A Sermon preached by the Rev. Deana Dudley

at Holy Fellowship Metropolitan Community Church, London, Ontario

and Christos Metropolitan Community Church, Toronto, Ontario

1 June 2003 – Easter VII – Pride Month

Anne and I have a maple tree in our front yard. And when we moved into our house, we had a heap of plumbing work done, and in connection with it, we had a guy run a video camera down our drains, to see what kind of shape they were in. They’re not too bad, they’ll do for a while yet, but there are some roots, from that maple in our front yard, beginning to insinuate their way into the drains.

And the drain pipes are down about seven or eight feet deep! I happen to know this, because that plumbing work we had done when we moved in involved them digging a hole in our front yard that was SIX feet deep, and they didn’t get as far as the drain pipe, so I know it’s got to be down below that. When the roots of that maple tree went looking for water, they went deep; they went down at least seven feet.

See, the maple tree just HAS to have water to grow. No water, no growth. And if it doesn’t get enough rain, or if there’s too much pavement around for it to spread its roots out around it, it has to go down. And when it went down, it went deep, and found a lovely source of water thoughtfully provided by our drains. So, I’m guessing, that tree’s not going anywhere anytime soon. It’s well rooted in our front yard.

When I lived out west, I occasionally drove through the desert, and out there they have these big weeds called tumbleweeds. Now that’s a plant that’s GOING somewhere. It’s a shrub, a big round bush, and when it gets dry, the wind just picks it up and blows it around, because, you see, it DOESN’T have deep roots. And because it’s round, it rolls, and so out west the tumbleweeds just tumble around all over the place.

I suspect that if the Psalmist had written Psalm 1 today, those are the images that might have been used. Maple trees and tumbleweeds. But the Psalmist had his or her own landscape to inspire the Psalms. And the Psalmist talks of trees that are planted by the water, and about chaff, the junk that’s left when you winnow your grain, that blows in the wind.

When I was in the Middle East, while I was in seminary, we travelled from Jordan to Jerusalem, and we went down into the Dead Sea valley, through the desolate Judean wilderness, which is the driest place I have ever seen, and one of the driest on earth. It’s just rock and dust, and rugged hills and valleys. But as you make a turn down the road from Amman, Jordan, you look across the big valley to a place where there’s a tiny ribbon of pale green, at the bottom of a deep, narrow canyon, called the Wadi Qilt. And it looks like green rocks, but it’s not. It’s a tiny, narrow strip of trees.

And when we saw it, it seemed kind of unbelievable. Trees? Growing in this desolate place? And then our professor explained that the trees were growing along the banks of the stream at the bottom of the wadi. And the thing is, most of the year, there’s no water there. None. Only in the rainy season.

But the trees manage to live there, because even when the water isn’t visible in the wadi, the stream still runs deep underground, and the trees can tap that water, and live. Nothing else lives there year round. All of the grasses and weeds and shrubs shrivel up and die when the rains stop, and are blown away by the wind, because their roots aren’t deep enough to sustain them. But the trees have deep roots, and they live. In the midst of a region of almost perpetual drought, water is still present in this stream bed, even when we can’t see it, and the roots of those trees are continually taking up its life-giving gift.

That’s the landscape the Psalmist knew; that rugged wilderness, and the heat and the wadis that are dry eleven months out of the year. I’m pretty sure that the Psalmist – maybe David, when he was a shepherd boy – travelled that same land, saw those same wadis, maybe even the Wadi Qilt, and marvelled at the trees that manage to hang in there for the long run. And then wrote this Psalm.

Now, you’ve probably pretty much figured out the rest of this sermon. You figure I’m going to explain how we need to be like those trees, to be deeply rooted in the divine, in order to live. And you are absolutely right. We do need that, and I am going to preach it. But we’re not given that teaching in this Psalm just for fun. There’s a purpose to it. And it’s found in the words "Blessed are those.... whose delight is in the law of God, who meditate upon it day and night."

Law. We don’t like law. We don’t want rules. But the word there is Torah, the Torah of God, and it means much more than law. It’s teaching, it’s guidance for life. It’s what we need to know to be blessed. To be like a tree that bears fruit. Jeremiah wrote some words that are very much like this Psalm. And he wrote: Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is in the Lord. For that one shall be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to bear fruit. (Jeremiah 17:7-8.) It will not cease to bear fruit in times of drought. See, Jeremiah and the Psalmist understood that ONLY those trees that are planted by the streams and rivers bear much fruit.

