A Redwood Tree Parable

A Redwood Tree Parable

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Last year I determined that I would take a real vacation this year. I wouldn’t stay around the house trying to get things done I hadn’t gotten around to doing. I would save at least one time of vacation where I wouldn't see family members two states away. I would see and do something special that I had never seen or done before. I would go to California and see the Redwoods and the Giant Sequoias. I would see Redwoods at the Muir Woods just north of San Francisco, a little ways past the Golden Gate Bridge. I had this song by Van Morrison running through my head.  I was about to see some of the world's tallest trees. The Redwoods in Muir Woods are not as tall as some of the other Redwood trees elsewhere, but some of them stand taller than a football field long, and taller than the Statue of Liberty. The more I found out about the Redwood trees and their cousins the Giant Sequoias, the more I could have imagined Jesus speaking parables about them if the land in which he walked had been north of the San Francisco Bay along the Pacific Ocean instead of up from Egypt along the Mediterranean Sea.

            Perhaps Jesus would have told a story about faith the size of a Redwood seed had his listeners known about the smallness of the Redwood seed.

“From these small seeds" – information posted in Muir Woods north of San Francisco

 

            Jesus might have described how the small cone of a Redwood tree, a cone usually less than an inch long containing seeds so small that it takes a hundred thousand redwood seeds to weigh a pound. Yet what can such a faith grow into when that small seed takes root in the ground, is nourished, watered, receives enough sunlight and lives out its days? Jesus might have described the possibility of how our faith begun from such a small beginning can grow into something we can’t imagine. We should not think of such a parable as hyperbole. It is not presumption to imagine that given to God our faith will grow and grow unto something astonishing, wonderful, and beautiful in the day of Christ Jesus. Our faith will grow into something wonderful not because of the size of our faith but because God is the one who watches over us as we grow in his care. The day will come for every Christian in the day of Christ; that if we could see the person we will become in Christ’s care when the process is finished we would be tempted to worship our final appearance on that day. The Redwood grows from such little seeds, a hundred thousand to a pound into trees standing this tall:

            Maybe Jesus or St. Paul would have used the Redwood tree as an example of how much we who follow Christ need the lives of other believers to help us remain stable. I went to California not knowing much about the Redwoods. I had in my mind that a tree that stood hundreds of feet tall would have a massive tap root reaching great distances beneath the soil's surface. I discovered to my surprise that a Redwood does not have a deep tap root. A redwood might have a tap root at most ten feet deep. So how does a Redwood stand so tall when the storms and winds blow hard in the hundreds of years that they must be protected from great winds? They have lateral roots that spread a little beneath the surface of the soil. The secret of the stability of the Redwood is that the trees grow in clusters and families. The roots of one Redwood tree intertwine with the roots of the other trees in the cluster. Instead of the roots of a single tree anchoring a tree in place, the root systems of all the trees in a cluster mingle and wrap around each other, until overlapping and intertwining the root systems of all the trees in the cluster are helping secure each other in their place. The redwoods have strength in their being gathered together in a solidly knit community.

 

 

            St. Paul might have described the Redwoods and the Giant Sequoias as trees that stood the fiery trials that came their way. Redwoods and Giant Sequoias do not survive for a thousand years in California without being able to survive an occasionally strong blazing forest fire. They not only survive fires but come out of a fire in better condition than they went into the fire. The other vegetation at the floor of a Redwood forest is burned off, while the Redwoods survive. After the fire with less vegetation to compete for the soil’s water or mineral nourishment the Redwoods and also the Giant Sequoias have a more hospitable setting to continue to grow in their centuries of life. It is an amazing sight to see a tree with burned out portions on their bases while the tree lives a healthy life for centuries more.

 

 

            My favorite Giant Sequoia tree that I saw was one called the Telescope Tree in Yosemite National Park. It had been struck by lightning sometime in its past. Explorers found it in a hollowed out condition because of the lightning that had struck the tree. They discovered the tree still living a healthy life in the late 1800's. The tree is still alive and healthy today. I took this photograph from inside the base of the Telescope Tree, having walked into the tree in the hollowed out portion of the base. Here is the scene looking upwards in the tree where the lightning had burned out a portion of the tree from the earth to the sky above.

