Look outside our front door and you’ll notice that, at present, the hydrangea topiary is puttin’ on a show. And not a moment too soon.
Regular readers may recall that other such buds in our yard never made it that far this season. They turned into a salad bar instead – a favorite grazing spot for the local fauna.
But I got my “fireworks” at last – a showy display of beautiful blossoms, just in time to mark America’s 250th birthday.
There’s something about the quiet humble splendor of this garden spot that speaks to my heart as the country marks its semiquincentennial. In other quarters, gunpowder tends to drive the day – exploding shells propelling chemical compounds into fantastical bursts of color across the sky. And more often than not, such fireworks are preceded by parades of America’s military might: fighter jets in formation, armaments on the ground, mighty strategic bombers rumbling overhead.
These days, I tend to wonder: Are explosions the best way to celebrate our blessings as a nation?
On some level, I suppose they are…since gunpowder seems to have displaced diplomacy as our preferred means of resolving conflicts with other nations. Only I notice this, too: the conflicts never seem to go away. A peace built on bombs is in fact no peace at all. At best, it unfurls as a ceasefire…soon to be broken by one “side” or the other, or more likely both.
Which is why I lean into the beauty of the topiary, I suppose. It reminds me of God’s creative Spirit – alive and active in the world. This is along the lines of the promise we encounter in the words of the prophet Zechariah this week – a promise of joy and peace ushered in by a savior who relies not on the might of armaments:
He shall banish the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem; the warrior’s bow shall be banished, and he shall proclaim peace to the nations.
This promised savior, it turns out, sounds a lot like the Jesus we meet in the gospel passage:
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart…
Only we never seem truly to learn from Him, do we? We typically find it hard to resist the temptation of might…the temptation of defining ourselves by division, ideology and resentment…rather than forgiveness, love and cooperation.
In the end, casting our lot with Christ – instead of explosions – is an act of hope. It’s a different kind of declaration than the one America celebrates this weekend. In the words of Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, “It is a declaration that the future does not belong merely to political movements, economic forces or political plans. The future belongs to God.”
And I like to think that God seals this promise in unexpected ways – like the quiet humble splendor of a hydrangea bloom.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 