We’ve talked about fruit a bit lately. How appropriate. But we’ve looked at scriptures in recent weeks that spoke to us of bearing spiritual fruit in our lives. So how do we know whether we truly feed our roots on the living water? How might we deduce whether we have become blase and ceased drawing on the water of life? Well, Jesus answered that one: "By their fruits you will know them." If we’re not bearing fruit, we’re dying.

Now, we may not all bear the same fruit. And for those of you over achievers out there, I don’t want to incite any spiritual self-bashing. We may not all bear the same fruit. But we need to be grateful for what we do achieve, not always beating ourselves up for the fruits we don’t have. Look at the fruits we do bear, and delight in them. God does. Why not you? Why not me? Cherish each fruit, small or large. Give God the glory and give ourselves a break.

Because there is one common fruit that we can all bear. Jesus spelled it out last week’s Gospel reading. Love. Love one another, even as I have loved you. One of the ways this love presents itself is in open-hearted fellowship, where we seek to affirm the best in one another and forgive the deficiencies. Love is the one common fruit.

And in the Gospel lesson that was read today, from John 17:6-19, Jesus is recorded as praying that his followers may love one another. His prayer and his joy is that they will stay together in love. If we’re not bearing the fruit of love, something is radically wrong. Because if our roots drink from God’s water of life, we will indeed love one another. Because the water of life is pure love, and the trees planted beside it and nourished by it, will be known by their fruits. It is Christ’s joy that we bear the fruit of love. He says "These things I speak in the world, that you, my disciples, may have my joy...."

Now, in my own life, I know, theoretically at least, how important it is to be grounded and firmly rooted . I know that when my life is not deeply rooted, "like a tree planted by the water," when the gales of life and the winds of adversity buffet me about, when I come to those seasons of personal drought, my life can come crashing down like a shallow-rooted tree in a storm.

And storms WILL come. All of our lives consist of crisis and change, lofty peaks and terrifying valleys of deep shadows. So I know that I have to be intentional about keeping my life firmly grounded in the depths of the divine, which waters my roots and nourishes my soul. When I don’t, when I rely on myself and on other human beings for my spiritual sustenance, that’s not deep enough. But those horrible times when I feel incomplete, when I feel powerless, when I’m facing some situation that’s beyond my ability to fix, then I’m far more likely to go deeper, to turn to God, to seek that water, that strength, that wisdom, that guidance.... in the words of the Psalm to meditate on the Torah, the teaching of God, day and night.

But when I try to live on the surface of life, I’m like a shrub in the desert. I’m like a tumbleweed. Stunted, misshapen, never growing to its full potential, always on the edge of death. But when I trust in God, I am like a tree planted by the water, sending out my roots into that stream, and when the drought comes, I am still green and refreshed, and I can still bear fruit.

There’s a verse in Psalm 46 (v. 5) that says: "There is a river, whose streams make glad the city of God..." And you and I have been planted by such a stream. It’s not the surface water, not the water that dries up during the drought. It’s the water that’s always there, out of sight, running deeply, sustaining us when we most need it. It’s like that stream in the Wadi Qilt, that in an unseen way, provides sustenance to the trees lining its banks. Sometimes it’s the unseen things in life that give us sustenance, are the most nourishing, that give us strength and endurance, even in those personal seasons of drought.

And when we come together in this place, we witness – I witness, at least – over and over this "river whose steams make glad the city of God." Every time we come together here, we come seeking those unseen things, those deep waters, as we seek to strengthen our community, and strengthen our faith relationship with God.

I think sometimes we take what we have here for granted. All we do is sing a few songs, hear a reading, a few comments, eat a bite of bread, drink a sip of grape juice. We might figure, what’s the difference if I miss now and then? If I don’t bother to pray or study, if I don’t meditate on the Torah of God day and night, who’ll know or care? What's the big deal with that? Or getting to know the people I worship with. It's not that important is it?

Well... when the time comes that we need the deep water, then you tell me how important it is. It’s like that maple tree in our front yard. No water, no growth. No growth, no fruit. No fruit, no life. Blessed is the one who trusts in God, for they shall be like a tree planted by the water. Don’t trust in something else; in your job, in your lover, in your RRSP, in your wonderful life. You just never know when that will all come crashing in on you. Trust God, that’s the source of deep, living water, that's where our roots need to grow.

And we grow through the storms. Until one day like a tree planted by the rivers of water, we shall bring forth our fruit in God’s season. Until one day like a tree planted by the rivers of water, we shall not be moved.