 

 

            The outside of the tree looked like this:

 

            The Redwoods and Giant Sequoias provide astonishing parables. They provide lessons for us regarding how we might stand the test of time.

            It does not take a giant seed to grow a giant tree, for the seed of faith grows in accordance with its being planted in nourishing soil, watered, and watched over until it grows into the stature granted to it by its creator.

           These trees stand secure because each of them have their roots connected to all the other roots within their cluster until it is not by one individual tree's roots that the tree flourishes but by the root systems of all the trees in the community. Stability is built upon the contributions of one another in Christ. Each tree bears its own burden and the burden of all the other trees in the community.

           Finally the redwoods and the Giant Sequoias endure because they are well prepared for fiery trials. These trials instead of destroying them allow them to grow. I am sure that if I knew more about these giants in nature’s realm there would be more parables to learn from them.

Suffering in a Liturgical World

Suffering in a liturgical world

(This title was chosen before I realized it had the feel of a Madonna song)

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Generally speaking one should speak of the meaning of a verse within its direct context. I am going in this meditation to rip a verse completely out of context. I am going to connect the words of II Corinthians 9:7 to the existence of suffering in the earth. II Corinthians 9:7 is telling about how God loves a cheerful giver. The verse says; “Each one must do as he has had made up his mind not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (II Corinthians 9:7 RSV) The reason I think we can apply this verse to an understanding of suffering is that the reason this verse is so instructive about how we should give is that it leads us to that understanding by giving us something to think about concerning the nature of the God we serve and worship. God does not wish for us to be motivated by compulsion but cheerfully, free, in a self-motivated albeit not selfish manner. God desires that we give ourselves, our worship, our service, our contributions freely and not because we are coerced or driven to something by compulsion. I believe this same desire on God’s part to see us serve and worship God freely is at work in God’s unwillingness to simply eradicate suffering by an act of sovereign power. God works to bring us to a point where we freely choose to serve him, and as suffering is connected either directly or indirectly with human sin it is God’s good pleasure to show his goodness and kindness to men that he might lead them to repentance. (Romans 1:4)

            In order to understand this line of reasoning I think we need to appreciate how the creation, as it is described in the Book of Genesis is a liturgical creation. One of the sad results of the battle between Conservatives arguing for a literal understanding of the creation account and progressives arguing for a poetic understanding is that we have become so obsessed with how long the days were in Genesis and how many years ago it happened that we haven’t stopped to realize that the creation account shows us that God created the universe in a liturgical manner.

            What do I mean by saying that Genesis shows us God created the universe in a liturgical manner? I mean by it, that God created all the stuff of creation and at the time when all the stuff was created, for however long that moment was the earth was described as a void, without form or shape, and covered in utter darkness. There is in that description a sort of chaos with everything and yet nothing is yet in any form or order. How does God cause this to change? He speaks to the creation and then things start happening. God calls the creation to order.

            There are at least two ways we can understand God’s work of speaking to the universe and his speaking leading to the creation. We can imagine God speaking like a magician. With a wave of his hand he speaks and non-existent rabbits start popping into existence out of God’s hat. There is simply one actor on the stage doing magic. But I believe we have reason to believe that God was speaking liturgically. He was addressing creation that creation might actively respond to God’s voice and participate in the work of creation. God would speak and say “Let there be light.” The creation responded by the power of God’s word for matter and energy to be rearranged in such a manner that light appeared where there had been nothing but darkness. If that sounds unreasonable then we might well ask why at the end of each day of creation did God evaluate the deeds of the day and say that what he saw was good. Was God congratulating himself because he is the utmost egomaniac who says by gosh I am good and I am going to congratulate myself? Do we really believe God is the most narcissistic being in the universe? Something else makes far more sense. God has invited his creation to be actively involved in moving towards the perfection of creation. He has said “Let there be light” and there was light and he looked upon what the creation had accomplished at his directive and he said to the creation “It is good.” He was congratulating the creation for its active and wonderful participation in the creation process. We then can see when we are told that God will say to the faithful in the day to come, “Well done good and faithful servant” such a similar expression as God said to the creation in the six days of creation.

