bawling calves cavorting in corrals.

from Climbing the Divide, published by University of Notre Dame Press.