Epiphany 6c 2025; 16 February
Luke 6:17-26; Jack Hardaway
MAKE LIKE A TREE
I like trees.
I plant them where ever I find a spot.
Tomorrow is Presidents Day, I like to do some planting around the Church on Presidents Day. Maybe a tree in the playground tomorrow. We’ll see.
They don’t all make it, some struggle and grow slowly, all twiggy.
But then there are the ones that just grow and grow, lush and green, bringing shade, and framing the sky.
And then, even more than that, there are those trees that span the generations.
We have a big knobby river oak in our front yard, against the odds it is at least 150 years old. It is on its last few years. I like to just sit and look at it. You can tell it’s a tree that’s been places, that’s seen things, and it shelters our yard, home to who knows how many squirrels and chipmunks and birds and critters.
Some people are like those trees, the ones that provide shelter and that frame the sky.
We become like that when we are in communion with God.
When love does its work and shapes us.
The Book of Psalms, the Psalter, it is the prayer book of scripture, the prayer book of the Bible. If I had to choose only one book in all of scripture it would be the Psalms. Luke’s Gospel would be a close second. If someone asks me my favorite poet I say the Psalms, the American Book of Common Prayer version, the one we speak and hear together every Sunday.
We speak and hear Psalm 1 together this morning, the beginning of the prayer, and we are given a glimpse of the tree of righteousness, planted by the stream of water that is the law of God, the teaching of God. The righteous are like that kind of tree.
They are happy, blessed, blissful, delighting in God and God delighting in them.
Jeremiah this morning even quotes from Psalm 1, about what happens to a life and heart that trusts in God rather than in human strength, our failing attempts to be invulnerable.
I love mixed idioms, sometimes called malaphors, one of my favorites is from the movie Back to the Future 2, when the bully named Biff threatens the hero, Marty McFly, and says, “Why don’t you make like a tree and get outta here!”
The Psalm is challenging us to make like a tree and trust in God, to grow roots that anchor the world and branches that frame the sky, to bear the fruit that feeds the world.
Righteousness is a mysterious and misunderstood thing. It has a negative connotation these days, with hints of condescending moralism, and judgmental virtue, joyless vampires sapping all the vitality from all they encounter.
Righteousness isn’t about following the rules and making other people even more miserable, weighing them down with demands to do more and do better.
Righteousness is about relationships, relationships that build people up rather than tearing them down.
Do you know someone who brings out the best in others? They are the righteous ones.
They reveal God, God as the one who makes us grow, with roots that anchor the earth and branches that frame the sky.
There are people, institutions, governments, communities and churches that are like this. That bring out the best and build up. Scripture and history are full of examples of where this tree is growing and where it is extinct.
Who are these people in your lives? Name them. Pray for them. Give thanks for them.
There are legends about the secret righteous ones, the tzadakim, the ones who hold the world together, they don’t even know who they are, like a sacred God’s Mission Impossible Team.
They bring just enough grace to tip the world toward staying together rather than flying apart.
They bring just enough of trusting God into a world that is caught up in a frenzy of devouring fear. They are the trees whose roots anchor the world and whose branches frame the sky drawing our gaze upwards to the One who is infinite.
The cross of Jesus is sometimes referred to as a tree.
The tree of torture and murder and capital punishment is transformed into the tree of life.
That is the righteousness of God.
God takes our worst and makes something glorious.
That is the gospel of Jesus, the good news, the good news that we can trust, the good news that is the water where our roots grow deep and our lives are made fruitful, Jesus is the love that shapes our lives, growing our branches to frame the sky.
The world could use some more trees like that.
So.
Make like a tree. Anchor the world. Frame the sky.
Amen.