Wildflowers and the Gospel

by John V. Upton, Executive Director

Wendell Berry, Kentucky farmer and writer, has said this about the Bible:  “I don’t think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible really is… It is best read and understood outdoors… Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural.”  To this claim that the Bible is best read outdoors we could add that a fair amount of what happens in the Bible takes place outdoors.  Jesus himself did most of his work under an open sky.  His teaching made use of what his listeners could witness in nature:  the wind in the trees, a storm cloud in the west, a farmer sowing seed, or birds and wildflowers.

“Look,” he said, “at the birds of the air.”  No doubt he meant whatever birds were soaring above them or singing around them on the hills of Galilee.  “Look at them,” he says.  His word “look” meant “to look thoughtfully.”  And “consider the lilies of the field,” he says.  He isn’t likely referring to what we think of as lilies, but to whatever wildflowers were blooming on those hills.  Imagine them in the colors you choose:  lavender, gold, scarlet, blue.  “Consider them,” he says; the word translated “consider” means “to ponder deeply.”  The crowds had come to see Jesus.  We’ve all come looking for him.  Look elsewhere for a bit, he says, and directs our attention to hyacinths and swallows.

Why?  To help us quit being so anxious.  He had just said, “Don’t be anxious about your life… Don’t be anxious about your body.”  But apparently he knows what many of us know about those words “don’t be anxious.”  Such words never ever work, not by themselves.  So having said them, he presents us with flowers and shows us the freedom of birds on wings.

It would be good to remember that the people to whom Jesus was speaking had better reason to be anxious than we do.  Most of them were desperately poor.  Their anxiety had to do with food enough to eat and clothing enough to wear.  It was to people genuinely worried about necessities that Jesus said, “Don’t be anxious.”

Yet we are by no means unfamiliar with anxiety.  Some are more anxious than others.  Our objects of worry and anxiety range far and wide, from our own body to the needs of our loved ones, to something we did long ago, to something that might happen in the future, to matters of financial security, to the condition of the world.  I think there’s something to be said for people who worry about such things.  At least they care enough to worry.  Worry may even drive them into good action.

But that’s not usually the case.  As a rule, anxiety doesn’t free us to act, but puts us in a state of paralysis.  The root of the word “anxiety” means “to choke.”  Anxiety is constricting.  Physically it constricts blood vessels, the throat, the gut.  Spiritually it constricts faith.  It narrows hope.  It pulls back the reach of love.  Anxiety comes to our open hands and tightens them into a fist.

To help us get past our anxiety Jesus shows us birds and wildflowers.  But isn’t this analogy rather weak?  Our situation is a good deal more complicated than flowers and birds.  He’s not saying we’re like these, though surely he’s suggesting we’re connected to them.  Mostly he is saying: look very closely at them and look for what they show you about God.  If God delights in feeding the birds, why would God’s hand not be stretching out to give us what we need?

And what of the flowers?  He’s not sentimental about them: he speaks bluntly about how they don’t last.  They all bloom, they burn.  Even so, he points us to them and says, “Would you look how gorgeous they are!”  And those first listeners, oppressed as they were, how cheered they must have been to hear him call the flowers at their feet more splendidly arrayed than the great King Solomon, and to hear how love was clothing them more gorgeously still.  Jesus says that such beauty speaks volumes to human beings about who they are under God.

It’s worth pondering, that the world is waving all these unnecessary colors, all this wanton splendor.  Science can tell us that this beauty has biological functions, that natural principles account for so many lovely colors and shapes of life.  Yet how easy to imagine a world less brilliant, more dull, with fewer forms and shades to break the heart with beauty.  And who can explain why these things move us so?  These plants do what they do as parts of their ecosystems.  They’re not here for us.  And yet, and yet, we thrill to them, as if Someone had set them into the world with our deep needs also in mind. 

I can account for the violence and cruelty in the world better than I can account for all this beauty and all this music.  Can it come from anything but an infinitely beautiful Mind, and a Mind that is exquisitely caring for detail, with a flair of extravagance?

If God has cared for us not only to meet our need, but also to raise us up for such high communion, how can we possibly remain in the grip of anxiety?  God has sent us flowers to move and lift the heart.  How can we, how dare we, be anxious, when we are so made and so lifted and called to serve in the kingdom – the garden – of God?

When we go to the florist to buy flowers for someone, they generally ask, “Do you want a card with that?”  On the card we try to condense into words the volumes we hope the flowers will say.  God has sent us flowers, knowing we would need them.  If you could condense the message of God’s gift to you – to us – into words, what would they be?  More important, having gotten that message, if you could condense your answer into a life, how would you live?