Forests of Faith

Sometimes when I read the Old Testament I pause over passages that describe God as having an if / then relationship with us. If you do this then God will… reward you, love you, bless you. It’s something I struggle with, this if/then theology, because it sounds like there are conditions to God’s love. Mostly because in The United Church of Canada we understand God’s love as being “unconditional”. There are no if, ands or buts about it. We understand God’s love as extended to everyone too, when we are angels and we mess up, when we do wrong and when wrong things happen to us, even when we sin and sin deeply as individual people and as a society. We know God’s love is offered through Jesus Christ as he walked with sinner and saints alike. No strings attached.

So, it’s a challenge for us to read this ancient, ancient text today, from Deuteronomy, the fifth book in the Old Testament. And to read this ancient Hebrew text with Christian eyes and from our contemporary Christian perspectives. Anytime we read scripture, we need to read with an awareness of who we are today as contemporary people. And to read with a humble heart, knowing the points of view that we bring to our reading of these ancient scriptures shared with us by our ancestors in the faith. Let’s listen again:

When all these things have happened to you, the blessings and the curses that I have set before you, if you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and return to the Lord your God, and you and your children obey him with all your heart and with all your soul, just as I am commanding you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, gathering you again from all the peoples among whom the Lord your God has scattered you. (Deuteronomy 30:1-3 NRSV)

It’s like their saying: If you speak of God to everyone you meet, and you turn time and again to God with all your heart and soul, then God will have compassion on you and you will never be alone again.

These sound on the surface like such words of hope, right? But it also implies that one action is dependent on another. And that you gotta get it right if you want to receive the blessing. But do we ever really get it 100% right? I know I don’t. And do we have to wait until the end to receive God’s blessings?

I find this if/then passage hard for us to hear today. We can never truly know the intention of the ancient Israelite people. Or the meaning of these words written, edited, and shared from thousands and thousands of years ago. But these words can inspire us to wonder and to ask questions that are relevant for us today.

Today this text invites me and us to ponder: Maybe what sounds like conditional love is about… a flow. When words and actions flow together and have consequences and affects. Maybe this covenant is about seeing ourselves as a bigger organism than just our individual selves. That what we do as persons and a people, as a church, as Wesley United Church matters, what we do matters… as part of the flow of creation which is how God works in the world. That’s pretty exciting!

Today I wanted to call this sermon “A Forest of Faith”, inspired by how we are both individual persons and members of a living community. Both that make a difference to each other. Which reminded me of the expression: Sometime you can’t see the forest for the trees. Meaning: sometimes we get so focused on the details that we fail to see the situation as a whole. And we fail to see the consequences of individual actions on the group. It also means, “When you are too close to a situation you need to step back and get a little perspective. When you do you will see there was a whole forest in front of you that you didn’t notice before because you were too close, and focusing only on your tree.”

These days I’m reading a book called “The Hidden Life of Trees, Discoveries from a Secret World : what they feel and how they communicate”, published by the David Suzuki Institute. This book is fascinating! It talks about how individual trees live in a balance between taking care of their own growth and taking care of other trees in a social community of trees. That’s right - trees can be friends with each other!

Here’s a bit from the book: “A tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it. When trees grow together, nutrients and water are divided among them all so that each tree can grow into the best tree it can be. What they create looks like a social network. The “wood wide web”, the author calls it. …There are advantages to working together. A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent climate… but together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates temperatures, stores a great deal of water, and generate humidity. And in this community environment trees can reach their full potential and live to be centuries old. If every tree were looking out only for itself, every tree would suffer. Every tree, therefore, is valuable to the community and worth keeping around for as long as possible,” the author writes.

It’s incredible how trees seek the fullest expression of their “tree-ness” by contributing to the fullest expression of other trees and the forest in which they live… and to do so they collectively have learned — over the eons — that their fullest expression is found in tree friendship, by living in the flow of community… of trees, animals, moss, weather, all that. If trees do this, then the whole forest benefits. The if/then of trees is not a threat or a promise, it is not a condition to receive God’s blessing, rather, “If trees care for each other, then the whole forest benefits” is both an observation and an assurance.

As humans, as people of faith, we believe or maybe we are seeking to know that assurance, that “something more” beyond individual human living. Something more calls to us. We learn from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, about that God-flow, that if/then that has been observed over the ages that has become an assurance of a higher potential for our lives. How our words and actions lead to a fullness of life beyond the basics… into a kind of hope! joy! friendship! community! an assurance that we are not just trees, but if we stand back we are indeed a forest people.

Our scripture today speaks of God’s compassion and regathering a people who have been scattered. Like seeds in the wind. You know those helicopter seeds that fall from some trees… they spiral in the wind and scatter to how knows where. Modern life can be like that. Limiting. Individualistic. We can feel lonely. Boxed into the daily grind. And I think that can be very hard…

I remember the trees we see planted on city streets, in a one metre square box of gravel and dirt. Often covered with a kind of heavy metal grill around the base of its trunk. Do you know the ones I mean? maybe on Sherbrooke street downtown? I feel for these trees — okay, I’m a bit of a tree-hugger. But I do, I feel for these trees. Because, yes the tree is ‘alive’ but it isn’t really living. It can’t take root. It can’t share resources with other tree friends. There are no bird nests in its branches, for example.

Most of my tree science comes from watching David Suzuki nature documentaries— I’m not a expert — but I see in these trees the difference between being biologically alive, and what it is to be living in the fullness of growing, stretching, being nourished, that assure us of a higher purpose that can only happen in community.

If we live in that space of “something more”, then we — like trees— can live in this divine flow of purpose, the if/then, that holds the ground soil together, that supports a host of other plants, animals, cycles of nature, and so on. That’s not a threat, it’s not a promise… but it is an assurance that one thing leads to another. Between God and humanity, and humanity and God.

If and then. IF trees create a forest, THEN the forest will create the kind of place where trees can live and can thrive. Hmmm… IF people create a church, THEN will the church be the kind of place where people can live and thrive? If you and I were a tree, then the church would be our forest, where one thing leads to another. It puts our words and actions in a different perspective, doesn’t it? Maybe the ancient people of our faith saw this parallel too. I’m pretty sure Jesus did. He taught us, in caring for and sharing with each other, as one thing leads to another, then we can really know what it is to live and thrive together. Uplifted by God’s love that has been with us through it all.

Oh, how we love to sit beneath great big trees in the summer, and ponder mysteries with the grandfathers and grandmothers of the faith. Reading back into the Old Testment from a contemporary Christian perspective: I see the tree of trees, solid and steady. Deeply rooted and with many branches swaying with the breezes and the flow of the Spirit. Summer is a wonderful time to invite a friend to a park bench and grow ourselves a forest! May God be with you in the journey. Amen.