Hope for a Tree
Hope for a Tree
A Sermon by Ross Meikle
Sunday 28 July 2024
Tonight’s text from Job struck me particularly when I read it at a recent Evensong. A short section that touched my soul:
“There is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again… that its shoots will not cease.”
The idea that plants respond to the very ‘scent of water’ is beautiful. The translators did a wonderful thing here. And the idea that lies underneath this short image of the tree cut down is one that offers us such an image of Christian faith…
And so, tonight’s sermon is titled: Hope for a Tree.
Yet the words that follow this reflection on the hope of a tree dwells in a worldview that restricts the hope to the arboreal world of trees and flora. Job – wracked with grief and despair – goes on to say:
“But mortals die and are laid low.
Humans expire, and where are they? …
… Mortals lie down and do not rise again.”
His worldview is one where there is no resurrection. He is not a Prophet who proclaims God’s judgement on a rebellious Israel or offers hope to a people in exile. Instead Job – secure in his righteousness before God – is working out his theology of God and suffering in conversation with friends who act as philosophical and theological sparring partners.
I think that there is something for us to take from this worldview of Job in our context today, especially when we consider our continued descent into climate crisis. At our hands and by humanity’s own sins, we plummet God’s Earth towards ecological oblivion. Destroying our own eco-system could be viewed as an act of prolonged suicide, or a slow genocide upon our children and children’s children.
And in that folly and in that way of thinking… what will we be the outcome?
Human will expire, and where are they? We will be gone.
But.
There is hope for a tree that it will sprout again.
In the event of a total wipeout of humans, the trees will still have hope and will go on growing and recovering the world without us. God’s good creation will continue without us.
There is a humility to find there. That we aren’t necessary to Creation but rather a gift of God’s grace into an Eden that our human nature can’t help but destroy. Our life is a gift and throughout it, some have the privilege to explore its meaning and to discover the Love at its foundation.
There is also a humiliation. Our end comes by our own folly and commitment to technological revolution, egocentric progress at any cost, slavery that is redefined time after time, and a sin that fails to recognise the dignity of every human.
Our ability to divide, other, and oppress is one of our greatest sins. Greatest because we are very good at it. And greatest because it is one of our most damning of sins.
So great at it that we even turned against Jesus.
And in this time of climate crisis, we will see this sin of division and oppression only increase as those with power execute it more and more to retain their own way of life at the expense of those who have little power or control over their circumstances.
And it is the way we look inward at our own small picture view of the world that keeps us from caring about the displaced peoples around the world now and future generations.
We have witnessed that first-hand here at the Cathedral with various complaints made about the art piece outside called Seaview that depicts a house on the verge of falling into the sea. People who wish for a perfect photograph or who find it distasteful to their desirous view fail to recognise the very precariousness of our human situation that is so perfectly encapsulated by the art piece.
I walk past it daily and I am struck time and time again by human folly and sometimes my declining hope. I confess that I do not expect a happy retirement nor even a world fit for the quality of life we have now – even with basic amenities like three meals a day and clean water.
And as one whose job is to work with and for young people, I wrestle with what my ministry to them needs to look like. What kind of hope do I offer?
What does Christian hope mean in the midst of the potential death of human life on Earth?
Let’s return to Job and the story that bookends the theological debate. A story that is more of a thought experiment in which Job is the most righteous man before God. He happens to be wealthy, have a happy family, and run a successful farm. The Accuser in God’s court suggests that Job is only righteous because he is so fortunate in circumstance, so God opens up the possibility for Job to lose everything to prove his righteousness. Thus Job loses everything.
Let’s be clear. God does not actually behave like this. I cannot believe that God who is Love treats other human lives as collateral in a great game of spiritual oneupmanship. God does not cause suffering to test us.
Job continues to plead his righteousness against his friends who claim that he must have done something wrong to deserve this.
Finally, Job gets a confrontation with God which can feel dissatisfying in that God says “I’m God, and you question me?”
The story ends with Job having more children and more wealth than before. It can be seen as a reward, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Because the story of Job ultimately declares that: Life isn’t fair.
It isn’t fair that Job loses his whole life.
It isn’t fair that that it is returned to him.
It just is.
It isn’t fair that we leave a burning world to our young people and future generations.
It isn’t fair that uninformed billionaires decide policy on the lives of trans people.
It isn’t fair that the rich get richer whilst the poor get poorer.
It is not fair that humans are treated with different levels of dignity according to whatever criterion is chosen.
From the moment of our birth, there are things that we do not have control over.
Things that perhaps God doesn’t have control over, relinquishing Power so that God may Love and be Love.
But what we can have control over is our commitment to our spiritual life. Our relationship with God who is Love.
In which we develop the spiritual fruit of love, peace, joy, gentleness, patience, etc.
Which in turn shapes the way we react and respond to the storms we encounter through life.
So that our responses are not bitterness and anger, fear and despair, but rather peace and humility and love. Which is how Job learns to receive his new life after his encounter with God.
That is not to advocate for apathy. That is not to allow injustice to flourish. That is not to allow wickedness and sinfulness to go without accountability.
But it is to recognise that:
- God is judge.
- Life’s not fair.
- And, that following Love is our best hope of making this mortal experience one that may be as meaningful as we want it to be.
Trees respond to the scent of water.
Humans respond to the scent of Love, and thus we grow.
Job asks: If mortals die, will they live again?
We trust through Christ and the revelation of Resurrection that we will.
Psalm 1: the righteous are like a tree planted by streams of water.
We are such a tree. And we do have the hope of a tree. For it is the scent and the drinking of Christ – the Living Water – that we are sustained, loved, and become those who love.
Amen.