Sermon from Grace and St. Stephen's 2/13/22 "Trees and Chocolate Cake"

 

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.