This was the week when I noticed, beyond a doubt, that the trees are coming back.
You are likely more observant than me about the world around us. I sometimes get so lost in my thoughts and feelings that I do not notice beautiful things, quietly beautiful things. So this week I have deliberately tried to look around, and to look up. Venus has been dazzling all week, did you know? She emerges after sunset, fairly far up the western sky, the evening star. And of course the supermoon will not be ignored. I walked the other evening with my friend Pete, who observed that the moon was literally painting silver linings on the passing clouds.
So I have noticed, finally, something that has been happening for weeks now: the trees are coming back.
The trees do many things for me and for you. They are the sink of our atmosphere, providing oxygen we need to survive. In this way they function precisely unlike the COVID-19 virus: the trees make our lives possible. They make it possible for us to breathe. Trees provide shelter and food for countless creatures, millions of birds, trillions of bugs. They make possible, alongside the oceans, every living ecosystem on this planet. Trees prevent soil erosion. Peter Wohlleben, a delightful and insightful German forester, has drawn attention for his studies of tree networks. He has shown that trees communicate and even establish social networks along their own social media, communicating through changes in the chemicals they produce and send along vast root systems. Other trees, in their own way, are able to like what appears on their social media feeds.
Trees are the vivid green chasuble that this planet wears, a seamless tunic of life and protection and beauty.
And so it is fitting, then, that we see our Lord and Savior hanging on a tree, and that we give that particular tree special reverence. “Faithful cross, above all other,” we will sing in a moment. “One and only noble tree! None in foliage, none in blossom, none in fruit they peer may be. Sweetest wood and sweetest iron, sweetest weight is hung on thee.”
Our Lord and Savior rises in glory on a tree, that is, on a living being that offers life, protection, and beauty; a living being that communicates; a living being that holds and sustains others, and draws life from them, too.
Even the lowly roots of a tree are majestic and life-giving. Their roots are anchors, grounding securely even the most soaring and towering tree. Their roots stretch and draw life from the rocky earth. Their roots and trunks and branches shelter the most dazzling and the homeliest creatures. Their roots buckle our sidewalks and force us onto new paths. The bodies of trees give life even in death, forming nurse logs on the forest floor that feed the creatures and nourish young saplings.
This is who our Savior is. This is what our Savior does. He is our anchor, enabling us to soar in beauty and strength. He draws life from the rock, that we might flourish. He offers shelter: in my case this past week, I was just an anxious guy walking his dog and, grief-stricken about all that troubles us, noticing finally that I was being sheltered by the tender new green quietly emerging everywhere. Our Savior interrupts our well-worn paths, like an invasive tree root. Sometimes, forced onto a new path, I meet my neighbor for the first time. And finally, ultimately, our Savior is our food, our nourishment, bringing life not only from death, but from his own death.
At San Clemente Church in Rome, a massive mosaic towers above the altar. It is a Tree of Life, its branches circling the whole apse. Birds are nesting in it; people and animals are going about their business beneath it; deer are drinking from the river of life that flows by. Naturally, on the trunk of this Tree of Life hangs our Savior, who gives life to the world through his death. All this life, so much life, even and especially in the midst of death… all this life is why Good Friday is the one day of the church year that we pointedly call good: God sees what God has done on this day, drawing life from death, and God proclaims it good.
We too are called to rise in glory, if not as saviors of the world (because let’s be honest, we often enough have more in common with the homely animals that trees protect than with the Savior that the Tree of Life bears on its body). But this is our calling nonetheless: to join the trees in their quiet re-creation of the earth for the sake of its creatures; to bring life where there seems to be only death; to rise not as solitary sticks, but as living trees, one forest, one congregation, one Body: a dazzling garment of life and protection for all.
That is who we are. That is who our Savior forms us to be. That is what we celebrate on this good, this very good, day.
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Preached for the Good Friday online worship at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Burke, Virginia, April 10, 2020.
A deer drinks from the river flowing beneath the Tree of Life in the San Clemente (Rome) mosaic.
A woman feeds her hens beneath the Tree of Life in the San Clemente (Rome) mosaic.