Amanda McMillen, “Jesus Christ, Our Giving Tree”
I want to speak this morning on the subject of trust. Jeremiah says “Those who trust in the Lord are like trees”, “trees planted by a stream of water”. As I was reading the scripture for today throughout this past week, the importance and the difficulty of trust just kept coming to the fore for me.
Who do you trust? Do you trust the institutions that make up the scaffolding of our society? The other day I had to get routine blood work done and during the process I found myself quickly losing trust in the particular medical institution I was in, when registration took over an hour and the nurses were processing the loudest and most irritable patients first (which, can’t say I blame them), before the ones who had been not-so-patiently waiting quietly for longer. Perhaps you watch or read the news and feel your trust eroding in our government - no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, the divided nature of our political landscape may make it difficult for you to trust in the idea of democratic stability.
Who in your life do you trust? In order to trust our loved ones, psychologists have found, we must have a basis for trust in a person’s benevolence, integrity, competency, and predictability. Those are the four factors of interpersonal trust. There are probably some you trust more than others, but trusting those around us is a key factor of personal wellbeing.
Do you trust yourself? Maybe you feel like there’s no one better to trust than yourself. “If you want a job done well, do it yourself!” - that kind of thing. You might struggle to trust others, you might have little faith in institutions, but at least you know you’re predictable - right? Trusting in ourselves might seem the most logical thing to do. But the Lord says in Jeremiah that trusting in ourselves is “making mere flesh our strength”. Whether it’s trusting in our intelligence, our social skills, our work ethic, or our physical health, trusting in mere flesh is something we do every single day.
And what’s so wrong with trusting in ourselves? Well it’s the problem of trusting anything we shouldn’t - we’re not all that trustworthy. Our intelligence is limited and biased, our social skills predicated on quick wit and good memory, both of which often feel out of my control at least, our work ethic can be plowed over by a really hard day and a bout of depression, and our physical health is mere flesh that can be taken over by illness without us even knowing. I say this not to totally demolish your sense of self, but to say what we all already know, which is that we are human beings very much limited by our vulnerability and mortality.
Trusting in mere mortals involves a denial of that vulnerability, but it’s part of the human experience, it is part of the human obsession with control. It started in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve not trusting the Lord, but trusting the snake who twists the truth instead. It is baked into the DNA of human nature to trust not in “the slow work of God” but instead in our rushed judgment of good and bad and right and wrong.
But the Lord says that those who trust in mere flesh are cursed. We might read this passage and think, how do I determine who is who? And how do I make sure that I’m in the category that is blessed, those who trust in God? Well verse 9 of this passage tells us quickly that such questions aren’t going to get us very far - “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart”.
Trying to determine who is cursed and who is blessed, then, is a fool’s errand. Our very hearts are devious (the Hebrew here means sick, weak, frail) - the heart is sick and therefore incapable of judging either ourselves or others. Let me say this specifically in our current political landscape: when we find ourselves attempting to separate the cursed from the blessed, we take on a job that is not ours at all. We, in fact, prove the passage correct - we are trusting in mere flesh when we judge one another, and therefore we find ourselves under the curse.
So if we are making dichotomies of who is blessed and who is cursed in this passage, then we unfortunately will find ourselves in the category of the latter. Who, then, if not you or me, is the blessed one who trusts in the Lord? Who is the one who is like a tree, planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream?
This is when the squirrel answer comes into play - do you know about the squirrel answer? We used to talk about this in youth group. A children’s minister once asked her group of kids - “what’s something that’s small and brown and furry and lives in the woods and eats acorns” …one kid raised his hand and said, “well it sounds like a squirrel but since we’re in church I think the answer must be Jesus?”
Here’s our squirrel answer. Who is the blessed one who is like a tree, planted by water? Well it’s the only one who is capable of trusting in God above mere flesh. The one who found himself trusting in God all the way to his death on the cross. He saw ahead of him death and destruction, but he trusted that God was somehow not only aware of all of it, but in control of all of it. He did not trust in his own flesh to save him, his own flesh which failed even him in the end, but rather trusted in God who he knows brings life to what is dead.
According to the logic of this passage then, you and I are cursed and Jesus is blessed. You and I trust in mere flesh - we can’t help ourselves. We are the cursed shrubs in the desert, living in parched places, trusting in ourselves before God, hoping that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and finally make this year the year of the “new me”. We are parched, and in need of living water to give us life. Jesus, on the other hand, is the tree planted by streams of water. Then how is it that this tree of endless life, whose leaves were supposed to stay green, found himself in the parched places, dead on the cross?
This is the miracle of the blessing, this is why we need not despair when reading this passage. Jesus, our tree of life, came to our parched desert land, where we trust in mere flesh, and took on the curse of the shrub. As he hung on the cross, Jesus asked for a drink, for he was thirsty in the desert. This is the rescue of God - he left the stream, came to our parched desert, and died a brutal death, so that you might find yourself with deep roots by a living stream, trusting in the Lord, your rescuer, where your leaves shall stay green with everlasting life.
Perhaps you feel today a bit like the shrub in the desert. You are tired and thirsty and in need of mercy. Trusting in mere flesh, trusting in your own righteousness, has led you to the end of yourself. I have good news for you - the end of yourself is exactly where God brings new life. If you are in a dry place right now, if you feel like you are cursed, well we know from Jesus that this is not the end of your story.
I want to end with one illustration from a beloved children’s book by Shel Silverstein called The Giving Tree. Well it’s this children’s classic that has no business being as sad as it is, about a tree and a little boy who loved playing in it. The boy makes crowns of leaves and climbs its branches and eats apples from it, and sleeps in its shade. But then the boy grew, and grew, and came around less and less. Until he stopped coming at all. Finally the boy returned as a young man, and the tree said “Come, climb on my trunk like you used to do, swing from my branches, eat apples and enjoy my shade.” But the young man said, “I’m too big and old to do that, I need to make money and buy things”. And the tree says, “well I can’t give you money but I can give you apples to sell at the market”. So he climbs the tree, which makes the tree so happy, and gathers the apples and takes them away and sells them.
And the man was gone for a long time again, and came back when he was older, and the tree was so happy to see him and said, “come climb my branches and eat my apples and play in my shade”. But the man said, “I can’t do that, I’m much too busy. I want a house, so that I can have a family to live in it with me”. So the tree says, “cut down my branches and build yourself a house”. So the man did, and stayed away for a long time, until he was an old man.
And when the old man returned, the tree saw him and was so happy and said, “come and play and climb my branches”. But the old man said, “I am too old and sad to climb you. I want a boat so I can sail away from this place”. So the tree said, “chop down my trunk and build yourself a boat then, so you can sail away and be happy”. So the man did.
The man came back, this time he was very old and very tired, and the tree, which was now a stump, said “just come here and be with me. I have no apples and I have no branches and I have no trunk, but you can sit here on my stump and rest”. And so the very old man did. And the tree was happy. The end. I know. Like I said, that sweet children’s book has no business being so sad.
Jesus, our tree of life, gives us everything, trading our curse for his blessing, a blessing of freedom and life. And this gift, this grace, might just bring about the very trust in God that you long for. You who trust in mere flesh, you who are tired, come and sit and rest in Jesus, who is your trust, your faith, your very life.
Amen.
