2023-07-05
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
July 2, 2023
Rev. Judy Bagley-Bonner
From the book of Revelation: a beautiful vision of the close of history:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home[a] of God is among mortals.
God will dwell[b] with them;
they will be God’s peoples,[c]
and God will be with them and be their God;[d]
4
And will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for[e] the first things have passed away.”
5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”
22 Then the angel[k] showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life[l] with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Before we get to the specific metaphor of God as Tree of Life, I’d like to talk a bit about trees in general which I believe are powerfully spiritual. The late poet, Mary Oliver, for example, says this in her poem “When I Am Among the Trees”
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily…
(For I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often…)
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
Indeed to go easy- not “have it easy” mind you, but to go easy, to flow with life rather than resist it. The trees accept each season as it comes, and bow with the wind, allowing it to prune them of dead weight so that new growth can emerge. Trees, indeed, have a lot to teach us.
In Emerson Pointe Preserve in Palmetto, Florida where Brian and I lived for ten years, there are two trees that we got to know well. Both are very near the fresh waters of the Manatee river just before it meets the salty gulf. They are both large and striking trees, and each fed us spiritually by their presence. The first is a Moreton Fig with multiple roots that emerge up from the ground to create waste high ridges. Clearly it is very old, even ts secondary trunks being a foot or more in diameter. It climbs to the sky with praise to God, sheltering all the smaller trees around it, and it is so majestic that the first time I saw it, I gasped. The storms of the last few years have vastly diminished it. The huge major right branch was lost, but what was spared by Hurricanes Irma and Ian is now regrowing. Because this tree is “planted by the water” It has held on and is starting to regrow in spite of the storms life has put it through.
The writer of Psalm 1 which we read in our Call to Worship reminds us that we must also allow ourselves to be planted by the water, to be nourished spiritually - to let the water of God’s love come up through our deepest roots. The Psalmist finds this in meditating on scripture. Some find silent meditation helpful. Others find singing or listening to uplifting music keeps them focused and strong in faith. Prayer is the key for some, whether traditional prayers or spontaneous expressions. For others, ecstatic experiences, like dancing for the Sufi followers of Islam or Pentecostal Christians. The first lesson trees teach us is that in order for us to survive the storms and the regular ups and downs of life, we must allow God to feed our spirit. We must find the ways God can strengthen and uphold us – the ways we can grow so we will not be moved from a solid foundation when the ravages of illness or tragedy or financial reversal come to us. What is it that feeds your spirit? What is it that grounds you and helps you keep perspective? I confess to you that I have sometimes been better at regularly doing those things than others, but in the last few years, I’ve made my prayer time a priority and practice it more or less daily, and it makes a huge difference in both my quality of life and in my ability to set myself aside and give to others.
The second tree in the Palmetto Preserve is a huge oak that sits atop the Temple Mound of those ancient, indigenous ruins. It is large and magnanimous in that you see huge plants are climbing up its trunk and tiny ferns growing in its branches. The tree is large enough to share the water and sunshine it needs with other species growing on it. It is a beautiful example of literally welcoming and sheltering others of God’s creatures in its great limbs. The tree teaches us about generosity - that in God’s world of abundance there is enough, so it gladly shares the resources it needs with other plants around it. It too lost a major limb, but it also continues to grow back while giving space to its plant companions.
Recently I watched Travel guru Rick Steeves as he travelled the Holy Land. He talked to both Palestinians and Israelis about the division and issues in their country. One particular Palestinian man he interviewed talked about the Olive trees that he and his family have nurtured and harvested for many, many generations. He called them “the poor man’s tree” because often where they grow they are the only large tree which can survive. They provide shade in this arid land, but also wonderful, edible fruit – delicious unripe or ripe and full of precious oil used in cooking and for lamp oil, tonic of skin and hair, and for ritual anointing. This tree is wondrous in its ability to live in soil that is not very good. Maybe because it grows in a hostile environment, it is difficult to kill. If you chop down the olive tree, new trees will form at the roots.
The great Sequoia trees of the West Coast also have much to teach, specifically about living in community. Did you know that their roots are very shallow? They can root in just 3 feet of earth, but at the most they root 12 – 14 feet deep which is nothing in comparison to their tremendous height. How can a tree that was already a thousand years old when Jesus walked the earth, and that is nearly 300 feet tall and weighs 2 million pounds be held up by such shallow roots? The answer is that they spread out widely, and not only that, they intertwine their roots with the roots of their neighboring trees. These giants of the forest literally hold each other up from their roots. What a marvelous image of mutual inter-dependence. What a perfect metaphor for the church! Imagine if the human community could follow their example. The remarkably resilient Sequoias also teach us about keeping going during difficult times. The trees will survive fires as evidenced by scars on their trunks and also will survive wind storms and rain. But when the Sequoia is finally overcome by some calamity, it then gives us a tutorial in its own succession planning and ensures the future of the community. The National Forest Service reports that “whenever fire, wind or other destructive agents manage to eliminate an older tree and expose the mineral soil, large numbers of seedlings will appear and quickly develop into a dense stand of vigorous trees.” Even in death, the tree is able to nourish the future generation.