            This brings this whole creation account into a different perspective in the modern battle between fundamentalists and evolutionists. Is the creation active in the process of creation? If we understand the creation as liturgical it is. Did God create the creation? Of course it is his word which energized and directed the activity into which the creation itself acted. The Christian views his salvation in a similar manner. Do we believe that salvation is by grace, energized and directed, and to be fully credited to the Word of God active in our lives? Yes, by all means. Do we believe that we participate actively in this salvation by seeking, believing, trusting, following, struggling, and doing all things in his name? Yes, of course. We believe in a liturgical world where nothing is accomplished towards our perfection apart from God’s Word and where nothing is accomplished without our participation in the work of redemption. This view of the creation seems especially highlighted in Genesis 1:10-11 where God commanded the earth to bring forth vegetation and then the earth brought forth vegetation. How did that happen? It happened by mystery as part of a divine work of liturgical cooperation between the creator and the creation.

            There was progress throughout the six days of creation, whether that creation was six days taking billions of years, or billions of years of activity packed into six days. The earth progressed from being shapeless, void, covered in darkness, chaotic and with neither beauty nor life to being a place with light, life, beauty and order. But then came man our human existence and our sin. While we can imagine something a bit different than a literalistic rendering of the creation story, the stories found in Genesis are describing something that God revealed was important to be included in the story. The work of creation in its progress to the ultimate perfection intended for it was disturbed when we broke from the plan of God. Sin derailed the march towards progress in the creation. The consequences of sin were death and disorder. The march towards eternal life was turned and creation began to retreat towards the disorder, darkness, death and chaos that had characterized the universe before God began to speak to the creation and the creation responded in accord to the Word spoken.

            That is where we have found ourselves in this phase of the work of creation. But God has chosen to be patient, forbearing, and in his goodness to work so as to lead us to repentance. (Romans 2:4) God did not simply use his sovereignty to sweep aside man’s freedom to remove suffering from our existence as if we had not sinned against God and broken the covenantal bonds of the liturgy of creation. God did something much greater. In the person of Jesus Christ, he became man and chose to enter the world as it was according to our present story in the creation. We live in a world characterized by mortality or death, characterized by sin and suffering. God, the eternal God, did not have to enter such a world. But he entered it that through the weakness of humanity he might absorb all the sin and suffering and death of this world in whose order we live and as he absorbed all these things he exhausted them and he gave himself up as an offering to God. Then on the third day he rose again having overcome Satan and all the powers of the earth.

            At this point he can turn to us and speak once more the liturgy of the Gospel promising rest, peace, and life to those who come to the Father in the Son by the Spirit. He has restored the possibility of our coming to him in freedom without coercion. In this time when God in his goodness is granting us the opportunity to find repentance in Christ we face suffering in a new way. St. Paul speaks of our relationship to suffering. He spoke of how he was determined to know Christ and this meant that he might know the power of Christ’s resurrection through his participation in the sufferings of Christ. Christ overcame sin, death, and suffering not by eradicating these things by an act of magic but by overcoming them through human weakness on the cross and in the resurrection that we might therefore be buried with Christ in baptism, participate in Christ’s sufferings and be resurrected unto eternal life through his resurrection. This is the wonderful news of Christ’s Gospel and even though there remains for a season suffering – it is now a suffering faced in Christ.

 

Job and Friends: Sufferings, questions, answers and mystery

Job and Friends:

Sufferings, Questions, Answers and Mystery

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Someone I was acquainted with through social media was struggling with questions concerning suffering. I imagined I could help with an insight. The one struggling with suffering and questions replied with a less than grateful reply. I remembered reading the Book of Job. I remembered how Job's friends had imagined they would be helpful to their friend in his suffering. They discovered he would not accept their answers as the answers to the questions he was asking.

            Have you ever heard that the Book of Job was a book written to explain suffering? I don’t believe that for a moment. If it was written for that purpose it was the greatest colossal of a failure ever in the category of a book that missed its intended purposes. But I would accept a more existential sounding description of the Book of Job. If you told me the book of Job was a book describing the human struggle with the questions and proposed answers about suffering in a world where there are no adequate explanations of suffering, then I would declare the book a true masterpiece that has survived the ages and is as true in modernity as it was when first published in ancient times long since forgotten.

