A Tale of Two Trees
Notes
Transcript
So there was like a really big sports thing last Sunday. The season finale of the NFL or something. So yeah, I watched it, did you all catch it? Well in case you didn’t, here’s a little recap - the team whose clothes were mostly red won. Now don’t let me fool you, I follow football, but it isn’t very often that I’ve got a lot of skin in the game by the time the Super Bowl comes around. So typically a football game between a team from Kansas City and San Francisco is a who cares kind of situation for me. I mean all I really know about Kansas City is that it’s not even in Kansas, and as for San Francisco all I can really come up with on the fly about them is that it’s the site of a really epic battle scene in X-Men 3 and the future home of Star Fleet Headquarters.
However, this year was special because Andy Reid, the coach of the Chiefs is a household name, a hometown hero. He was the leader of our nation, the Eagles nation, for a lot of years. If you don’t know about the Eagles Nation, you can quickly identify us as the people wearing green and lighting our own city on fire. Not out of anger, because we won something. Not necessarily behavior I condone, but none the less I’m really happy for Andy and his family that they finally have a Super Bowl Championship. But you know, while many people in America were distracted by the rhetoric surrounding the half-time show, something much more important was happening. Something with much more value than football and dancing, something more heart warming than Googles “Loretta” commercial. (the one where a man uses google assistant to bring up memories of his late wife… you cried admit it).
In 2012, Andy Reid’s last year as the Head Coach of The Philadelphia Eagles, he lost his son Garrett. Garrett had struggled with addiction and was in and out of recovery. He relapsed and was found dead of a heroine overdose. The news rocked the city. In a football town, the head coach is closer to hearts of the people than the mayor is. And so, even winning the Super Bowl, there was a piece of Andy’s family missing. That’s the sad part, the part that warms my heart is that in the shadow of such a tragedy a light shined bright.
In July of 2018 Demi Lovato faced a similar fate. However, she survived her overdose and has found freedom from addiction. And I can’t help but think that while she sang the National Anthem, a song about our nation’s freedom, that it must have meant so much more to her than just words about a war and a country being liberated. That after the war and the turmoil and great sadness of living in addiction, that her flag still stood. And I imagine Andy felt that too. I know that I did and that I do looking back at it.
You see when Garret Reid died, I was in the midst of the end of my own downward spiral towards death. I was still a few months away from a moment in which my life would be forever changed. I had lost the ability to choose anything other than the thing that was killing me. In his mercy God, placed before me a decision: live or die. Miraculously I chose to live, and every single day I have to make that choice over and over again if I want to continue to be a survivor of Addiction. And surviving to me is much more than just staying alive. It’s about living life as though it is a gift, a gift that not everyone who is like me gets.
You see in August of 2012 when Garrett Reid died, I barely knew about it. I was disconnected from the real world, entering the final few months of a downward spiral that nearly left me dead. In fact I was extremely close. Luckily I was given a gift, and I made a decision to choose to do something different. I was given the gift of life, the same gift that Demi and millions of other people like us are given all over the world. It’s not a cure, but it is the gift of choice. Every single day we can wake up and say today I choose life. Today I choose to
T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace, my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed
Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come.
T'was grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home,
And grace will lead us home
It is a reminder for me that life is fragile, but that life is also so much more than just taking breaths and having a pulse.
But part of the human condition is that we can really easily become consumed by a fear of the fragility of life, so tuned in to the reality that death happens, that we forget to truly live. I think one of the most incredible gifts that we have as believers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that we have a blessed hope that this isn’t all that there is. That our story goes on beyond what we experience here in this lifetime. But that hope doesn’t always win in our minds. So today what I want to look at is really this idea of life and death from a biblical and theological standpoint and really just try to dive in and figure out what we are so afraid of.
Two Trees
Two Trees
And so begins the Tale of Two Trees. Now I’ll be honest with you, I can’t really give this the full treatment. Kind of like last week’s topic, this could be a sermon series all of its own. And so you’ll just have to hang with me and trust that I’m not making some of this stuff up, it’s just that I’m trying to give you what I learned from 6 hours of lectures in like condensed form, so here it goes.
First: Imagine you are a middle easterner. Especially a Middle easterner from prior to the invention of irrigation. Ok are you there in your head? Now look around and what do you see? Sand. And the sun. And now you can’t see because sweat and sand have mixed in your eye and you’re blind. Trees are like miracles, so much so that a lot of Ancient Near Eastern civilizations had Gods who were trees. So trees, really big deal in ancient theologies that surrounded our Jewish ancestors. So with that in mind check out how our story begins.
