“Tree at My Window”
The Rev. Sandy Selby –
6th Sunday after Epiphany, Year C –
Text: Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 6:17-26
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But, tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.
This is how the poet Robert Frost described the tree at
his window—a tree with which he was in profound sympathy. Frost saw how the
tree was “taken and tossed” by the wind, just as Frost himself was “taken and
swept” by life’s vicissitudes. But where Frost had felt “all but lost,” the
tree stood firm where it had been planted, its roots providing a solid foundation.
Nature
has a way of capturing our experience and speaking to us and for us when words
have reached their limitations. For nature brings us into the near presence of
God. Poets know this. Theologians do too.
The
great minister and educator Howard Thurman wrote of how, as a young
African-American growing up in segregated Daytona, his trust in God was shaped
by the forces of nature.
The
experience of storms gave me a certain overriding immunity against much of the
pain with which I would have to deal in the years ahead when the ocean was only
a memory. The sense held: I felt rooted in life, in nature, in existence. When
the storms blew, the branches of the large oak tree in our backyard would snap
and fall. But the topmost branches of the oak tree would sway, giving way just
enough to save themselves from snapping loose. I needed the strength of that
tree, and, like it, I wanted to hold my ground. Eventually, I discovered that
the oak tree and I had a unique relationship. I could sit, my back against its
trunk, and feel the same peace that would come to me in my bed at night. I
could reach down in the quiet places of my spirit, take out my bruises and my
joys, unfold them, and talk about them. I could talk aloud to the oak tree and
know that I was understood. It, too, was a part of my reality, like the woods,
the night, and the pounding surf, my earliest companions, giving me space
(Thurman, With Head and Heart).
Blessed are those…whose trust is in the Lord, says Jeremiah.
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.
Jeremiah
wrote in a time of profound anxiety. A strong ruler had been followed by a
series of weak and inept kings, and
For many
of us, trusting in the basic resourcefulness of humanity comes naturally. In
the modern era, one of the fruits of Enlightenment thinking was a belief in the
inevitability of progress—in humankind’s ability to solve its problems and live
together in harmony. For much of the 20th century people had a basic
sense of optimism, a belief in human self-sufficiency. We now find ourselves in a so-called “post-modern”
era in which we no longer have that sense of optimism. But even if we are
skeptical about humankind as a whole, many of us still put our ultimate trust
in our individual abilities and resources.
Jeremiah
warns of the limitations of such a worldview: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make flesh their
strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. 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.
Terrorism,
civil wars, genocide, global warming, relentless consumerism, and hunger and
poverty on a massive scale should tell us that Jeremiah was right.
Yet in
the civil religion of
In
this world of conspicuous consumption, we may find ourselves being critical of
people for being materialistic and constantly craving new things. But in a
rapidly changing world, consumption is driven less by the desire for those
objects than by needs of identity and belonging. Consumption is driven by
anxiety: the more anxious we become about the world around us, the more our
desire for consumption is fueled.
By
almost any measure, the standard of living is significantly higher than it was
just fifty years ago, but research shows that people are not any happier than
they were when their standard of living was significantly lower. The truth of
the matter is that for those trapped in this endless cycle of consumption,
nothing will ever be enough.
The
gospel message from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain is, like Jeremiah’s message, a
contrast between blessings and curses. Jesus describes a series of blessings
that represent a dramatic reversal of
the world order in the reign of God. He goes on to contrast these blessings
with a series of woes. But woe to you who
are rich, Jesus says, for you have
received your consolation. In other
words, “you’ve gotten what you asked for, and you will learn that it will never
be enough.”
In
whom—or in what--do you trust?
Jeremiah
reminds us, in the image of the tree, that there is a way to stand against the
pressures of life and withstand the changes of its seasons. There is a way to
grow in the face of adversity and stand firm against the anxiety that threatens
to paralyze us. There is a way to live without being done in and weighed under.
There is a way to be not just resilient, but joyful. There is a way to abundant life.
We
do well to draw a lesson from nature—to plant ourselves, like trees, beside
God’s living waters, and to send forth our roots to be nourished in the
ever-flowing stream of God’s love.