Sermon: Deeper Roots, Stronger Branches

Texts: Job 14:1-2, 7-9; Jeremiah 17:5-8

Date: April 24, 2005

Listen to this poem by Mary Oliver titled “The Black Walnut Tree”

My mother and I debate:

we could sell

the black walnut tree

to the lumberman,

and pay off the mortgage.

Likely some storm anyway

will churn down its dark boughs,

smashing the house. We talk

slowly, two women trying

in a difficult time to be wise.

Roots in the cellar drains,

I say, and she replies

that the leaves are getting heavier

every year, and the fruit

harder to gather away.

But something brighter than money

moves in our blood—an edge

sharp and quick as a trowel

that wants us to dig and sow.

So we talk, but we don’t do

anything. That night I dream

of my fathers out of Bohemia

filling the blue fields

of fresh and generous Ohio

with leaves and vines and orchards.

What my mother and I both know

is that we’d crawl with shame

in the emptiness we’d made

in our own and our fathers’ backyard.

So the black walnut tree

swings through another year

of sun and leaping winds,

of leaves and bounding fruit,

and, month after month, the whip-

crack of the mortgage.[1]

There’s a lot in Mary Oliver’s poem that reminds me of the capital campaign we are celebrating today. We’ve really had to pay attention these last few months to the burdensome privilege of being stewards of an old wood and concrete block building. I doubt a week has gone by in the last year when there hasn’t been something in need of repair—something leaking, dripping, rotting, snapping, fizzling, cracking, wearing out. Never a dull moment. We have not, except in passing, thought seriously of abandoning this house of worship, selling this primo property, and moving on. Even so, I hear in Oliver’s poem the heavy sense of responsibility for an old tree that we feel for an old church, and the question may well have flitted through more than one mind whether it is worth it. What we are undertaking is an expensive project, requiring more from us than we have ever been asked to give before.

But I believe we have uncovered in our campaign the same thing Mary Oliver found in her reluctance to sell the walnut tree to the lumberman to pay off the mortgage: “Something brighter than money moves in our blood.” “Something brighter than money moves in our blood—an edge sharp and quick as a trowel that wants us to dig and sow.” We knew that before we started this campaign, but now we really know it, deep down, that there is something brighter than money that gives us life and moves us forward and engages us in the tending of God’s garden. We know that like the poet, we would crawl with shame in the emptiness we’d made in Winslow’s backyard if we let this church die of neglect. The commitments we are making will provide for another half century at least of shelter in which the ministries of the church and community may thrive. More years of “sun and leaping winds, of leaves and bounding fruit,” because you are showing with your gifts of money that something brighter than money moves in your blood. Congratulations, and thank you.

I believe we will be blessed by our participation in this second-mile investment in the church, even more than we have been already. One of the blessings is that we are being given the opportunity to take something transitory—our labor and the money we have earned from our labor—and dedicate it to something that smacks of eternity. Not that I think this little wooden church is going to be here forever—but it has been longer than any of us has, and we’re doing what we can to see that it will outlast us, so in terms of our life spans it might as well be eternal. And the church points to the eternal even if the structure eventually goes to dust. Annie Dillard was musing on trees on day, and what she said about trees made me think of the church: “Trees are tough. They last, taproot and bark, and we soften at their feet.” Then she quotes the Bible—“For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.” Abiding, Dillard says, is part of the business of a tree.

The church abides, with its taproot sunk into the living water of God’s grace. The church lasts, while we soften at its feet. Isn’t that a lovely way to think about our lifespan in the shadow of an institution that will outlast us? Softening at its feet. When Job was complaining about his lifespan, he compared human life to a flower that comes up and withers. Life is short, he points out; we have no hope of long lives as our days fly away like a shadow. Down the page he speaks about how a tree has more hope, because even if it is cut down, at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. Job is bitterly unhappy at the injustice of this situation. But I wanted to read these verses today because I think they point to one of the blessings of participating in this campaign. Again, think of the church being like the tree Job describes. Isn’t it so cool that we can put a little bit of ourselves into this church building that we hope will be here long after we are forgotten? Even if the church goes through hard times in the future, its life is rooted in God, and God will be able to bring it back from the brink and coax new life out of it, budding ministries, new shoots, more fruit. Our life may be short indeed but we can be part of something that both embraces us now and outlives us to shelter and nourish future generations. This is a little sip of eternity being offered to us.

Wendell Berry wrote a beautiful poem about planting trees that expresses this notion of being part of something that outlives us, and I want to share a few lines of it with you:

I return to the ground its original music.

