Message 12-09-07
Series: Say the Words [Lectionary]
Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-10
Title: The Tree, the Water, and the Door
We’re going to get mystical today. Now that might make some of you uncomfortable. Mysticism is not something most people are used to or are thinking about in life. But we’re in a season when we’re going to celebrate our understanding that the Creator of the Universe somehow joined in our experience of life. That’s pretty mystical.
When you think of the mystical you may think of smoke and wild, fervent prayers or you may think that the mystical is not really Christian, but mysticism and the mystical is not far from us as I just pointed out. We are following a man and pray in the name of a man that we believe had such an experience with God that really the only way you can describe the man fully is to suggest that he was and is God. And there’s no getting away from that being mystical.
Our Scripture today is a mystical piece that describes a person as a tree, a shoot that will spring up from the root of Jesse. Some day this tree will stand as a banner or an ensign or a standard, a place where the people of the earth will rally. Last week our Scripture was about a time when God would reign. This week’s Scripture is about a specific focal point – an experience even more than a place.
The tree is a symbol. And the truth is that Trees are a symbol for cultures all over the planet. You’ll find the Tree of Life as an experience of people from almost every culture. It’s not hard to imagine why since, with all the difference between the varieties of trees – they are still something we share in common. Almost all people have trees in their lives.
The Tree of Life image is simple to understand. The tree connects the three worlds – that which is up in heaven, that which is all around us and that which is above us. People have seen the tree, and specifically the Tree of Life, as a core element of living. Today we know that trees are exactly that. Our rainforests are the lungs of our planet. The trees of our planet breathe in the carbon monoxide that we exhale and they produce oxygen that we and just about every other living things needs. But trees have carried a mystical quality to them that people have recognized and spoken of since time began.
You may know something of this experience yourself.
Whenever I go hiking, if I’m able to go into the woods for any period of time and whether I’m using my feet or using a canoe, I will sometimes feel moved to a new place. I’ll feel like I’m not in my own time or around my life. I feel like something new and very different is happening. There’s something about sunlight through the branches, the sounds of the wind going through the trees, the sunlight shining through leaves and through the trees. It can make me feel like I’ve entered a story I love to read. It can make me feel like I need to stay in a place like this. There is a connection with peace and a connection with living, with deeper life that draws me. It makes me want to stay.
You may have sat in the shade of a tree and experienced the rest and peace I’m talking about. You may have listened to the wind moving the branches and felt like you heard a voice. You may have wished it actually was a voice.
I’ve spent a lot of time studying the people called the Celts. I went off to study Celtic theology for a week, just to get my feet wetter, but it is a hobby of mine and the Celtic understanding of the mystical connections trees carry is not that different from every other culture on the planet.
The Celts felt that trees were sacred and that they were worthy of honor. Trees were the givers of life. They bore fruit, they became the materials of building, and they were medicine. They were food and fuel in some cases.
I had a personal experience of healing with a tree once. When my son, Sam, was an infant I promised him, leaning over his crib one evening, that he and I would one day hike in Alaska. It took 23 years to keep that promise, but a few years back we did it. Wouldn’t you know that the week before I was supposed to leave on this trip that I’d been waiting for almost all of Sam’s life, I got a sinus infection. I went to the doctor and got loaded down with medicines and instructions but nothing shook this thing. I left on the trip with this infection in full strength. Every ascent and descent in an airplane was excruciating. Headaches, my eyes watering, my muscles tensing, it was horrible. Sam had his own issues because we were sharing a small tent since we were hiking in the wilderness and I was snoring like a horse. In the middle of the night I’d get slugged just so I’d turn over.
Finally after being in Alaska for 2-3 days, during one of the drizzly moments that come and go during the summer up around the mountains, I was reading one of Sam’s books. Sam is a vegetarian and so he had purchased a book on the planets you could eat and use in Alaska. As I was flipping pages and just reading random information to get my mind off of how miserable I felt, the words “sinus infection” flashed by. I flipped back until I found them and there it said that one way to get rid of a sinus infection was to take spruce needles and boil them up in water breathing in the fumes for about 20-30 minutes. Literally in arm’s reach was a Spruce tree with brand new light green buds on the ends of the branches. I popped off the ends of a bunch of branches, threw them in the pot of water I used to cook my food and stood over the pot breathing in for about a half hour. My sinus infection was gone. Gone!
