Rev. Rachel Lewis Cooley
“Like a Tree Planted by the Water”
Kensington Community Church UCC, San Diego CA
April 21, 2024
Jeremiah 17:5-10
5 Thus says the Lord:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the Lord.
6 They shall be like a shrub in the desert
and shall not see when relief comes.
They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
7 Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.
9 The heart is devious above all else;
it is perverse—
who can understand it?
10 I the Lord test the mind
and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways,
according to the fruit of their doings.
Psalm 1
1Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked
or take the path that sinners tread
or sit in the seat of scoffers,
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous,
6 for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
Will you pray with me? God of the mountaintop, God of the mundane, God of yesterday, today, & tomorrow, strengthen & encourage our faith today, O Holy One, that this time of worship and our individual journeys and our communal life as church might in all things be faithful & know your presence. Amen
PRACTICE FAITHFULNESS
Spiritual practice or spiritual discipline
To practice, practices, a practice
To think of things as practices in our faith journey— be we insist/choose/know God is here all the time
On the mountaintop, in the moment
The distractions, the things mortals say matter— we’ve all seen enough money doesn’t matter movies
Scoffers, cynicism
V the legacies the faithful leave behind (not immediate results) Reaching out our roots, planting seeds, sharing resources with one another How our habits inform our thinking & feeling, and vice versa
It all flows from sacred presence— we cannot live without water, we are all thirsty
The sound of running water soothes nervous system
Good news is it will be written on our hearts, God will keep God’s promises whereas humans cannot, do not, fade away
Not about rewards or right, but choices & happiness— faithfulness Keep coming back because God has filled you before & will again
Love God will all heart, mind, soul, body— and love neighbor as self. This is the “law”— Jesus did not replace law
Water our roots so we might fruit, all else will fade
God like water in the desert. An oasis.
Zoom out from conventional wisdom— God is not there
Of winners & losers, punished or rewarded,
But we are invited to drink from God’s stream— to have our thirst actually quenched
Sometimes the thing | need is not more but less. It’s about focus. What are we telling our brains to focus on?
This is not about adding another thing to your plate. It might be about subtracting, refocusing on watering your roots that you might be well when the drought comes
We must be a church flowing with life-giving water
Even coming down from the sky
I love trees, y'all. Maybe this sounds obvious & trite, because I bet you do too. A moment sitting in the shade of a tree, or climbing its branches, or noticing its leaves shimmering & rustling in the wind can cause a sense of peace to wash over us— a releasing, an exhale of all the rest. Picture a tree you've loved, Take a moment to scroll through some moments with trees that stand out to you. What if we in our faith could grow to be as strong, as peaceful, as flowering as that tree? The church might thus be like a grove of trees, a forest. Have you ever had the experience of telling your griefs & anxieties to a forest, perhaps on a hike, a walk with a friend there, or quiet meditation under a tree? The forest grown strong, having weathered many seasons. The forest can hold it all.
How do trees grow so tall & strong & become, in some ways, ageless? Their roots, of course. Their roots reach for water, connect with each other, send messages & resources. The Secret Life of Trees
So what are your roots in the faith and what do you give & receive through your roots to one another? The roots reach out not knowing what they'll find. God as the water we find buried deep, in the river oasis in the desert, in the rain that falls on all, no matter what we do. We are reaching, and this reaching can be like spiritual disciplines.
In what ways are you reaching & seeking in the faith? Unique to you. I know life can be so busy. And it’s not that you’re wrong if you're “not reaching” or you need one more thing on your plate. Sometimes less is more. It’s about presence in the moment, peace there. All these good things might be happening but we might be so distracted, distressed, tired, lonely, traumatized or activated in our nervous systems that we don’t notice, or if we do, its just a passing thought, not something we take time to soak in, to smile, to feel contented, to have gratitude for.
It’s not that you earn God’s presence, or can lose it too. It’s that God is always there and if we can acknowledge that, remember that, feel that, we are happier. Happy are those who meditate on God’s law day & night, psalm 1 says.
Some of faith is a choice— like our hymn at the beginning that there are things we cannot know.
Some of it has to do with our choices & habits, that we might be encouraged on our journey. some folks have prayer or scripture practices. Centering prayer is an ancient Christian spiritual practice where one simply repeats a phrase about opening to God, and each time your thoughts wander and you realize it, you simply repeat it again. In doing so, you insist that God is there, and you invite God in like God invites you again & again.
There is also a practice called Remembering Sacred Moments— a meditation Dr. Frank Rogers at Claremont
And some of it is surrender. God is the one showing up. This is where a practice of sabbath & spaciousness helps. When you're too worn out & still trying to get to the next thing, feeling grumpy & trapped, it’s amazing what a day off, even a couple hours just being & flowing with what you need, just seizing a snippet of time in your day to lay down or daydream or stretch or whatever you need in your body, mind, spirit, to get some space. Tricia Hersey who wrote Rest is Resistance and creates a “nap ministry” if you will.
This is revolutionary stuff in our productivity-driven world, where our jobs & all we do seem to make up our worth. To say no, I’m worthy of rest. I’m enough no matter what I do.
