Rings of a Tree

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
February 11, 2007
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Rings of a Tree
Luke 6:17-26
Jeremiah 17:5-8

Trees are natural storytellers.
Scars on the bark tell us that various animals have used the tree
for homes or as a refuge from danger;
Limbs torn away tell us of the power of nature;
In another era, we might have found initials carved in the trunk
that spoke of sentiments on Valentines Day.
It is the rings, though, that tell us the real story,
the true story of the tree.
The rings of a tree tell us about the life of the tree.

Have you ever looked closely at the rings of a tree?
Perhaps you looked at tree rings in science class,
or on an outing with a Scout group;
you may have been hiking and stopped by a downed tree,
glad to have had a comfortable bench on which to rest.
Or perhaps you’ve looked at the stump left behind
after you've had a tree taken out in your yard.

The rings radiate out from the center;
like ripples radiating out in a pond.
Count them up and they will tell you the age of the tree.
But look more closely and the rings will tell you
more than just the age;
they will tell you about the story of the tree.
its history, year by year.
Look closely and you will notice that
rings are not the same width year in and year out.
Some rings are narrow, close to one another,
while other rings are as wide as can be.
There may be no pattern, a narrow ring,
a wide ring, another narrow one,
a ring of medium width:
a completely random pattern.

The rings vary depending upon what kind of year the tree had.
A wide ring tells us the tree had a good year:
that rains were regular and plentiful
that it was neither too hot nor too cold;
that the tree wasn’t threatened by things like fire
or infestation or disease.

Narrow rings tell a different story.
The tree had a tough year.
It might have been brutally hot,
the leaves withering in the heat.
Or it might have been dry as the desert,
with little snow in the winter, or rain in the summer.
Other forces may have attacked the tree:
It may have been in a small stand that withstood a fire,
or it may have been home to a swarm of locusts that came
out of hibernation after a 17-year sleep,
as we witnessed not that long ago.

Trees certainly don’t think,
but somehow trees seem to know that not every year
will be a good year, that one year of rain and sun
could just as easily be followed by a year of drought or disease.
A wide ring is no guarantee that next year’s ring
won’t be as narrow as can be.
So trees push their roots deep into the ground,
deep to anchor themselves,
deep to draw up groundwater and nutrients.
Deep to stand strong against the gusts,
against the droughts,
against all the vagaries of the weather.
Deep to stand strong against
all the inevitable challenges that nature will throw at them.
Deep to make each ring as wide as possible
to reflect determined, healthy growth.

Trees provide us with a wonderful metaphor for our own lives.
so it isn’t surprising that we find numerous places in the Bible
where we are compared to trees:
In the very first Psalm we read that
men and women of strong faith,
“are like trees planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.”

This simile appears again in Psalm 92:
“The righteous flourish like the palm
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
They are planted in the house of the Lord;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
In old age they still produce fruit;
they are always green and [fresh] … (Psalm 92:12-14)

God reinforces this theme through the prophet Jeremiah:
“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
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 17:7-8)

It is a good analogy,
a good comparison.
And we too have rings in our lives,
rings that tell our stories.
Rings that may not be as obvious as those we find in trees,
but rings we most certainly add each year;
rings in our hearts, our minds, and our souls;
rings that reflect the year we had,
wide rings to reflect years of growth,
narrow rings to reflect those years in which we struggled,
years in which life seemed determined to overwhelm us.
Our rings are also narrow when we don’t work to make them wide,
when we make little or no effort to grow.

But like a healthy tree, what will help us add
to the width of our rings,
add to the width even in difficult years,
is the depth of our roots.
Drought will come,
gale winds will come,
searing, withering heat will come,
all come into our lives,
but with deep roots, we will be able to get through
even the most difficult times.

God does not promise a life of ease;
By the sweat of our face we will live, God tells Adam.
Following Christ does not assure that
life will be without struggle.
Christ himself began his earthly ministry with the people
of his own hometown trying to push him off a cliff,
and he ended his earthly ministry nailed to the cross.
There is no prosperity gospel in the Bible.