It will rise out of the horizon

of the grass, and over the heads

of the weeds, and it will rise over

the horizon of men’s heads. As I age
in the world it will rise and spread,
and be for this place horizon
and orison, the voice of its winds.
I have made myself a dream to dream
of its rising, that has gentled my nights.
Let me desire and wish well the life
these trees may live when I
no longer rise in the mornings
to be pleased with the green of them
shining, and their shadows on the ground,
and the sound of the wind in them.[2]

Borrowing Wendell Berry’s words, in the commitment we make to the long-term health of the church, we return to the ground its original music; we desire and wish well the life the church may live when we no longer rise in the mornings. We are making ourselves a dream to dream of the church’s rising long after we and our contributions have been forgotten.

There is another blessing we will experience in the present as a side effect of this campaign effort. I’m not talking about enjoying the refreshed and renewed building, which will also be a blessing once the work is done, but about the spiritual benefits of having made a decision to trust God. The verses from Jeremiah contrast the experience of a person who trust in mere mortals and those who trust in God. The person who is relying only on their own strength and listening only to the sound of their own voice, turning away from God, is like a shrub in the desert, living in a parched place, an uninhabited salt land. It bears no fruit, has no permanent source of nourishment, no companionship.

You and I know a lot of people who are living like shrubs in the desert, relying completely on human resources. One can live a long time this way, without God, believing that everything is fine and any problems that arise can be handled on one’s own. But then there are crises—illnesses, broken relationships, jobs lost, sudden grief—and the shrub in the desert simply withers in the heat, made bitter, dry and hard, as the prophet says, not even able to see when relief is offered. Trust in mere mortals is often an arid life.

Jeremiah offers a contrasting picture of those who trust in the Lord: “They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” [Jeremiah 17:8] It’s not that there won’t be dry spells or crises, but that, tapped into the love of God, there is no fear and anxiety under the heat of misfortune. Life stays green and fruitful—all because of placing trust in God.

Giving away money to a campaign like this is a sign of trust in God. We are deciding to trust a little less in conventional, secular means of “security” and putting a little more trust in God’s providence when we part with some of what we have acquired. It’s not that contributing to a religious institution buys God’s favor somehow. We are not trying to teach people that it’s a slam-dunk guarantee that when you give money to the church, God will find a way to return it to you ten-fold. There are Christian quacks who will tell you that, but that’s not our message. We want to say, Trust God, and do what’s right with your time and your money. Giving follows the important choice to trust God in all circumstances. Giving money is not the same as trusting in God but it is a symptom of trusting in God.

When you give money to a church, you are also saying that you trust God to work through the church. The church isn’t perfect but it is a vessel for God’s grace. It may be a cracked and leaky vessel—something that looks like it was made in a 3rd grade ceramics class. But it still holds water, it still holds grace, it holds hope, it holds the possibility of changed lives that come about as souls learn to trust in God. And the church looks as good to God as the 3rd grade ceramics project looks to the mom who unwraps it on Mother’s Day. We are delightful in our lumpy-bumpy-leaky-blotchy state because we are offering who we are and what we have as a gift of love to a God who loves us. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord! I hope you drink deeply from that stream of living water as you exercise your trust in God.

The campaign itself is a means of growing deeper roots. What we accomplish will manifest, we hope, in stronger branches reaching out to our neighbors in love. We’re planting something here, and I don’t just mean the tree we’re going to go outside and bless after the service. You know what Arbor Day is? A day set aside to plant trees. We’re having a kind of spiritual Arbor Day today. J. Sterling Morgan once said, “Other holidays repose on the past, but Arbor Day proposes the future.” As we dedicate our gifts, we turn confident faces toward the future, trusting God to work through what we have to offer. We are being renewed as we seek to renew our house of worship.

We are, in the poetry of Ann Weems, “New Shoots”

Born in the light of the Bright and Morning Star, we are new.

Not patched, not mended…but new

like a newborn…

like the morning…

The guilt-blotched yesterdays are gone;

the soul-stains are no more!

There is no looking back;

there are no regrets.

In our newness, we are free.

In the power of God’s continuing creation,

we are:

new shoots from the root of Jesse,

new branches from the one true Vine,

new songs breaking through the world’s deafness.

This then is a new day.

New shoots, new branches,

new songs, new day…

Bathed in the promise of God’s New Creation, we begin![3]

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[1] Oliver, Mary “The Black Walnut Tree” New and Selected Poems Boston: Beacon, 1992, p. 201

[2] Berry, Wendell “Planting Trees” Collected Poems New York: North Point Press, 1984, p. 155

[3] Weems, Ann Searching for Shalom: Resources for Creative Worship Louisville, KY: Westminster, 1991, p. 56