Jack Hardaway
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Planting trees.
Planting trees is a radical gift of hope and generosity, a pledge to the future, trust in the future.
It is the gift of shade, of fruit, of beauty, of rooting the soil into place, of cleaning the air, a gift that matures slowly for another generation to reap the benefit.
It is a physical act of faith. And faith is always physical, because Jesus Resurrection is physical. Always sacramental, always outward and visible. Planting trees.
Grace Church plants trees, big ones and small ones, a radical gift of hope and trust that the future belongs to God, that the future is worthwhile, that God can be trusted.
So we plant trees. It is simple, elegant and profound. Planting trees is about so much more than planting trees.
All the readings this morning can be summarized in the simple statement, “There are two kinds of people, those who plant trees and those who don’t.”
Why do some plant and others not?
It comes down to having faith and acting on it rather than sitting in the seats of the scornful as the psalm says.
The Apostle Paul writes of the fruit of resurrection, almost like there is a resurrection tree, and the first fruit of those who have fallen asleep is Jesus.
The blessed-s and woes of Luke’s Beatitudes, there are no woes in Matthew’s beatitudes.
Luke’s beatitudes are up to something else, they all have contrasting woes: the poor and the rich, the hungry and the full, the weeping and the laughing, the persecuted and the well-spoken of.
The arrival of God’s Kingdom brings a reversal of fortune, turning everything upside down, or as Deacon Mary likes to say, “turning everything right side up.”
Lifting up those who are held down, and cutting down those who are lifted up. Not so much punishing and rewarding as taking a turn, a strange mysterious karma that warns us all not to hold on too tightly to our pains and grief, nor to our blessings and joys, in order to live in the kingdom that is lifting up what was once held down.
The arrival of Jesus is the arrival of the lifting up of all those who have been held down, growing like trees planted by streams of water.
What was betrayal and death has been reclaimed and transformed by the resurrection fruit that is Jesus body. The cross becomes the fruitful tree.
The hope and the trust that plants trees, that is the resurrection faith of Jesus.
Be trees of faith. Be trees of resurrection. Bear the fruit that raises what was dead back to life.
Plant trees.