But we will get through even the most difficult times
if our roots are deeply embedded in faith,
roots that we work to push deeper and deeper to anchor us,
to hold us, strong and solid.
At year’s end, the ring we added may well be a narrow one,
but we will be standing, a solid tree,
with our arms like branches
reaching up, up to God,
reaching up to the very source of life,
still able to fulfill our Lord’s call to bear fruit.

Speaking through the prophet Jeremiah,
God forces us to think about just how shallow our roots are:
that our focus is all too often on “mere mortals”,
that too much of our time, energy, and effort
is spent on “making flesh our strength.”

The shallowness of our roots is all around us:
our obsession with celebrities;
our love of the latest fad.
I read an article in the paper the other day
about companies that make cellphones.
They have found to their surprise that their profits have dropped
because people are no longer willing to pay hundreds of dollars
for phones as a fashion accessory;
The Motorola RAZR was the “it” accessory when it first came out;
people were willing to pay hundreds of dollars
to have something no one else had.
But now RAZRs can be had for next to nothing;
people no longer see cellphones as the thing
that sets them apart from everyone else.

You may well be thinking that that’s not you,
but then you have to ask yourself,
what is your fashion accessory?
Your car?......... Your clothing?
Your home?
Your job?
Your position in the community?
Your position here in this church?
It is probably something.
It always is.
Just look at where our national focus has been the past few days:
Not on the dire situation in Darfur,
not on war in the Middle East,
No, it’s been on the unfortunate death of a woman
whose skill seemed to be in simply finding ways
to stay in the news.

We bring that superficiality to church.
Churches are struggling more and more with the demand
that churches be more entertaining;
with PowerPoint presentations and theatre lighting.
Members expect churches to be more convenient –
to schedule worship that better matches their schedules,
to minimize demands and expectations.
Shallowness and superficiality leads to pettiness,
gossip, arguments over trivial matters,
and then we slide away from Christ,
instead of climbing up toward him.
Woe to us who are full now,
for we will be hungry.

Phillips Brooks, who preached from the pulpit of
Boston’s Trinity Episcopal Church
in the latter part of the 19th century,
helps us to stay focused on our roots,
focused on growing healthy rings,
by reminding us that our lives as disciples of Christ
is not about what is convenient.
Our Lord did not complain that it was rather inconvenient
to be confronted by Roman soldiers
in the Garden of Gethsemane.

We are here for our very lives,
to nurture our roots, to push them down
ever deeper into the soil of faith;
we are here to be nurtured and nourished
to grow and be transformed
from tiny acorn to mighty oak.
We are here to be reminded that if we don’t work
on pushing our roots down deeper and farther,
then we will not grow.

And then when those difficult times do come –
as they absolutely will –
we risk wilting, toppling over,
rotted and dead on the inside.

A young athlete goes to the doctor for a routine physical
before the start of a new season and learns that he has cancer;
A e-mail is sent around the office describing the cutbacks
that will follow the merger of a business;
A husband and wife realize that their marriage has
has foundered, fractured and come undone;
The gales blow in life
always threatening to topple us.

And even when the winds dissipate,
the rains may not come to refresh and renew:
the promotion that does not come,
the boy or girl who does not call,
the championship game that is not won,
The American Idol tryout that is not offered.

We hunger,
we mourn,
we are poor,
we are alone,
And yet, yet, if our roots are deep,
we understand that these are matters of the flesh,
and that blessings are ours
through the love of God in Christ,
even in the storm, even in the drought.

Deep roots can never make us invincible or immortal;
Life has its share of struggle and pain.
A drive around Buffalo makes that clear:
even the mightiest oak trees had massive limbs torn from them
in last October’s snowstorm.
But the trees stand,
stand firm,
scarred, but not bowed,
focused, as always, on pushing those roots downward,
ever downward,
focused, as always,
on making this year’s ring as wide as possible.

Where is your focus?
How deep are your roots?
Here’s the answer: the answer for every one of us:
“not deep enough”
Not deep enough.

How can we hope to respond to our Lord’s call to bear fruit
without deep roots?
How can we hope to weather all that comes with life
without deep roots?
What are you doing to strengthen your roots?
To widen your rings in faith?
The honest answer is the hard one to hear:
“not enough”.
And God makes clear the risk:
that we will be “like a shrub in the desert,
living in parched places.”
These are not my words;
but the Word of the Lord.
Amen