Planting Trees in a Pandemic
If you invoke as Parent the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through Christ you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.
1 Peter 1:17-23
Why would you plant trees in the middle of a pandemic?
Martin Luther said, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." Actually, it probably wasn’t Luther, it was maybe confessing Christians in Nazi Germany. Which actually might make it a better quote. “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
And we still did plant trees this week, even if it was the process of donating money to plant trees elsewhere. Our denomination, the United Church of Christ, helped facilitate this to celebrate Earth Day this week. And you still can support planting trees by going to the website, https://www.ucc.org/plantatree.
I donated to plant trees and I encourage you to do so as well. But this still doesn’t answer why we would plant trees right now.
Why do something that’s so future oriented, something that takes so long to show results, when everything says, “Now is the crisis. Now is the problem. Take care of what is in front of you right now!”
But trees? That takes longer. Trees take hope.
My dad has always planted trees in his yard from the Arbor Day foundation. They would come in the mail and they don’t really look like trees at that point. They look like sticks. And he would take these trees/sticks and put them in designated places. You’d have to ask him for the exact percentage, but these tiny trees weren’t guaranteed success. Deer, for one, love these new snacks. And disease. And accidentally running them over with the lawn mower.
Yet miraculously, a small number of these trees have actually become something I can recognize as a tree. When I walk around my parent’s yard, I see trees that have taken essentially my entire life to grow.
Trees take hope for the future.
People take hope for the future.
1 Peter is a complicated book of the bible. We had a great bible study looking at this passage on Thursday. (All of you are invited to bible study on Thursdays at 7pm! We had people from three states.) Part of what helps our understanding of books like 1 Peter is a community to read along with. So know that I don’t come up with these ideas on my own, but by listening to you, too.
One thing we had consensus on, and Geoffrey was very helpful in pointing this out to us, is that this is a scripture that could be abused. There’s a line in this passage that says, “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors.” This has been used incorrectly by those who have thought to spread the message of Christianity by cutting others off from their cultural heritage.
Which is why we have to read together and find out really what this passage is saying.
I think of it this way. And this is totally another example I received from talking about this scripture with Sarah this week.
How can we go back to ever thinking that paying grocery store workers a “minimum” wage is sufficient? How can we ever view the folks who clean our hospitals as non-essential and not worth our respect and compensation? How can we go back to dead end ways of thinking, when Christ has ransomed, redeemed, and pointed out the value of those around us?
These, I think, are the futile ways that we are being called away from. Just because we have inherited a system that belittles people and takes their worth from how productive they can be, by how much we can wring out of them, that doesn’t mean we have to keep it.
1 Peter shows a forward, hopeful way of understanding the world. There is new birth, a future, a way of being in God that is not a dead end, not futile, not limiting. There is a future, a hope worth believing in.
The CEB translation says it this way in verse 23,
“Do this because you have been given new birth—not from the type of seed that decays but from seed that doesn’t.”
Why plant trees?
Because we believe we, ourselves, our very being has a future in God. We are redeemable, able to find new life in the future. If you need to hear this about yourself today, know this. You are beloved and worth more than gold or silver or dollars or cents. You are ransomed by Christ just as you are.
We also believe others have a future, a hope. They are redeemable, precious, sacred to God. We can look around us and not seek to cut people off from what is life-giving to them, but instead offer the courage we know comes from Christ to say no to dead, barren places. To turn away from what has been unhealthy before. There is a future to be had in God for all people.
And not just people, but we believe creation can be redeemed. Little sticks can become trees.
Through Christ, we believe in the planting of trees, because we have a future filled with hope.
Thanks be to God, Amen.