In the Beginning God did his thing. He created the earth, and all the plants and animals, and he created us humans. And after breathing life into the nostrils of Adam, the book of Genesis tells us this:
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
God has created like a cosmic paradise in their eyes. And then a few verses later:
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
So this is the set up. We’ve got Adam, who is shortly going to become Adam and Eve, and they are hanging out in the Garden with complete freedom to eat anything they want, except for fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and “bad” which is closer to what the Hebrew means than “evil.” If they eat from that tree death will come upon them. So we have in the middle of the garden a tree of Life, and a tree of death.
Of course in our Christian theology this choice has cosmic ramifications. But we don’t always understand it. At face value it looks like God wants humans to have a childish innocence, to not know anything about right and wrong, and that by exerting our curiosity Adam and Eve were punished for disobeying a rather condescending rule.
However, the rest of the biblical narrative sees the tree of life as a source of wisdom, a source of God’s wisdom. Meanwhile the Tree of Knowing Good and Bad represents humanity’s decision to define for ourselves what is good and what is bad. One tree leans on God for truth and grants life, and the other forces us to decide for ourselves and always leads to chaos and destruction.
So in case you haven’t heard… we messed it up. We take what looks pleasing to our eyes, we eat, our eyes are open, we see our naked bodies and realize this is bad. And God shows up and we are like oh no this is real bad. And long story short there is a confrontation and God’s dialogue amongst himself and the heavenly host goes like this:
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
At first I’m like dang God thats rough cutting us off from the tree of life like that. But this tree grants Eternal life, and the humans have chosen a path in which Eternal life will be disastrous. And so God cuts them off, and it’s the right choice because what happens next is just generations and generations of absolute chaos, violence, and destruction. Can you imagine this living in this world, in its current painful state — forever? I can’t. Not having to endure centuries of this is a gift. So finally God has had enough, and he calls Noah to build a boat because he’s going to attempt something new. And Noah builds a boat out of wood (which is the same word in Hebrew as tree). So here we have a tree carrying on it life, delivering that life from the death that is to come. This is played out again with Abraham and Issac and is recurring throughout the Old Testament and I’d love to just tell you all about it but you want to go home at some point so I won’t. Just know this… It’s really important.
Fear of Death
Fear of Death
So lets just hang out right here for a moment. I think the fear of death really comes to us because it is associated with pain. And it should be painful. Death takes from us something that God did not initially intend for us to lose. So whether we fear for our own death, or the death of those close to us, its natural. However, what is not natural is for the fear of death to cripple us and cause us to avoid actually living. We understand nature, at some point in life we all come face to face with the reality that our existence and everyone else’s will come to an end, at least in this particular form. For some people our first encounter with death is the death of a pet, for me it was a grand parent. But it is an inevitability.
In my world, Demi Lovato’s world, Andy Reid’s world, a lot of people die. Some years it’s worse than others. And I’ll be honest, it doesn’t get easier. The hurt gets a little less intense over time, but the reality is that everyone that I associate with outside of the church people that I hang with, they are all one decision away from death. And I know that, and I have known that for a long time. And so there is a reasonable level of fear involved with getting too close to anyone.
So our real fear is not of death itself, but of the void that it creates in our own life. No matter how we dress it up, we are sad because when we lose someone it affects us. And if it is our own death that we fear, maybe it’s less a fear of life ending, and more a fear that we haven’t truly lived yet. As followers of Jesus one of our most fundamental beliefs is that when this life ends we will enter into the presence of God and (as crazy as it sounds) one day we will again walk with God physically on this earth in physical bodies.
And so a few weeks ago we defined Fear as False Evidence Appearing Real, and so what if, our fear of death and dying is just that. A false perception that death is the end? A false narrative that reads from the tree of knowing good and bad rather than from the tree of life that God has given for us?
You see while humanity continued and honestly still continues to exist in the cycles of violence and destruction that come from us choosing to define good and bad for ourselves, thus partaking in the fruit of the tree of death, God has been continuing to offer the tree of life. First through Noah and his descendants, then through Abraham and his descendants, and through the nation of Israel. And all of them have failed to continuously rely on God for wisdom and life.
And so, out of those people who have been trapped and held hostage by their own actions, God called a young girl. And into her womb he placed a seed from the tree of life, his very own existence. And unto her this child was born who became the God/Man Jesus Christ.
