This earth of whom we sing a new song to the
Lord – This earth of whom we sing, “Joy to the world! The Lord is come.” –
This earth of whom Jesus sees himself expressing a living vine -- of whom we
are living the branches! – This earth is inherited from our ancestors --
all our ancestors, of every species! This earth is borrowed from our
grandchildren -- whose ancestors we will be! And we will have to be almost
like another species from them – if they are to survive on this earth, in
this world, as we leave it to them. When we lived in Marin County, our
congregation volunteered in restoration work at Muir Woods. If a giant
redwood tree fell across the pedestrian path, volunteers were asked to move,
not the tree, but the path. Why? Because those fallen trees are still full
of new life! New trees spring out of the old! If you are a giant tree of
this congregation, and you fall, we promise not to move you, but to move the
path around you!
We have to go out of our way to find our way
– especially our way past all the walls in our ways. Since Lent began, we
have been reflecting on “walls in our ways,” and now on our “ways past our
walls” -- until in two weeks, on Pentecost Sunday, and in the words of a
brand-new anthem, we proclaim, “the walls come tumblin’ down!” That Sunday
–birthday of the Holy Spirit coming upon the “first church” of disciples
still so fearful of trying to live in all the world without Jesus right at
their sides – that Sunday this year for us offers as well the precious gift
of Confirmation. Four of our young people have spent much of the past year
getting to know one another, sharing faith and life experiences with one
another, and in the past few months meeting almost weekly with adult
mentor-members of the congregation. Please pray with them as they approach
this time of decision.
The children and youth and young adults of
our congregation (And we specially thank those who made the “Moses” musical
such a joyful witness to God last Sunday!) even now are growing their roots
in the risen Jesus, in the church as the living body of Christ. Gary
Gunderson, a pastor working in public health, writes in Deeply Woven
Roots that while it’s tempting to keep looking up at the heights of a
forest of mighty redwoods (That’s the Ascension story this Thursday! Jesus
disappears beyond the clouds, and we are asked why we keep looking up at him
and not at the Christ-work of our own lives! Don’t blink or you’ll miss
it!) – the real story of the forest is found in the dirt, in the roots. The
health of separate trees depends on “whom they grow next to, whose roots
tangle with their own.”
Gunderson further reflects on these
connections between generations: “A forest’s resilience reflects diversity.
Any one tree relies not just on its own roots but on an interwoven fabric of
roots.” So that, “even in our falling, even as our individual memories slip
behind, we will be part of the whole.” How does a redwood forest, how do we
a church, pass on to others our lives and our life together? “Where does
the next generation come from?” Gunderson asks. “Redwood trees don’t
usually spring from individual seeds; they spring from the roots of older
trees.” We can’t describe just one tree: “Not only are they tangled
together at the top, they are inseparable at the bottom, where the roots are
deeply woven together. We, too,” he concludes, “spring from the roots of
those who precede us.” God help us, and all those who follow from us, as we
have been helped before us.
I love to think of this congregation, this
living expression of the whole living body of the whole living Christ, as
“Like a tree that’s planted by the Truckee, / We shall not be moved!” Our
wonder-filled church building is 80 years old this year! As we prepare for
summer weddings and Artown events, I hope we find a way to invite friends to
invest in this building with us – that it may be a base for worship and
study, witness and service, analysis and action required of us in the next
80 years! Can we even begin to imagine? As Jesus says of himself, so are
we as a congregation called to be as seeds forever falling into the earth
and dying to our old forms and former selves – that God’s Spirit might
transform us into root and trunk, stem and stalk, branch and blossom, fruit
and flesh of new life! New hope!
As Julie and I were traveling, I came across
an article by biologist/ecologist Kurt Schwenk. He uses the image of a tree
to portray what he calls “evolutionary equivalence” among all species, all
creatures, all lives. As I read I thought immediately of Jesus’ image of
the vine and the branches. It was as if Jesus grasps in an image the whole
story of life in this world, on this earth! Jesus sees the big picture!
Nature is not meant to be ranked and scaled, with some beings lording
themselves over others – implying there’s a “ladder of nature” with room at
the top for only one species. Rather, we are all part of God’s ever-growing
tree of life. The author invites us to imagine a healthy tree, and in our
imagination to see that tree as cut evenly at its fullest point, creating a
level plane. Imagine a sheet of glass placed across the cut. The glass
represents the present, everything beneath the glass the genealogical
history of life on earth!
The base of the tree is a single trunk
grounded in the origins of life three and a half billion years ago! So that
the growth of creation looks like a gigantic “V” shape, and inverted pyramid
– not with the many at the bottom and the one at the top, but rather with
the one at the bottom, the origin of life, and the many at the top, the
continuing rich and full expression of God’s creativity! We are not so much
the many becoming one as we are the one becoming many – each with its own
unique place in and contribution to the whole! The branches diverging from
that base of the “V” represent all our ancestral species. The branches
become descendants, sons and daughters of species, evolving into their own
lineages!
Countless branches split off into new life
forms – most of whom, like lower branches, end before reaching the sheet of
glass where we can see them. Doesn’t Jesus seem to anticipate this way of
seeing in his image of pruning the vine? (“Vine” with a big “V”!) There
are so many extinct lineages, so many fossil remains! They vastly outnumber
the very few branches who reach to the glass. But just imagine the branches
that get there, the author suggests –
They encompass the diversity of
life on earth as we know it.
