"In the Bulb There is a Flower" (sermon)

July 10 and 17, 2022

Flower Service

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Scripture:  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

“Favourite Hymn”:  In the Bulb There is a Flower

 

 

All summer long this year, we are going to be exploring our favourite hymns – what do they tell us about God and what do they tell us about our relationship with God?  Back in the spring, I surveyed all three of our congregations to try and get a sense of what the favourite hymns are, and it was no surprise to me that “In the Bulb” was one of the top couple of hymns.

 

We sing it together every year at this Flower Service.  It has been sung at many funerals that I have attended.  I know that it is part of my own funeral plans too, if and when the time comes.  (Or maybe that should just be when the time comes.)

 

This hymn is a fairly recent one compared with others in our hymn books, and there is a bit of a story behind it.  The words and music were written in 1985 by Natalie Sleeth, the wife of a Methodist minister in the US.  She had been pondering death and life and Good Friday and Easter.

 

To the composer, the key line in the song is the beginning of the third verse, which goes:  “In our end is our beginning.”  The funny thing is, this line doesn’t come from the bible but was actually inspired by a poem by T. S. Eliot who wrote:  “What we call the beginning is often the end / and to make an end is to make a beginning. / The end is where we start from.”

 

The hymn was popular right from when it was first written – it was sung at Natalie Sleeth’s husband’s funeral not too long after it was written, then it was sung at her own funeral only 7 years later.

 

The hardest thing for me this week was figuring out what bible reading to pair it with.  It is a hymn that is filled with good theology, but it isn’t the sort of hymn where you can read the words and say this hymn was definitely based on this passage or this story from the bible.

 

It is a hymn about new life and resurrection – think about the images of the winter snow melting into spring, or butterflies emerging from the darkness of the cocoon, or the dawn that emerges out of every night.  With these images, I might have paired it with one of the Easter stories, and the promise of Easter that no matter how bad things get, we can cling to the hope, cling to the promise that things are going to get better.

 

I was also thinking about the reading from the prophet Isaiah where he writes about a new shoot coming out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch growing out from the roots.  This is another reading about hope – one that we usually hear in the season of Advent when we are waiting for Christmas; a season of waiting when we trust that what is coming is going to be good, even if we don’t know what shape this coming goodness is going to take.  Looking at the hymn, the images of a bulb that will become a flower, or a seed that will become a tree fit here.  A stump looks dead, like it could never be the source of new life, in the same way that a tulip or daffodil bulb doesn’t look anything like the tulips or daffodils that it will turn in to, or an apple seed doesn’t look anything like an apple tree.

 

In the same way, what the future holds for us – whether we are looking at our own personal lives, or a society that is transformed, or the life that follows death – it may not resemble what came before, but is so much better than we could ever imagine.

 

But in the end, I ended up pairing this hymn with the reading from Ecclesiastes that _______ read for us today.  It is a reading that may be more familiar to you from the Pete Seeger song made popular by the Byrds.

 

The author of Ecclesiastes was writing about life, and how our lives often move through different seasons, one following the next, each season different than the one that came before it.  The overall message of the book of Ecclesiastes is that since no season lasts forever, we should enjoy each season of life as it comes.

 

Think of all of the loved ones in your life who you are remembering today.  Think of all of the seasons in their lives – their lives weren’t static, but were continually changing as one season rolls into the next.  The end of one season isn’t the ultimate end, but, as the hymn tells us, in our end is our beginning.  This new beginning, this new season isn’t revealed to us until we get there, but God can see it, and God knows that the new beginning will be good.

 

And with this song, and with so many parts of the bible, the end isn’t the end, but rather it is a new beginning.  Good Friday may feel like the end, but it isn’t really, for Easter is coming.  And as Ecclesiastes advises us, don’t try to hold on to one season trying to make it last forever, but trust that the unfolding season will be good, for God will be there.  And that includes the season that awaits us after we pass through the curtain that separates this life from the life that awaits us on the other side of death.  We can’t see that season yet – it is still a mystery – but we can trust that this season that awaits us will be good, in the same way as the flower that unfolds from the bulb, or the tree that emerges from the seed, or the dawn that cracks open the night.

 

It is a mystery, and that isn’t a bad thing – it is only a mystery because we can’t see it yet and we can’t understand it yet.  But just as God is with us in all of the seasons of this life, we know that God will be with us in the season that awaits us.  Thanks be to God!

 

 

The Bouquet of Memories – Long Reach United Church

July 10, 2022