Jeremiah 17:5-10, Psalm 1
Our Tuesday morning Women’s Book Group has been learning a
bit about botany as we read together Braiding
Sweet Grass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In the book she weaves together her
knowledge as a botanist with the passed down wisdom she is the recipient of as a
member of the Potawatomi Nation. So when I read this metaphor about the tree by
the stream, sending out its roots, nourishing its leaves and bearing fruit- in both the Jeremiah reading and the Psalm, I
immediately thought about all the learning I have been doing through reading
this book.
One section in particular came to mind. She is talking about the mast fruiting
phenomenon of pecan trees, meaning that the trees go for long stretches of time
without bearing fruit and then all together offer an abundance. She writes, “When the trees produce more than the
squirrels can eat, some nuts escape predation. Likewise, when the squirrel
larders are packed with nuts, the plump pregnant mamas have more babies in each
litter and the squirrel population skyrockets. Which means that the hawk mamas
have more babies, and fox dens are full too. But when the next fall comes, the
happy days are over, because the trees have shut off nut production. . . so
[the squirrels] go out looking, harder and harder, exposing themselves to the
increased population of watchful hawks and hungry foxes. The predatory-prey
ratio is not in their favor, and through starvation and predation the squirrel
population plummets and the woods grow quiet without their chattering. You can
imagine the trees whispering to each other at this point, “There are just a few
squirrels left. Wouldn’t this be a good time to make some nuts?” All across the
landscape, out come the pecan flowers poised to become a bumper crop again.
Together, the trees survive, and thrive.”
It is mutual thriving, interconnectedness … like a tree
sending out roots to the stream, bearing fruit for the animals and feeding the
people. There is no way to look at nature and not see how everything is
connected. The air, the land, the plants, the people … all reliant on one
another. And so the prophet Jeremiah
uses this metaphor. For the tree, the water is life. Without the stream it
withers. So it is for Judah. Jeremiah is referring to the people of Judah as
the tree and God as the source of life, when they continually separate
themselves from that source they cannot thrive.
As Father Jeremiah said in his Wednesday night Bible Study on this
passage, “Self-reliance is repeatedly the sin named by the prophet Jeremiah.” A
failure to recognize our interconnectedness and our dependency leads us away
from the source of life, from what sustains us. It takes us further from the
river.
I once found myself in a place that survived by the river.
It is a small town with a couple of restaurants, a couple of churches and a
diner on the edge of town along the state highway called “The Speed Trap.” I
learned a lot about small towns and what it means to be in a community in the
years that I served as a pastor there. Their proximity to each other and distance
from a city kept the people very interconnected. They saw each other at the
drug store, the grocery store, the post office, school pick up and church.
Sometimes their interconnectedness drove me crazy. I heard lots of things
“secondhand” “So and so said this the other day at so and so’s house.” Rumors
took off quickly. There were feuds that lasted generations even after the
initial cause was long forgotten. And people were so comfortable with each
other that they often went straight past polite and made me very uncomfortable
with the direct manner in which they spoke to one another.
But it wasn’t long before I was part of the community. Because
of the 30 minute commute home, church members would often have me over for
dinner when I had a late meeting. They let me into their homes, showed me
family pictures, told me their stories, fed me delicious food and even changed
my flat tire. They trusted my new ideas, listened to my sermons and called me
their pastor. As they were sustained by the river, I was sustained by them in
sometimes unexpected ways. Like when I would show up to a house for a pastoral
visit and see the Tupperware on the table which meant I was going home with a
treat, and sometimes that was chocolate cake. Or when a retired pastor who
attended the church seemed to magically appear at the hospital after I had my
first baby and sweetly nestled my son’s fresh skin into the nook of his aging
arm. When sweet Clarence had my then toddler son and I over for apple picking
and fresh honey from the hive and I had so many apples that I shared them with
my neighbors in the city. When I returned from maternity leave to find that a thoughtful
man in the congregation had installed a curtain over the window in my office
door and a mini fridge next to my desk to make it easier for me to pump milk
for my new baby. Or when the funeral director and I let tears fall as we rode
in the car together past the elementary students lined up along the road, as
they said good bye to their classmate. That place with roots in the river was a
place where people sustained one another, not always easily, but steadily.
Last week marked six years since we saw Pike’s Peak on the
horizon with a car full of car seats, snacks, toys and everything else that
could fit. It has been six years since we came to a place not sustained by a
river but rather sustained by a mountain. I remember telling my then four year
old, “the white on the top of that mountain becomes the water we drink from our
sink!” It took us a while to learn how to grow things here. It takes time,
attention, watering and protection from the hail. Eventually we found a way to
develop roots. My husband now has a full garden that we all help tend to and
celebrate the first signs of sprouting spinach. And at the same time our roots
have found a way to thrive in the thin mountain air and dry earth. This place too is interconnected. And like everywhere else, that can also drive
me crazy. The differences in religious and political perspectives can sometimes
make for tenuous connections and heated conversations. But I also see the many ways in which we
sustain one another here. People here are more likely to let you in than in
other places I have lived. They are used to new people and will give you a
chance. Many people don’t have generations of family here and so friendships
become deeper out of mutual need and appreciation. And sunshine soaked hikes
are a great way to open up to one another while navigating boulders. Every week I meet more amazing people who
inspire me with their openness, passion and ability to speak honestly about
what they believe. This place, with roots in the mountain, is a place where
people sustain each other, not always easily but with eagerness.
The tree by the river in both Jeremiah and the Psalm remind
us that we need to stay close to the source. The water is life. God is life. We
stand by the stream of God’s grace and strength and let our roots soak it up.
It nurtures our soul and makes our leaves green and then we are able to bear
fruit for the world around us. We are at our best when we remember not to drift
off alone in the desert, bent on our own self-righteousness or our
unwillingness to see the benefit of others. Because here among the trees, close
to God, we can get through the drought, whether it is a pandemic, tragic loss,
doubt, sadness or the absence of hope, because we have the shade of one
another’s leaves. We are interconnected, like the pecan trees that feed the
squirrels … thriving together.
