The Lone Tomato

Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. I have never had much of a green thumb. Keeping plants alive has never been my strong suit. In fact, I’m fairly confident I could kill off an artificial Christmas tree if given the chance. But all the same, I love the idea of nurturing plants. Well, this last Christmas we got an aerogarden for our family. It uses hydroponics, which, if you aren’t familiar, means that the plants basically grow in water instead of growing in dirt. Every few days a sensor alerts us that the water needs to be refilled… and every two weeks another sensor reminds us that it’s time to add two more capfuls of nutrients to the tank. And every day, synthetic sunlight turns on at 6am and shuts off 16 hours later. It’s the perfect growing environment.

We are, as of today, on day 132 and there is still green leafy stuff growing in our little aerogarden. However, it has not gone without issue. While our family had a few very busy weeks around Easter, we continued to water and feed the plants but we did not take the time to prune them. One would think that a few weeks without pruning shouldn’t be an issue. But it was. Our brasil plant sprouted new branches and pushed toward the light source like the Roman Empire sweeping across the ancient world. Before long, light from the lamp dimmed as basil leaves pushed against the lamp in a hungering thirst for every bit of sun it could get. In the basil’s quest for solar power, our other plants began to suffer. By the time I came to prune back the basil invasion, our parsley had withered away, our mint had all but died and both tomato plants were looking pretty sick. Now, I tell you all of that backstory to share what’s going on with one of those tomato plants right now. As I pruned back the basil and removed dead branches from our remaining plants… I found a single cherry tomato surrounded by crispy, brown leaves. The tomato looked surprisingly healthy among the dead leaves… so I decided to leave it alone and see what it would do. Each day I checked on it, I expected to find that the tomato had plummeted to the table’s surface below… but each day I found that the plant was still clinging to that little cherry tomato. And what’s more, despite the branch appearing to be completely dead… that little cherry tomato continued to grow and ripen.

While the tomato plant has probably no hope of reviving that branch, it is doing everything tomatoely possible to pour its gathered nutrients and even its very life into that seed-bearing fruit. The purpose of that tomato plant is focused in on creating life beyond itself. And, really, it’s quite remarkable to watch.

In our Gospel Lesson today, Jesus is in the upper room with his disciples and he’s preparing them for life without him. His time on this earth is coming to an end quickly… and he knows it. All of this tongue-twisting language that we hear from our Gospel writer, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home in them…” or “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid…” all of these words that Jesus is speaking at the Last Supper is his final earthly effort to fill his disciples up with life before he goes to the cross.

So too when he says in Matthew that whoever wishes to be his disciples should deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him… we hear once again his effort to pass along God’s teachings to his disciples before his own death on the cross.

To be honest, that verse is one that I often struggled with in my younger years. To love like Christ loved… to take up our crosses… it seemed that the only way to truly live out the Christian life was to actively and perhaps literally give my life for someone else. Maybe that meant stopping a bullet meant for someone else… or diving into a fire to save a child… or going to war with the hope of securing freedom to live for a complete stranger.

The scenario for me always came down to end of myself in order to offer life for someone else. And yes, I do still think this can very much be part of our calling at times in significant moments… to lay down our own lives for someone else. But that tomato plant has really got me thinking about all of these last words that Jesus poured into his disciples as his death was coming near. And something rather obvious dawned on me that I knew but I don’t know I had necessarily put to words before…

When Christ calls us to love as he has loved… when Christ calls us to take our crosses and follow… he’s not calling us to go to our deaths. Even though, again, it is always a possibility that we might feel called to offer up our lives in an extreme moment. But rather… when Jesus calls us to take up our crosses and follow its not that he is leading us toward an end of this life but instead he is pouring the nutrients of God’s Word into our hearts and minds like that tomato plant was infusing vitamins into that lone cherry tomato. It is a love given for the sake of life. Life in Jesus’ disciples. Life in me. Life in you. Life in those who come after us. The Jesus walk of the cross is, ultimately, not towards death but towards new life. While that branch of the tomato plant is most certainly going to die as it withers away into nothing… its last efforts are not for preserving a comfort unto itself but to see the possibility of life beyond itself. There is an intention to care for that which comes next in this world.

I think we can learn a lot about our discipleship walk from that little tomato plant. We may feel a bit withered around the edges ourselves at times. For one reason or another, we may feel like we haven’t had the full access to the sunlight that we once did. There’s a little less light perhaps… a little less joy… or maybe the joy is still full but we feel the changes that come with time regardless.

One day, each of us will wither off these mortal coils. Whether we are followers of Christ or not… these bodies will die. But while we still have breath we can love as Christ has loved… we can take what joy what light what hope what wisdom what faith we have been fed throughout this life and we can work to pour it into the seeds of what comes after us.

I encourage you this day to hear the call of Christ on how we might live out these days as his disciples. Not that we need to prove that we are Christians… but because we are free through Christ to pass on the love that Christ first gave to us…. And we should do just that.

So find that cherry tomato in your life if you haven’t already and pour that love into them. Share with them the hope and the faith that you have thanks to Christ. Share with them the good news of stability