[Please raise your hand as your name
is called!] Here is a parasitic worm, there a sponge. Farther
along are frogs, and not too far from them, fishes, crocodiles and
lizards. There are antelope, yeasts, bacteria, giant squids, oak
trees, cormorants, algae, paramecia, locusts, moray eels, deer ticks
and centipedes – diversity almost beyond imagining. [Sounds
like the way some nations, and some denomi-nations. maybe all, are
becoming!] Some of these life forms are simple, microscopic
specks, hardly more than a strand of DNA surrounded by a membrane.
Others are indescribably complex, vast conglomerations of
specialized cells, pulsating organs, jointed legs, moving fluids and
bulging brains packed with millions of sparkling neurons. A few of
them are human beings.
The point the author makes (in the Spirit of
Jubilee Jesus sends on the 50th day of his resurrection!) is how
all the species are leveled! Find common ground. There is no vertical
ranking or scaling of one species over another --higher/lower,
superior/inferior, holy/unholy, closer/farther from God. “Every form of
life now extant has exactly the same amount of evolutionary history beneath
it!” Including every person! Every people! Even every nation! As we
recall there were only 50 nations when the UN began – now there 192, and
counting! Imagine how many more nations our grandchildren may see! “Every
species,” he says, “is equally evolved since the origin of life! Diversity
is arranged across a single plane of equivalence. From simple to complex,
from E. coli to the leader of the Free World, each species – each
individual -- is at precisely the same level!”
Precisely the same level – Jubilee!
Equality of access -- with parity of result! Jesus gets it! And what is
the leveler? Love is the leveler! God’s love is a love we can trust in,
abide in, grow in – because God’s love is equal for all of God’s earth! The
Spirit of God is poured out so freely, so fully – even on Gentiles! On
strangers! On enemies! How can we withhold the waters of life from the
nurture of any peoples, any nations? Any children and creatures of God?
The Spirit is coming to show us a third way to relate to our enemies. It is
not a choice of just “fight” or “flight.” It is also a choice of
“friendship!” The most faithful way to get rid of an enemy is making a
friend of them! Even if we lay down our lives in the process. Now that we
know what the master is doing, now that we know God is suffering love, and
commands us to love as well, as we have been loved – now we have no more
excuse but to be, to see, to act as friends of Jesus in all the world!
Friends of God! Friends of creation! Only the fruit of friendship will
last.
Kurt Schwenk says “the question is not if
we are related but only how closely” we are related, connected,
befriended. Diversity in close relationship is the very best way for ours
or any species to avoid extinction. The more we become homogenous and
monocultural – the more “McDonald-sized” and “Wal-Marted” we become – the
more we endanger our healthy future The only hope for us lies in taking
“the other” as seriously yet joyously, with as much respect and wonder, as
we take ourselves! The only hope for us lies in our continuing “evolvability!”
Beyond guns and weapons, for instance.
Beyond violence and war. Beyond the need to win and to be “number one.”
Beyond the need to look down on and to belittle anyone else. Part of our
evolution has been to learn the art of selective sexuality. We are not
compelled to couple ourselves with everyone we meet – thank God! Rather, we
learn to couple sex with love, with enduring friendship and lasting
commitment. We may learn as well that love is not just interpersonal – not
just between two or a family of persons. We can learn to love in larger
terms. We can learn to love our neighbor not only as self but as other. In
fact, we can learn to love all others! We can learn to love the very
creation herself!
One of the parables of such love in our time
is that of Julia Butterfly Hill (www.circleoflife.org).
She wrote The Legacy of Luna after living for two full years alone
– against all odds of weather and scorn -- in the top of a 200-year
old-growth redwood she named “Luna” in order to save her from being
clear-cut by the order of a financier in Texas who happens to own the land
under Luna in Headwaters Forest, Humboldt County, CA. Julia’s two years of
tree-sitting -- which she says is always “a last resort” to save a tree as
old as Jesus! – teach her how possible it is for us, if we will let
ourselves, to fall in love with creation herself. She says in the constant
company of Luna she comes to learn many gifts of life and many arts of
living all life in love – arts of relating, connecting, befriending –
beginning with one single tree and spreading to all the earth! She is led
to conclude, “For the rest of my life, I will do everything within my power
to honor, cherish, and protect this gift of life that connects us all.”
Sounds like the vine and the branches of Jesus, the tree of “evolutionary
equivalence,” to me!
Julia Butterfly Hill writes these “Offerings
to Luna” in about the sixth month of her tree-sit –
A tree / a life so many years gone by
history bound with each new / ring and
every scar
I lay nestled in Her arms / I listen to
all She has to say
She speaks to me through my / bare feet .
. . my hands
She speaks to me on the / wind . . . and
in the rain
telling me stories born long / before my
time / Wisdom
as only Ancient Elders know / Truths
passed to me through / Nature’s perfect
lips / She cries
Her overwhelming grief / sap that clings
to me . . . / to my soul
I wrap my arms around Her / offering the
only solace / that I know
giving myself as the only gift / I have
to give / a pitiful offering
to a Goddess such as this / but of myself
/it is all that I have to give
All that we have to give. Ourselves. A
life laid down for a friend. It is enough. We are enough. With God, we
are enough! Let the beleveled and the beloved vine-livers, vine-lovers, of
this congregation say, Amen!
