“Praying Twice: Jesus Christ the Apple Tree”

Rev. 22:1-7

Sunday, December 2, 2018

First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

(A version of this sermon was delivered by Sue Zschoche on Dec. 2, 2018.)

If you have a smartphone or tablet with you in worship this morning, I’d like to ask you to get it out. And if you don’t have one, no worries. I feel confident someone near you will have one and you can share. So find a buddy. Buddy up.

Type into your browser sacredspaces.cor.org/leawood/window. It’s printed in your bulletin under the sermon title if you want to see it written out.

Okay. Made it there? You’ll want to flip your phone into horizontal mode so you can get a better look at it. What you’re looking at is the stained glass window at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Johnson County Kansas. What you can’t really tell from your tiny screen is the SCOPE of it. This window, is roughly the size of a basketball court - 100 feet by 40 feet - and was designed to tell the story of the Bible from beginning to end.

When he speaks about the window, Pastor Adam Hamilton says, “The biblical story begins and ends in a garden.” And so there are three trees in the story. Over on the left, there’s one of the trees that’s found in Genesis.. The tree that got those early humans into so much trouble.

In the glass, the tree is depicted as an ancient tree with old, weathered bark and golden leaves that seem ready to drop at any moment. I also notice that it’s heavy with fruit….which is, of course, odd, because I’ve never picked a ripe apple from a tree with bright yellow leaves. To me, this is a reminder that we’re looking at metaphors here, we’re digging into symbols. So even though the tree is bearing fruit, it’s also about to drop it’s leaves.

Abundance happens even in the midst of what seems to be death and loss. Which is, of course, exactly like the story of that first garden….even when the humans disobeyed and were kicked out of the garden, God lovingly knit them clothes to wear out in the big, scary world. Abundance and fruitfulness even in the midst of what seems to be death and loss.

We also see in the stained glass the river that flows next to the Garden….that river that Eve and Adam must have traversed as they were sent out of the Garden. The river that, along with the cherubim, guarded the Tree of Life, keeping the humans away from it as they were sent east of Eden.

On the right hand side of the window we have Tree of Life from Revelation. Bright green, brimming with life and, as with the first tree, heavy with glossy, round, beautiful fruit. Here at the  very end of the Bible, we find this tree in a city, not a garden. But this city certainly has a garden-like feel about it….big green trees, rivers bright as crystal flowing through the middle of streets (seems like an inconvenient place for a river, but we’ll go with it).

In a Salvador Dali-eque move, the Tree of Life in Revelation somehow manages to straddle the river of the water of life. Trees don’t typically straddle rivers but if we’re thinking symbolically, again, it makes sense. Because here, at the end of our sacred texts, the message is crystal clear. “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” Here in this New Jerusalem, we will study war no more. Night shall be as day. God will wipe away every tear from human eyes, and there will be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain. For the former things are passed away and we are enveloped completely in God’s love and grace and care.

In the middle of the window, we have the third tree. Do you see it? That’s right: the cross. For many Christians, the cross represents that which holds the two gardens together. The human sinfulness on the left paired with goodness and paradise on the right. Or the brokenness of a violent world, an instrument of torture and hate somehow bringing about new life and resurrection. The fear and terror that the disciples felt upon seeing their friend murdered somehow being transformed into good news when they discovered even death has no power over God’s love.

The tree on the left is all about the pain we experience as humans. The tree on the right holds up a vision of God’s true intentions for us. The Prophet Jeremiah describes it like this: For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

And the tree in the middle represents all that comes between...our imperfect striving, the mystery of Jesus’s death and resurrection, the things we struggle to understand about the pain that humans inflict on one another, the tentative hope we feel each spring when we notice the first crocus trying to peek it’s way through the still-frozen ground.

Three trees that hold together the entirety of our Holy Scriptures - Genesis to Revelation.

This Advent we will be focusing on “songs of the season” during worship and our first song is one that isn’t very well known:  “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree.” The text was written by an anonymous English poet and it’s a love song to Jesus, the One who keeps our dying flame alive, the One who cheers hearts, brings comfort, feeds our spirits.

It may seem odd that a song about an apple tree would become a Christmas song, because we don’t usually think of apples in the cold of winter. But it turns out that in England, there is an old tradition of wassailing (Christmas caroling) in apple orchards. Going out in the cold months to pray for blessings upon the cider trees. And so, in England, at least Christmas and Jesus and apple trees do go together just fine.

But there is something else about this image of Christ as an apple tree that resonates with me, and I want to share it with you. In the book Glorify, UCC pastor Emily C. Heath poses this question: “What is the fruit of an apple tree?”

Heath says, “If you’re like most people...you’ll give the obvious answer: an apple. But I was once listening to a talk by the Rev. Jack Stephenson...He asked this same question and then said something that struck me: ‘The fruit of an apple tree is another apple tree.’” [1]

The apple itself, that delicious fruit we enjoy, is really just a vehicle for the seeds.

The fruit lasts only a short while, but the seeds contain the future.

Just like Jesus Christ, whose earthly life was short. But the seeds that he planted have grown and borne fruit for the ages.

And we are still a part of that great network of life - reaching backwards and forwards, holding together the past and the future, the world as it is and the world as it could be, the pain of who we are and the people God dreams for us to be, Genesis and Revelation, beginning and end, Alpha and Omega - like Christ, we are called to hold it all together, planting seeds of life even in times of death and loss.

Seeds of hope. Seeds of peace. Seeds of joy. Seeds of love.

Let us journey into Advent together with Christ, the apple tree.

NOTES:

[1]  Emily C. Heath, Glorify, chapter 8.