Indeed, trees are amazing. Scientists tell us that in this life, forests are good for you. There is even a new name for spending time in the woods called “forest bathing” which involves hours long immersion in forests to drink up their oxygen and immerse ones self in their palpable , healing serenity. There is evidence that surgical patients recover faster if they have woodland views. Trees reduce ground-level ozone and other airborne pollutants that worsen asthma. A few years ago our son ran the 7 miles from our house to the hiking paths of the forrest preserve I mentioned earlier. He reported he could literally feel the percentage of cool, clean oxygen shoot up as he entered the dense wooded area. Studies show that trees in urban areas improve cognitive function and promote an active lifestyle. Children who have green spaces in which to play show improved performance in school.
Trees are also sources for many medicines. More than 120 distinct chemicals derived from them are used in a variety of medications. The National Cancer Institute says more than two-thirds of all cancer-fighting drugs come from rainforest growth. More discoveries are made each year. Just recently, scientists found a compound in the needles of the Eastern Red Cedar that fights MRSA, an infection that kills thousands every year. And get this! Even more recently, science has learned that trees actually communicate with one another! If one is attacked by a predatory pest, it sends out hormonal discharges that inform the nearby trees about the attack so they can create a line of defense. Trees, it would seem, in their own way, talk to one another. Just how cool is that?!?
Trees are then, as a broad entity, powerfully spiritual and enrich our lives dramatically. We could say they are full of the divine spirit, made in the image of God just like we are. So what is their prototype? For this, I think we can turn to the idea of “The Tree of Life” which I propose as a metaphor for God.
The tree of life is a fundamental and almost universal archetype in the world's mythological, religious, and philosophical traditions.The concept may have originated in Central Asia, and was absorbed by other cultures, and is especially prevalent in nature and indigenous religions such as paganism and my personal fav, celtic spirituality, where we see its branches mirror and balance its roots. The branches reach both up and down, eventually touching the roots and creating a full circle indicating harmony and rebirth. So its history is ancient, but by the time it gets to Judeo-Christianity, The Tree of Life is also still prevalent, and so in our Bible, we see the stately presence of it at both the beginning of our Biblical story in the early chapters of Genesis, and at the end, in the very last chapter of the book of Revelation from which we read today. History, it would seem, plays out between two gardens. In Genesis, in the Garden of Eden, the tree of life stands right next to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from which Adam and Eve ate, and by which humanity fell from their “Imago dei” state of perfect wholeness and joy into a state of sin which is to say the distortion of our wholeness, the condition of brokenness, pain, and chronic struggle. In those early chapters of Genesis, after “The Fall,” God places a barrier in front of the tree of life, source of immortality, so that humanity cannot enter a state of immortality while in the state of sin, thus being banished to an eternity of struggle. The tree of life, then, goes on hiatus, or is placed on a shelf for all of human history while the story of God’s redemption plays out Biblically. It is mentioned a few times in the rest of the Bible, mostly in the moralisms of the Book of Proverbs, but it makes its real reentry at the end, when God finally completes the work begun in the incarnation of Jesus and the giving of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost by which we do our best to begin fleshing the restored Kingdom of God, even as we wait for God to act decisively and bring the restored Kingdom with power at the close of history.
It is thus that we come to today’s passage. After the comforting words of Chapter 21, where we are told that on that great, final day, when heaven will descend to earth, and earth will be redeemed and become heaven, (how do you like that? The Bible indicates that heaven is not going to be on some cloud out there, it’s going to be everything we know and love of earth here and now, only healed and whole! ) So the new Jerusalem will descent to earth and God will wipe away every tear and sorrow and sighing will be no more, and there will be no more death or struggle or addiction or disease or oppression or sexism or heterosexism or racism. There will be no more need for affirmative action because there will be no more racially based priviledge, but restored, redeemed structures and systems: social righteousness and beautiful justice for everybody. It’ll be like that incredible poem that went viral on Facebook after the death of Pat Robertson by the poet known only as K who said this:
I don’t like to think
About Pat Robertson going to hell.
That lets him off too easy.
I like to think about
Pat Robertson finding himself
In a heaven he never believed
Would exist.
Where Divine is reading in drag
To the children murdered at
Sandy Hook and Uvalde.
While Edie Windsor
And Gertrude Stein drink coffee
In the breakfast nook
talking politics with Harvey Milk.
Where Matthew Shepard relaxes by
A stream, reading poetry to
A nameless young man whose family
Never claimed his body
when he died
Of AIDS.
Where the music plays loudly
Welcoming dancers from the Pulse
And Club Q to the floor where they
Twirl and vogue with
All the murdered trans women of color
Whose names we never knew.
Where Jesus puts his arm around
Pat Robertson’s shoulders and
Drapes them with a rainbow feather boa.
And, gesturing around him says
Come, meet my disciples.”
That’s heaven on earth: Where love finally heals everybody, even, (dare I say it, because God’s extravagant, universal love really honks off some people) so dare I say even, eventually, Adolph Hitler and Osama Bin Laden and you and me!
… And the Tree of Life, will be in the center of it all, generously offering its medicinal leaves for the healing of nations, and all shall finally, really be well and all manner of things shall be well.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and the servants will worship. Amen