Sabbath also reminds us that we Often want things to happen the way we want them. We want them on our timeline. We want to write the story, and control, control, control. Surrendering to trust, and to knowing we are enough and God will keep showing up is so tough.
Jeremiah writes from a time of exile. The Israelites were conquered by the kingdom of Babylon and deported to Babylon—modern day Iraq—in 587 BCE. This was a disaster for the Israelites as they believed the temple in Jerusalem was the actual house of God — as in their God resided there and not elsewhere. The weren't allowed to return home... to where their God lived, until 537 BCE after Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon. This 50-year period— known as the Babylonian captivity or just “Exile” is a longing to return home— to go home to Zion, to their temple where they believed God lived. For how could they ever have peace until they were home, and closer to God?
Where is home, how do we find God? And then if we don’t, are we like chaff on wheat that will blow away in the wind? When we’re so used to responding to demands, it can seem that God is demanding we follow more— the “law.” But what if God is really just inviting us, inviting us to the water, the nutrients, and connections with others that we need. What if less is more— if we pause to reflect in the moment, or remember the past sacred moment that God is always inviting us back to.
For we started as seeds. Yet through finding unexpected nutrients & moisture, to the rain which falls no matter how we reach or what we do, to the deep well we might find if we reach, stretch, grow! Trust. Surrender to trusting & reaching. Thanks be to God for the love & peace we will find. And for the sharing with others around us. Amen
I think in our achievement & productivity-focused culture, we may respond to the feeling of exile & longing for home by trying to do more, to hustle for our worthiness, to “should” on ourselves. We might therefore read these scriptures as having a seeming binary between righteousness & sinning and meaning that God will reward the righteous & punish the sinners. Conventional wisdom would suggest that our choices are everything blah blah.
A tree near a stream is a powerful metaphor for desert welling peoples—and for us today. A tree by a stream does not appear fully formed and all at once. Life and growth is not even easy for the tree! Yet the tree trusts it can grow and find God. The seed bursts forth in the dark! It’s first sprout finds itself in the hard ground, yet there are nutrients enough there for it to burst, so it might as well keep going. Reaching, extending up, up, up! All is dark here, yet it reaches, it grows, believing that it will find what it needs, growing, reaching, extending some more until suddenly! It bursts forth. Into the sunlight! It grows some more, and it gets stronger and stronger through days in the sun and days in the rain, soaking up moisture and heat. Sometimes it is too hot or too cold. Its thirst is unbearable, sometimes. Yet as it was growing upward, it also roots down, into the ground where more moisture can be found, but not without searching. Not without time spent growing and reaching and piercing the hard soil, always trusting there will be moisture somewhere. It has found moisture before, and it will find it again.
You have found moisture before, you have found God before, and you will find God again. You can insist, like the seed, that there is life and light up above the surface, to be found even in the heat, or the cold. But our roots take time to grow— time, time, time to turn to God again and again. Sacred moments we honor the roots that are flowing & can newly inspire. We honor that even if we’re not feeling God right here and now, God is real. The good news is that God is here all the time— what if we chose to believe that.
We might tell our griefs & anxieties to the tree, and in her tall trunk, grown through many summers, and the spindles of her branches, which have let go of many leaves, she calmly witnesses to our struggles and we see her stand tall & allow the wind to blow through just as she did the moment before, and as she has done for generations, in some cases millennia.
What if the church is like this tree, this tree in a forest? A help which witnesses and holds our griefs & pains as well as our joys & our rebirths, and which continues all the same. And what if the church isn’t the building—I| don’t just mean the standing of these stained-glass windows, the steeple standing tall, though that can be nice too - but the church is the people? Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the door, see all the people. Individual fingers meant to represent individual people. The church thus becomes like a grove of trees and this is where we get to part of why I not only experientially & spiritually love trees but intellectually love trees too. Because scientists have discovered that trees share information and resources with one another. Though the prevailing thought was that trees must compete with one another and thus -- And no diversity.
This brings us to the importance of roots. For how does the tree reach the nutrients to allow the growth. And how does it stand tall later on?
All of us have surely had moments & ways of knowing the sacred. Sensing there’s something beyond what we see, beyond ourselves & our experiences, beyond this moment. Yet | know all of us have also had times where we feel we’re wandering in a desert, thirsty for God to grant us peace, wishing for things to change, resisting what is. Feeling like we’re too tired, too small, too lost. Always too far from the place that would feel like home. Like we keep wandering through the same thorny areas, tripping on the same cactus. Or maybe following a mirage, something that seems to shimmer in the distance, but no matter how you move toward it, it keeps getting farther & farther away. There was some achievement, some purchase, some arrival you thought would cause peace to wash over you. Or something outside of you is keeping you from where you want to go, holding you back, stifling your agency.
Yet I think you & I both have encountered God in unexpected places too many times before to think that we'll only find God when we…
I am not sure how those in the day would have read this— what their map of success was (cleanliness, priestliness, but the image of
How could they ever connect to God now?
Not achievement but invitation.
And where WAS God, and how did God let this happen? Were they being punished for turning from God? Yet they’d had such blessings before, and they sought to be faithful though they knew they were imperfect. Would God bring this exile upon them??