Sermon - Cutting Down Trees

Preached on December 13, 2009, the third Sunday of Advent, at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Luke 3:7-18

Dedicated to Harry and Margaret Craft, my parents-in-law; and always to the glory of God.

Introduction
Every year in the season of Advent, we read scripture passages about John the Baptist preparing the way for Christ. This may seem like a chronological mix-up, because while we are preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas, John the Baptist is preparing the way for Jesus to begin his public ministry in adulthood. It’s not a mix-up, but a good reminder for us that when we celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas, a large part of what we aer celebrating is who Jesus became as an adult: the way he healed bodies and relationships, the compassion he showed for people living hard lives, the anger he had for injustice, the forgiveness he gave with every breath - including his last, the way he taught us how to understand God’s character in parables, instruction, and in the very way he lived. All of it is what we celebrate on Christmas, and John the Baptist is here in the season of Advent, preaching to the people of Judea long ago, and preaching also to us, about what it means to get ready for Christ. He’s talking about an axe at the root of the tree: every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down. Cutting down trees. That’s an image that stays with me, because I want to see where it leads.

Prayer
O God, revealed to us in the Christ-child’s life, grant us in this time of worship a place for our souls to be at rest and time to re-center our lives. Surprise us with insight and affirm our deepest hopes in you. Amen

When we moved into our home five years ago there was, by the back fence, this wonderfully tall elm tree that gave shade over the entire back yard. Every autumn, for several years, it covered the yard with leaves. But then this past summer the leaves started coming down months too soon. An arborist confirmed our concern with his diagnosis: Dutch elm disease. The tree couldn’t take up water, and the leaves dried up and fell off. For our safety, and that of our neighbors, we had to cut it down. It was a sad reality, and our sadness caused us to drag our feet for a while. We just didn’t want it to come down. And now that it is down, I miss it. You see, there is this problem we have about getting from the head to the heart. In my head, I knew the tree was dead and it had to come down, but in my heart I was still very attached to it. Most of the time, the best way to move a message from our head to our heart is to act as we know we should, and the practice of those actions will change our heart. We will learn to love what comes next as we had learned to love what came before. In other words, I am learning to love the expansive sky view of clouds and sun that I see now where the tree used to stand, and I look forward to whatever will grow next in the newfound sunshine.

Or, to put it another way, and this is really what John the Baptist is saying to us, I believe: when we remove the things in our lives that are not bearing good fruit, we will have more time, more energy, more space for the things that do bear fruit, and what a gift that will be to us and to those around us. To prepare for the gift of Christ is to look at our own lives as if we were cultivating an orchard. Some of the things on which we spend our time, and thoughts, and money, and energy are not bearing fruit. They just aren’t. Maybe they once did; maybe they never did. But we keep doing them because, at some level, we have grown attached to them. That’s why we don’t want them to be cut down. But we need to change.

If the image of trees isn’t working for you, then try this. Think about the rotation of a fan, especially a ceiling fan with those long blades that stick straight out from the center. (We’ve got ceiling fans in this sanctuary, and they are on this morning because as hot air rises, we want the fans to push it back down to us. In a tall room like this sanctuary, these fans are for use in the winter.) I’m thinking about ceiling fans as a metaphor for our spiritual lives. Think about how the very tip of the blade moves at such a fast speed; when a fan is really moving, it’s hard to keep your eye on the tip of just one blade. But if you look at a spot close to the center, the fan blades are moving much slower, and your eyes can keep up with them. It almost feels restful to move from the outside tip down to the center, where the motion slows down. So, where do we live our lives: out at the edge, or close to the center? The closer we stay to our center, the more at rest our spirit will be. But we spend so much of our lives away from our center, out on the periphery, concerned with things that aren’t really central to our lives, and when we live like that, we can feel like we’re running just keep up; we have trouble focusing, and we wear ourselves out. To go back to John the Baptist’s image, we are putting a lot of energy into trees that don’t bear any fruit. Advent is an invitation to return to the center of our lives, and at the center of our lives we find a child who is Immanuel, God-with-us, who shows us that the center of life is love, compassion, mercy.

Now, I’m not going to stand here and tell you exactly what you need to change in your lives. I don’t know what each of you can do to move toward the center of your lives. If I were a different kind of preacher, I’d pretend to know exactly what you need to do. (You, don’t spend so much time on this or that. And you, stop feeling like you’re responsible for everyone’s happiness, that’s not bearing any fruit for anyone.) Or maybe I could just give everyone a list of seven things you need to give up by Christmas. I can’t do that. Our lives are too different and complex for me to give you a simple, one-size-fits-all remedy. And even if I could, it would only rob you of the valuable work of discernment, which is a spiritual practice itself. I can’t tell you what you should do, but I think there are some guideposts to show us the way.

1. First, practice discernment. Take a clear look at your lives, and consider that which really deserves more of your time and attention than you have to give right now. Think about giving yourself to the trees with good fruit, and that will make it easier to figure out what can be given up in order for you to do that. Discernment is prayerful, thoughtful. Sometimes it works by trial and error, so give yourself permission to make a few mistakes and then to learn from them for next time.

2. Second, remember that this business of cutting down trees is not judgmental. The last thing John the Baptist had in mind was to say that some people are bad and others are good, and you are a bad person if you’re not bearing fruit. The truth is that all of us have parts of our lives that are fruitful and parts that aren’t. If John had wanted to condemn people, the first people he would have condemned were the tax collectors and the soldiers, the people who enforced the Roman oppression of Israel. But right there in this morning’s passage are soldiers and tax collectors, listening to John about the trees and then asking him “what should we do?” He tells them “keep your jobs and do them fairly; don’t use your power for gain at the expense of others.” All of us are complicit in injustice at some level. We can’t change the structural problems of the world by ourselves, but we can make changes in our own lives to live more justly, with more compassion for those who bear the heaviest burdens.

3. Finally, remember that we change in small stages. We live one day at a time. No one can cut down all the bad trees in one day, but we can think about this day, this week, this Christmas. What is one small change we can make that will allow more room for better fruit to grow, more room for Immanuel to be born within our lives? Begin there, and one step at a time, we will walk together to Bethlehem.