Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

Autumn is easily my favorite season in the Mille Lacs Lake area, where I live and serve as pastor. The weather is cooler. The bugs and tourists aren’t buzzing around as much. But the even greater blessing are the brilliant fall colors.

Wandering the paths of our local state parks – Father Hennepin and Kathio – offers some of the best opportunities to immerse yourself in creation’s vibrant autumnal display. However, if you happen to find yourself hiking the Landmark Trail at Kathio, I encourage you to take a brief pause from your leaf peeping and note some of the historical and cultural signage.

The Landmark Trail notes the site of former American Indian villages that once thrived on the shores of Ogechie Lake (which the trail parallels for much of its route). The signage notes that people have long been drawn to Ogechie Lake for the wild rice that grows in its waters. First, for the Dakota peoples for well over a thousand years and then later for the Ojibwe people, most especially the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, as Kathio State Park and Ogechie Lake lie within the boundaries of the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation.

However, in the 1930s, logging companies built a dam which kept water levels in Ogechie Lake too high for wild rice (or manoomin in Ojibwe). So, for more than 70 years, this lake, which had fed people for millennia, provided sparse harvests of wild rice. This also, of course, negatively impacted the wildlife that once thrived on the lake. Only in recent years, through a collaboration between the Mille Lacs Band and the MN DNR, has the lake finally started to bounce back. [Please see the article linked below for more information.]

I thought of this story as I reflected on our Bible passages for this Sunday. Most obviously, the beloved 23rd Psalm. While I am not sure sheep could easily snack on some manoomin, if you have ever paddled among healthy beds of wild rice, you know that it is very much akin to a lush, green valley. Beyond just the gift of this food that grows on water, those waterways teem with life of all kinds. In fact, those who harvest wild rice sometimes tape their sleeves to keep some of that life from teeming all over you.

And yet, how easily we might let these gifts be cast aside or ignored. I would imagine that given the choice between preaching on Psalm 23 and another of these gloomy Matthean readings where someone gets thrown in the outer darkness, you might be tempted to focus solely on the abundant grace of Psalm 23. But I find that the pairing offers much to ponder.

In our advocacy of creation care, we might often feel like prophets of old, calling people to turn aside from their evil ways lest disaster and doom befall us. And yet, our Gospel reminds us that we don’t just reject the dire warnings, we are just as likely to turn down an invitation to a party!

We cling to the promises of Psalm 23, confident that if our Shepherd leads us, we will gladly come to that place of rest and abundant food and water. But we forget that, like actual sheep, we are just as likely to run bleating the opposite way. Or remain stubbornly planted, no matter how many pokes and prods from the staff, munching on our dry thistles and thorns instead of the green grass that is just down the valley a little further, if only we would follow.

Psalm 23 isn’t typically categorized as a lament Psalm, but, like those psalms, it doesn’t shy away from the painful realties of life. The shepherd does not just wave his staff like a magic wand and make all the enemies poof out of existence. The valley is still deep and dark. But there is a promise of presence, of guidance and welcome. We don’t see the act of someone getting cast into the outer darkness, but that fear is still there.

In her book, “Getting Involved with God,” scholar Ellen Davis notes that although the Psalter contains more lament psalms than any other category, the Hebrew name, Tehillim, translates to “Praises.” Though she admits this may seem like a contradiction, she offers that “when you lament in good faith, opening yourself to God honestly and fully – no matter what you have to say – then you are beginning to clear the way to praise. You are straining toward the time when God will turn your tears into laughter.”

I am never quite sure what to do with Matthew’s imagery of the outer darkness. Is the outer darkness a permanent state? Is there still room for grace, for reconciliation and redemption? Our sins do have consequences. We build dams and abundant life is flooded for 70 years. We reject warnings and invitations alike, and, when it comes to the many serious challenges our planet faces, I hope that we are able to listen, to hear either or both and take them seriously before the time of weeping comes.

But if that time comes, I do trust that God will hear our laments. That as we strain toward the laughter, toward the green valleys, the still waters, the abundant feasts and well-aged wines, that the Lord, our shepherd, will once again turn around and come back for us, and lead us forward, out of the deep, dark valley.