Third Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 6B) – Ezekiel 17:22-24, Mark 4:26-34
When the first European settlers came to New England, they found incredible diversity of creation here, plants and animals unlike any in the lands they’d left behind. One example: In the early days of America, over 200 different varieties of apples were identified and catalogued. Trees produced fruit that were large and small, in every shade and color, apples that were sweet, apples that were tart—even one that tasted like a banana! And that’s just one type of fruit. The creativity of God was on display everywhere, and the earliest inhabitants of our land, the native Americans or First Peoples, generally lived in a way that honored and protected that diversity.
But our ancestors, the Europeans, had a different way of doing things. God put these things here so we could use them, they reasoned. And so they practiced a policy of exploiting the land. They moved in and clear-cut forests to make way for farmsteads and settlements. To be fair, some measure of agriculture was necessary to sustain their lives and families. But it totally reshaped the landscape of New England. Everything was driven by economic needs. To take that same example of apples, only the largest, most beautiful-looking fruits would sell in the markets. Brown varieties, or mottled, or small apples just weren’t financially viable. Trees were destroyed. Most of the varieties of apples disappeared from the face of the earth; only a few remain today—Red Delicious, Cortland, Roma, you know the list. The rest are gone, gone forever, because we used the world for own needs, instead of caring for it the way God wants us to.
And that is what God wants of us. In Genesis 2:15, when the Bible is describing the creation of humankind, it says that, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it.” That’s our purpose, what we were created by God to do. To keep creation, to protect it and care for it. And we failed, in this and so many other ways.
Except that one man, named S. Lothrop Davenport, gathered clippings, scions, from as many of these apple trees as he could, and planted them in an orchard at his farm in Grafton. Today you can see the descendants of those clippings in the orchard on the drive in to Tower Hill Botanical Garden, where 119 different types of heirloom apple trees stand tall, and from where new scions are sent out all over the country. 119 varieties of apples saved from extinction by such a small thing, a little clipping here and there.
It’s high time I turn my attention to the Biblical text. Let’s look a few verses before our Old Testament reading for the day. In Ezekiel 17:3, This is what the Lord God says: “A great eagle, with great wings and long pinions, rich in plumage of many colors, came to the Lebanon. He took the top of the cedar, broke off its topmost shoot…placed it in fertile soil; a plant by abundant waters, he set it like a willow twig. It sprouted and became a vine spreading out, but low; its branches turned toward him, its roots remained where it stood. So it became a vine; it brought forth branches, put forth foliage.” This planting that Ezekiel speaks about is a metaphor for the city of Jerusalem, and the people of Israel. They are God’s special people, whom God planted in the midst of the earth to be a sign for all peoples of his blessing and love for all creation.
And Ezekiel continues, telling us that the vine will rot, its leaves will fade, it will wither in the face of the wind. The prophet is specific about why, citing political realities in the ancient world, treaties broken and promises discarded. In short, Israel has failed to live up to the standards God has set for it. It has proven itself as faithless and destructive as any other nation, and so God leaves it to its own devices, allowing the poor decisions it has made to take their toll, the mistaken political alliances Israel has set up become the means of its downfall.
Only then do we get the words of today’s reading. “Thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind.” The first planting has withered and died, but God doesn’t give up. God tries again. God takes the remnant of Israel and begins a new planting, founds a new nation, starts over again. And all it takes is a tender cutting from the youngest of the twigs—a tiny, weak gathering of the remnant people that will once again become a mighty nation, the sign of God’s presence in all the earth.
God does the same for us, too. There are so many times in our lives when we fail to live up God’s standards and purpose for us. God wants us to be people of joy, but we sow worry and despair. God wants us to be people of hope, but we believe the world is hopeless. God wants us to be people of peace, but we respond to the world with anger and violence. God wants us to be people of love, to carry God’s love to the world, and instead we set up divisions between people based on our age or gender or the color of our skin or the amount of money we have.
And then God comes to us in Jesus, and everything changes. God who is all-powerful gives up his power to live among us and die for us. Death conquers all, but then Jesus conquers death and brings out of it new life. Life out of death? It seems all backwards! But then Jesus turns everything on its head, and like the new shoot growing in place of the old, life springs from every place. Jesus shows us a reality deeper than age or gender or color or cash, and helps us see the brilliant, beautiful diversity of all humanity as God has made it. Jesus takes moments of violence in our lives and surrounds them with people who can heal and renew. Jesus takes the dead ends of despair in our lives and forges a new pathway out of them, giving us hope where none could be found. Jesus fills our hearts with the Holy Spirit and sends us out into the world to rejoice at what God has done, what God is doing in the darkest corners of our lives.
How can all this come from one person, from one Jesus? From the decision of God to become powerless, to be born as an infant, to take on human flesh and human blood? God is great and powerful, majestic and mighty! How is it that all this newness of life comes when God is at his weakest and most powerless?
Because that’s what God does. God takes the tiniest, most tender shoot from the youngest growth of the tree, and transplants it, becoming a mighty cedar. God takes the tiniest seed, a single grain of mustard, and plants it in the ground, becoming a great bush for all the birds to make their nests in. God takes us, weak and small, you and me, and produces growth and new life that is large and flourishing and new.
And we, as God’s people, have the opportunity to share in God’s work. I want to finish today by talking a little bit about one of the ways we can do that. We are inheritors of our European ancestors’ way of doing things, of a worldview that saw creation as something for human benefit, to be used and exploited as we pleased. But we’re learning that unbridled exploitation of the world’s resources has drastic consequences. And we’re remembering that old summons to be keepers of the earth, protectors and caretakers. After all, in Jesus’ coming, God so loved the whole world, not just its people.
I invite you to take a look at the list printed in your bulletin today, the Personal Covenant with Creation. This list was created by an organization called Lutherans Restoring Creation. Read through it and find things you’re already doing. Mark them off, in thanksgiving for the ways you’re already serving God environmentally. Then choose another one or two items from the list, and work to implement them in your life this year. Make this part of your stewardship commitment to God.
They’re small things. They probably seem like they won’t do much. But remember that God makes great growth come out of the smallest clipping. Just one mustard seed to grow into the greatest of all shrubs. Just one man to save 119 species of heirloom apples. Just one tiny remnant of Israel to grow again into a great nation. Just one committed Christian to begin reversing the destruction of creation. Just one Christ, to bring salvation and new life to the whole world. Amen.