Jeremiah 17:5-10
Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of my ordination as a deacon in the Church, and as I’ve been reflecting on the past 6 years something has struck me. I have served nearly my entire ordained ministry in “unprecedented times.” Plague, violence around the world, multiple contentious election cycles, an awakening to a new awareness of the deep roots of racism in this country, a growing sense of division and a culture of loneliness so profound that health researchers have named it an epidemic. Even before I was ordained, before I even knew what ordination was, I was shaped by a fearful and confused world. I was young enough when the towers fell that I have no memory of a pre-9/11 America. I have never known a world without school shootings. I lost my first friend to gun violence when I was in the 8th grade. I do not remember a time when we were not afraid of each other, afraid to lock our doors, afraid of what will lead the eleven o’clock news. I know that for some, such a world existed at one time, and the loss of that world is a source of tremendous grief for those who knew it.
I see and hear a great deal of fear around me and within me these days. There’s the fear of conflict, of losing our temper or losing relationships over disagreements or different worldviews. There’s the fear of the unknown, of what will happen next, of the risks of trying something new. There’s fear for those who are in vulnerable positions, for refugees whose flights were cancelled and federal employees who are losing their jobs and the people who are being detained because of the language they speak or the country where they were born. There is fear of saying the wrong thing, believing the wrong thing, fear of not knowing enough. And there’s fear of doing anything at all, the fear that paralyzes and silences us. There is a fear that makes us lash out, and a fear that cages us in. Both are meant to protect us. Neither is succeeding.
At the beginning of the month, Ben and I were lucky to join my in-laws for a few days away in Charleston South Carolina. I had never been, and Ben had not been there in many years. The last time he visited the area was on a mission trip, and there was one memory that had superceded all others from that experience, so he insisted that we revisit it. The Angel Oak Tree, the oldest Live Oak tree East of the Mississippi. If you’ve never seen it, as I hadn’t before this trip, there is really no way to capture in words or even in pictures the vastness of this tree. She is estimated to be 300 to 400 years old, although the priest at the parish next to the tree believes that she is much older, or at least that a predecessor tree had stood on the same spot for a millennia. This priest told us that there is archaeological evidence of tools and pottery from over a thousand years ago, signs of civilization and community, surrounding the tree in concentric rings. While the tree still stands protected, we can’t know just how deep the roots of humanity’s relationship with this tree might go. At the very least, we know this tree is older than the United States, older than the Episcopal Church in the US, older than the oldest parish in this diocese.
Standing sixty five feet high, reaching 160 feet across, shading over 17,000 square feet, the Angel Oak nearly completely blocks out the sun as you stand beneath her. Her limbs stretch so far and are so heavy that they touch the ground in places. In some places they are even buried underground, rooted and putting out new growth from centuries-old branches hollowed out by time. This tree has survived hurricanes, floods, lightning strikes, animals and insects and pathogens, human conflicts, pollution, and the encroachment of modern construction and deforestation, and still it grows.
Jeremiah says “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its 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.”
And the Psalmist echoes “They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.”
I am struck by how the prophet speaks of trust as a rootedness, a growing down into fertile ground. Those who place their trust in mere mortals, who seek strength and salvation from fallible human beings, those who turn their hearts away from the Lord and toward other kinds of power- these are described as shrubs in the desert, unable to see relief when it comes. Those who in their fear turn to human strength, false prophets and empty promises from would-be saviors are rooted in dry, cracked soil. They are unable to take in the moisture when the rain comes; the soil in which they have rooted themselves is too compacted and dry to absorb it. They have planted themselves in their fear, and in that place there is no relief.
Those who trust in the Lord, on the other hand, are blessed. Their roots do not have to stretch far to find water, and even when the heat comes they are nourished, able to continue bearing fruit even in drought conditions. By trusting in God, they have rooted themselves in good, fertile soil. Because they need not be fearful or anxious, they are able to bear fruit and keep themselves fed at the same time, leaves evergreen even in harsh and unprecedented times.
Clearly, sometime in the last 400 or more years, an acorn found itself in good soil on St John island in South Carolina. Her roots reached into the earth and found water, and her branches reached for the sun, all the while the world turned and changed around her. The mystical combination of time, place, and circumstance allowed that acorn to become an angel, providing shade and sustenance and inspiration to countless living things. She reminds me of the exceptionally faithful people I have had the honor and privilege to know, those who have forsaken their fear in favor of trust in God’s provision. The greatest saints I have known, the ones with a faith big enough to block out the sky, have not been people striving for any kind of greatness. These oaks of righteousness have been people living simple lives of love and faithfulness, trusting in God to guide their footsteps and turning to God when fear threatens to break that trust. The Angel Oaks of the Church have been people rooted deep in Scripture, watered daily by prayer, bearing good fruit and remaining steadfast in justice, mercy and love even in the harshest and most fearful of times. They have been tempted as we are to uproot at the first sign of drought, seeking shelter somewhere other than God’s grace. They have endured hardships and tempests as we do, and they have trusted in God to get them through it. It is only through this trust, this choice to be rooted in divine love, that we can bear good fruit as they have.
If we do not trust in God, if we choose to place our trust in anything but God, we can be overcome by fear, shriveled and parched in a wilderness of our own making. This is not God’s dream for us, and it is not the example offered to us in Jesus and the saints who have followed after him on the way. We have much to be afraid of in this world, there is no sense or justice in denying that. But the God who made us, the God who saves us, the God who redeems us calls us into the kind of trust that makes us grow, that unbinds us and makes it possible for us to bear good fruit. There is good soil here beneath our feet. There is water, and sunlight, and a God who keeps promises. Tend to your roots, and together the fruit we bear will feed an anxious, fearful, starving world. It is for this purpose that we have been planted here.
Mother A Writes 