When I got back to Florida I told my doctor to buy a Spruce tree.
People have found that trees are partners, helpers in life and so have honored trees all over the planet. Our heritage of putting a tree in our houses during the Christmas season carries over some of that honoring. However the tree that is honored over most trees is the oak tree. There are trees that, when you cut them down, will never grow again, like pine trees. You don’t get sprouts out of the roots of a pine. But you can get a sprout out of an oak stump and that’s what we read about in our Scripture. Abraham, father of faithful people in the Bible, sat under the Oaks of Mamre. He may have been there to give judgment. He may have sat there because it was peace. He may have liked the shade, but it isn’t a surprise to find him under an oak.
We get our phrase “Knock on Wood” from the history of giving honor to trees. We “knock” in order to receive blessing, in order to receive strength – like the strength of an oak. We touch a tree or part of a tree to retain something of what the tree has to offer.
This is probably why the old word for oak, the word daur, became our word for door. It is through the tree that one enters. It is through the door that we enter home, rest and peace. It is through the door that we others lives. It is through the door that we enter new knowledge, security, and find help.
Today we’ve lifted up the water of baptism as an entrance into new life. It is through the water that we receive life giving help. But if you go to the Bible you discover that the water of life, referred to in Revelation, comes out of the roots of the tree of life. The tree of life is the door to life.
The Celts and people all over the planet believed that the core of life was a tree and they meant that quite literally. A tree, the tree, the Tree of life went down into the earth, into the core of the earth and the word grew around it. We continue to carry that image with us. The Celtic cross, even here on our Mission Candle Stand, holds the image of a tree that is the core of the world, the axis of the world, but this is a particular tree. This is the tree of life that we discover through the work of Jesus. This circle isn’t just a circle that holds the arms of the branches of the cross together. When we see this circle we’re supposed to think of a sphere. The tree of life is the core of our planet, our world. It is the thing that holds everything else together.
And so, we read our Scripture today and we read that what looked like a dead stump is actually going to produce life, that death and destruction did not hold the last word. We read that this tree will create a climate where natural enemies will stop and live in peace, where children will lead the way, and where nations will rally and find a rest they ache. We read words that people all over the planet will recognize as the tree of life.
There are stories of life and death connected with trees all over the planet. There are evergreen trees, but the Oak stands as a tree that gets cut down and comes back to life. That is the description of this person here. This person will be the descendent of Jesse, the descendent, therefore of the king, David. This person will become like a tree who will produce a life of comfort, of change, where nature itself will live in harmony and where people will find rest. That is also the description – this death and resurrection and hope of life that we find in cultures all over the planet. Now some people think that this dismisses the value of this description. As Christians have claimed this to be a description of Jesus they’ve been told that this description is one used of savior images from every culture. It can’t have meaning for one group, for one religion.
And my friends they are right. It can’t. It has meaning for all people. God has been speaking to all people. God has been preparing the hearts of all cultures. God has been lifting up his truth to everyone that will hear and see.
We will find this image and this understanding all over the planet but remember there has only been one person who has been documented as being this person. There has been only one person who has been connected these words and images into real life. There has been only one person who said to his friends, “I am the door.”
This Christmas as you gather around your tree to celebrate the season, remind yourself of the health we receive through trees. Remind yourself that it is through trees that we receive the air we breathe. Remind yourself that trees have been the image of wholeness and security for people all over the planet. But then remind yourself that there is only one person who has acted to become the living image of the Tree of Life that we all seek.
We come into the presence of Jesus and into the truth of God’s love through his work on the tree that is the axis of the planet. We live and breathe today because of the one who’s truth has been hinted at, known and is now revealed all over the planet.