            After my failed attempt to encourage someone struggling with suffering I realized something I had never so fully grasped before about the Book of Job. It is easy for you and me to think that Job stood on the brink of spiritual disaster as he asked all those questions about his suffering and as he accused God of making him a target – which by the way is something acknowledged in the book as Job’s sufferings all flowed from God’s expression to Satan that there was no one else like Job in all the world, one who was blameless and upright, who feared God and shunned evil. (Job 1:8) Every trial and suffering Job experienced followed that assertion by God. We like to have thoughts about God that do not allow him to be the one who allows suffering in our lives. Yet this is enough of a theme throughout the Scriptures that St. Paul, quoting the Psalms describes believers as being accounted as sheep for the slaughter. (Romans 8:36) St. Paul hasn’t changed subjects from his describing the Christian life as being a life where all things work together for good. But he is describing the whole story which includes that God is working all things together for good even through those seasons when we experience what it means to be sheep appointed for the slaughter.

            It struck me that we fail to appreciate one of the lessons the Book of Job shows us. Yes, Job was in spiritual danger as he sought to question God with questions that chipped away at the boundary between faithful and impious sorts of questioning. We imagine Job to be in spiritual difficulty, but we imagine his friends to be mistaken but in no real spiritual danger. Yet when the book of Job is concluded God appoints Job to be the mediator between God and Job’s friends. He tells them that they will have their sins forgiven if Job prays for them. He will not forgive Job’s friends until God hears Job’s prayers for them.

            That mysterious ending seems to prefigure the mystery of the Gospel in Jesus Christ. For Christ, despite our attempts to downplay it asks the questions that seem to border on heresy. He retires to the Garden of Gethsemane and asks if this path of suffering he is moving towards is really necessary? Is there another way? Whatever one might think of how Anselm of Canterbury treated these questions such questions were poured out in the Garden of Gethsemane. Our Lord wanted to know if there was a way out of the path of suffering for which he had been chosen. On the cross, his questioning became more intense as he prayed what must seem like the most heretical prayer ever prayed – “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” We esteemed him stricken, smitten and afflicted. The multitudes scorned him and wondered about this messiah who now hung helplessly upon a cross. If only he had listened to some of his disciples he wouldn’t be in this mess. If he hung upon a cross facing such agony then surely he must have sinned grievously or he would not be hanging there. Yet he is not in the spiritual danger as we are, who have fortified ourselves with our theological and philosophical explanations that help keep the disturbing realities of evil pushed out of our minds and kept at a safe distance from us.

            Perhaps it is not someone who asks questions about suffering, that we should imagine is in danger on their spiritual journeys. Perhaps it is the one who has so compartmentalized suffering into a restricted zone that he has an answer for its appearance. That answer allows the reality of suffering to be restricted, isolated, domesticated, and managed from a safe distance. Perhaps true spiritual life does not have safe answers for suffering but only dangerous questions that erupt when we are found struggling with the reality of suffering.

            Perhaps that is why our mediator between us and God must be one who suffered and asked the  inconvenient questions. Perhaps our ability to restrict our thinking about suffering to fit into tidy compartments based on theological and philosophical understandings simply show us having lost our sense of horror regarding suffering. Many of our answers prove not to be answers rooted in wisdom but words which darken counsel, words without knowledge or wisdom. (Job 38:2) We have safe answers for suffering because we have begun to take on a disorder akin to that of a psychopath who has lost feeling and empathy for the suffering of others. Perhaps if God were speaking to us and to Job, he would point out that some of Job's questions were improper. But I imagine he might look at us (the ones with the answers) with disgust and ask, "Have you so figured out suffering that you have no questions?" So God looks upon us and says that he will not hear us unless a mediator prays on our behalf, a mediator who has suffered and has asked the questions and has overcome suffering by passing through its fiery ordeal. That was how God reproved Job's friends and secured their redemption. Job prayed for them. That is how our Lord secures our salvation when we imagined we had all the answers but in reality the only proper answer for us to give regarding suffering is to ask the tortured questions that are the only realistic response to suffering. Once we have been rescued from our having an answer for everything we are left to join the martyrs with one more question to ask God, "How long O' Lord, How long?" Until that day is realized perhaps our lot in life will be well described by the Anglican poet George Herbert (1593-1633) who wrote:

Ah, my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love.