Resurrection and the Life
Resurrection and the Life
Humanity, since the time of our banishment from the Garden of Eden had been stuck in a cycle of sin and death. And then Jesus came, and he lived a human life. He loved, he made friends. He experienced the reality of human life, and although he was God, he felt the emotional toll that death takes on the human heart. And so one day, he got news that his friend Lazarus was very ill, and by the time he got there, his friend had been dead for days. And in a conversation with Lazarus’s sister Martha Jesus said this:
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
And the story goes on to include Jesus weeping at the death of Lazarus, and then raising him from the dead. But I think that the important point that Jesus makes is that he identifies himself as the resurrection and the life. You see if sin and death are the great cause of the terrible situation of our world, the cause of pain, and hurt, and fear, and oppression; then the cure to it is resurrection and life. Jesus is announcing himself as the tree of life. He saying “believe in me, and you will never die. Eat the fruit of my tree and life will be yours because I am life.”
It is at this point in history that the tree of life becomes fully available to God’s creation once again through the life of Jesus. However his work is not quite finished yet. There is still work to be done. And so Jesus, the tree of life, must face off one last time against the tree that brings death. And so the apostle Peter writes to us this:
(NIV)
“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed
(NIV)
24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), .
24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
The word most commonly used for cross is σταυροσ (stauros) which means cross. However, when Peter speaks of the cross he uses the word ξυλον (xylon) which means can you guess it.... Yeah it means tree. So in Peter’s mind, the tree of life was put to death on the tree of death, so that we may be freed from the power of death. Through the resurrection of Jesus death was defeated, the cross, the tree of death no longer has power over God’s creation and the hope that comes from that is radically proclaimed by Paul in his letter to the Corinthian Church:
Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
And of that time we have been given a vision, a vision of a the earth made new, of humanity and God living together free of sin and death, living out the resurrection in age to come. In the last book of the Bible John says this:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
This is Living
This is Living
So what I want to make clear to you after all of that is this: Life and Death —theologically speaking — have less to do with biological functions, and much more to do with our proximity to God. And our proximity to God is determined by whether or not we are living our lives in a way that we try to define what is best for us on our own, or if we allow God to do that for us. Are we eating from the tree of life, or from the tree of death?
For a lot of years I ate from the wrong tree constantly. And like I said, most of my friends are one decision to eat from the low hanging fruit of sin and death away from a tragic ending. And so I could live into the fear of that eventual end. I could keep an emotional distance. And in doing so I could remain safe, however I would not be truly living. You see for me living is seeing lives changed by the power of God’s grace and watching people begin to eat from the tree of life and allow God to fulfill them. That’s living for me. So if I distance myself from that miracle then I am not living. The fear of death has robbed me of my ability to truly live.
And so I don’t know what truly living looks like for all of you but I surely can tell you that no matter what it is, don’t let death steal that joy from you. My point here is that in order to healed of and alleviated from the fear of death, we ought to start living. And God says that living means walking with and allowing him to impart his life giving wisdom to guide you. So that your life imparts life to those around you. Life means being in relationship with God, because that is what eternal life is all about.
Think about children for a moment. Before they know about death. When life is all there is in their little minds. Before they can even say real words, they live. And the way that they live is by expressing themselves in song and other creative ways. They worship. I really love this quote by Phylicia Rashad, She says:
"Before a child talks they sing. Before they write they draw. As soon as they stand they dance. Art is fundamental to human expression." -Phylicia Rashad.
Think about that for a moment. Art is fundamental to human expression, and we, as followers of Jesus, believe that true human expression is a reflection of God’s image in us. And so, in our quest to overcome the fear of death by choosing to live a life that is close to God, I think that we should bring it all the way back. Back to the practices that we had when we were young and unstung by death.
You know I don’t do a lot of funerals, that’s more up Jason’s alley right now. But, because I live in community with people who love God but aren’t necessarily church people, I get asked to do funerals for people to whom I’m the only pastoral relationship they have. And when I go to visit them towards the end and we meet, they aren’t afraid of what’s next. They don’t want to talk about it really at all. Most recently it was my friend’s mom, and her name was Joy. Which was really appropriate because although she was in the late stages of brain cancer, all she wanted me to do was pray with her, and sing with her. And so we would pray. Then we would sing. Then she’d ask to pray again. And then sing. And then at her celebration, we sang a lot. And I thought how incredible is it, that when facing the end all Joy wanted to do was worship God.
And I think there’s a lesson in that for all of us. The cure for the fear of death is to worship, for worship is our natural way of responding to eating from the tree of life that is offered to us through Jesus. So I thought that our spiritual practice for this week will be to worship, and we can start right here, right now by singing Amazing Grace.
Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
T'was blind but now I see
T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace, my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed
Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come.
T'was grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home,
And grace will lead us home
