Life Between The Trees: Olive Tree - Genesis 8:6-12
I shared last week that I
was a glad to be called a “tree-hugger.”
Is there anyone else her who is ready to be called a “tree-hugger”? My hope is that by Easter Sunday, everyone
here will be thrilled to be called a “tree-hugger.”
Last week we began our
journey of exploring “Life Between The Trees.”
We considered the fact that the Bible begins with a tree and ends with a
tree. All of Scripture is found between
the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis and
the Tree of Life in Revelation. We find
that throughout Scripture God’s people connect with other trees between these
three. What I failed to mention, was
that while the Scriptures are about Life Between The Trees, since we haven’t
yet reached New Jerusalem and been restored to life below the Tree of Life, we
too are on this journey, we are living Life Between The Trees ourselves.
When we left last week,
having observed humanity’s first encounter with God’s Creation and the gift of
Free Will with the two trees of the Garden of Eden, we departed with a sense of
doom mixed with hope. We left with
humanity, for if we are honest we can see ourselves in the actions of Adam and
Eve, choosing themselves and death rather than choose to live for God. You would think expulsion from Paradise would
have shaken humanity up a bit and set us on the right track, yet…
After Eden, the first
couple began creating the first family.
New family, new children (well, the first children anyways), and a
chance to begin life obedient to God once more, just outside of Eden. Cain and Abel, one a gardener, the other a shepherd,
brothers. Each brings their offerings
before God. For reasons unknown, God
approves of Abel’s offering and not Cain’s.
Cain begins to get upset, God asks him why and warns Cain not to let his
anger cause him to sin. Cain could’ve
listened to God and followed God’s encouragement. Cain could have gone up to Abel and said,
“Hey Bro, I realize God approved of your offering and rejected mine. Can you help me understand why? Will you help me get it right the next
time?” Yet Cain did not choose God’s
path…he chose his own, he chose sin, he chose death…his brother’s death. And from there humanity, while still seeing a
glimpse or two of light, continued to spiral downward into the darkness of sin…
It spiraled downward
until, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth,
and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil
continually. And the Lord was sorry that
he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the
earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping
things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah
found favor in the sight of the Lord…And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined
to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of
them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth…For my part, I am
going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all
flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall
die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the
ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every
living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to
keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according
to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping
thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to
you, to keep them alive.’”[i]
So Noah builds this huge
ark, loads the animals aboard, and the rains begin…and it rains and it rains
and it rains…forty days and nights it rains…and the earth is flooded. Can you imagine how Noah and his family felt
shut up on that ark, going up and down over those waves for those forty days? I know how I felt this past week after being
shut up in the house with the flu for just seven days, not counting two brief
escapes on Wednesday. Sometimes we
forget that the waters didn’t just disappear the moment the rains stopped. Events across our country in the last month
have reminded us that even once the rains stop, the water levels continue to
rise, flooding areas long after water stops falling from the skies. Genesis seven tells us that the waters
continued to rise for more than another hundred days.
Think of how hopeless
Noah and his family had to have felt.
They had watched all life destroyed.
Yes, they had watched all the evil and violence that had surrounded them
wiped out, but they had also seen all life as they knew it wiped away…and now
for almost half a year they had seen nothing but rain and rising waters. There was no land for them to watch the water
level drop to reveal more and more ground…just water, water, water…with no end
in sight.
Have you ever been there?
Something happens in our lives, not something good, something awful, like
sickness, disease, or unemployment, or maybe it’s not one thing, but an endless
wave of storms, one right after the other, pounding on our lives, flooding our
lives with one difficulty after the another, and we can’t see any end to the
flood waters. Those times where we get
to December and say, “I can’t wait until 2015 is over,” and January comes and
we realize that the change of the calendar is nothing but flipping a page,
everything stays the same. It seems like
it is over. We feel trapped. A sense of hopeless settles over us the same
way it probably settled on Noah and his family.
We look at the flood in our lives, we look to the dark skies surrounding
us, and we want to cry out like the Psalmist did in the flood of adversity he
faced, “How long, how long, O Lord, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me
forever? How long will you hide your
face from me? How long must I bear pain
in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”[ii]
Noah’s ship continued to
drift upon the waters until it became hung on some unseen mountain top, some
three hundred days after the waters began rising. Fifty days later the first of the mountain
peaks became visible…
Noah sent out a raven,
but never saw the raven again. The
Scriptures say that it flew around until the waters had dried up, but Noah and
his family didn’t know that. For all
they knew it flew until it fell exhausted in the waters, dimming their hopes
that the waters would ever dry up completely, enough for them to get off the
boat. Noah sent out a dove. The dove returned having found nowhere to
roost. A week later Noah sent the dove
out once more. This time it returned
with an olive leave in its beak. It is a
good thing that Noah didn’t send the dove out on NC roads after a snow/ice
storm, for that’s why our olive trees didn’t make it for worship this morning.
The Olive Tree, one of
the Trees we encounter in our Life Between the Trees, is the tree that moves us
from despair to hope…the tree that became the first sign of new life for those
eight lives on the ark…the tree that becomes the symbol for Paul of new life
that those outside the Jewish community have by being made part of the people
of God through Jesus Christ. For without
Jesus, we were caught in the floodwaters of sin with no land in sight.
My brothers and sisters,
I do not know where each of you are right now.
Maybe some of us have walked out onto dry land and under the rainbow and
are already experiencing a new life after the floods. Some of us may see the mountain peaks of
hope, but have no idea when we will be free of whatever has flooded out
lives. Some of us may be drifting, lost
in the flood and have hung on something unseen.
Some of us may still be drifting caught up in rising flood waters with
things that seem like they will never stop getting worse. For others of us, it may still be raining, or
maybe just started raining. Regardless,
of where we are, when we are ready to cry out, “How long, O Lord,” we need to
remember the Olive Tree, we need to remember that God has not forgotten us, we
need to remember that there is a future, a new life that God has in store for
us, and never let go of the hope found in an olive leaf, in the olive tree…
In the Name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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