“Divine Intent”
“Divine Intent”
Exodus 20:1-17 Psalm 19 John 2:13-22
Year B, Third Sunday in Lent, March 3, 2024
Pastor Andy Kennaly, Sandpoint, Idaho
In this week’s Grapevine, the church newsletter, I changed a photo on the page that lists ongoing events, such as Al-Anon meetings. The old photo was me standing in the sanctuary, this indoor worship space. This room is amazing, has great acoustics, and the lovely woodwork gives it a chalet look. Of course, this is a pretty room, so the picture was nice, but it had a Christmas tree in it and we’re not in that season anymore, so I thought we better change the picture.
I looked through the photo file on my computer and found a picture taken in California on May 23, 2023 on the Sabbatical. It shows me sitting on a bench in a grove of ancient Redwood trees. Of course, it only shows the lower part of their trunks. They tower so high the picture cannot capture their full immensity with large branches and a needle canopy hundreds of feet from the ground. The girth of the trunks steals the show, and the photo conveys a feeling. On the bench, I rest among wise ones, share a moment in a place and among Earth creatures where time has a different feel.
Of course, when you look at a picture of yourself you notice things. I’m wearing shorts because it’s a warm, sunny day in late May, (summer-length trousers for our UK friends). My exposed legs show off my varicose veins and they look kind of rugged. But in that sense, I fit right in. The surrounding trees have bark that is scarred with burn marks, jagged with years of complex growth and thick defensive layers. There are a few burls, which are knots of wood, or lumps. Nature has a messiness to it, and yet somehow the beauty is enhanced by the mess.
Catastrophic fires have been in the news, especially in California the last few years. Drought takes a toll and global warming changes ecosystems. Redwoods trees of California are also subject to very extensive forest fires. In some locations, the burns take everything, even those high branches and the canopy as these giants become black, scarred, and without needles, like desolate poles in a forest that has lost its cool shade.
But there’s something about those Redwoods. These trees regenerate even though they look like black sticks pointing to the sky. The image that comes to my mind is like those chia pets that develop green shoots all around; the massive Redwoods have buds within layers of their bark, branches, and roots. These buds link through cells to the very core of the tree, all the way in. That deep pathway helps buds regenerate into new, green growth.
The trees that stand as charred trunks also have no needles after a fire event, which means photosynthesis can’t happen, where the sun’s energy drives the food system. No food available. If you and I skip a meal, we have fat stores in our cells. Trees don’t have fat, but they do have sugars and starches and energy stored away as carbon. Redwoods have a unique knack to access energy of stored carbon.
What emerges onto the black, charred bark are sprouting buds that eventually may form new needles and branches, and they are fed from within until they grow enough to create energy through photosynthesis.
Trees store carbon from the atmosphere. The energy of carbon stored in these Redwoods is from 50, 60, even 70 years ago. And those buds with cells that connect them to the core of the tree are ancient, hundreds if not thousands of years old. What was past is feeding current growth through these connections as thin as living cells that regenerate and help the tree live into the future.
What to us would be called an ancient species is living out a lifespan on a timescale that we find hard to comprehend in our rational thinking and limited chronology. Those early trees in their youth, sprouting in forests where even older trees had fallen; these woods try to adapt to burn cycles. By focusing on the basics, life at cellular levels, and the energy needed to continue and flourish, a new forest may emerge, trying its best to adapt to a changing climate and increased wildfire frequency and intensity. From the core of their being, deep down inside, buds try to find what they need to reenter the world. Their challenge is great, as is their resilience.
Today we read scriptures that remind us of basic Christian faith. Exodus includes commandments that give shape to healthy living as intended by God (although the mention of slavery can use some historical criticism, to be sure). The Psalmist reminds us that the ordinances of the LORD are “more to be desired than gold, even much find gold; sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.” The wisdom of silence, silence as a living entity whose “voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the Earth and their words to the end of the world.” The cosmic significance of Divine intent is called upon in multiple ways, both by “the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart.” John’s gospel presents a dramatic scene of Jesus clearing out the business side, the profiting from religious devotion that invades the courtyards of the Temple.
In that picture of me by the Redwoods, it looks like I’m not doing anything, just sitting on a bench. But as much as you are sitting in this sanctuary space, I was sitting in an outdoor cathedral, resting from the hike we were on, taking a breath in a very inspirational place, looking with eyes of my heart upward into the sky along the massive trees, and into the Earth beneath my feet where roots gathered and supported all of us. Just by being there, I was having spiritual renewal, silent prayer, and connection with Christ in all things, and all things in Christ. In the Gospel of John, in the scene where Jesus clears out a space, the courtyard at the Temple was also intended for this purpose: the Divine intent for connection.
The Temple was for the Jewish people, and yet the courtyard was a place of welcome for non-Jews. The Courtyard of the Gentiles was a place where people could come and get as close as possible to what was believed as the very Presence of God, who lived and dwelled in the inner, Holy of Holies. But the chaotic presence of merchants selling doves, lambs, and those types of animals for sacrifice in the Temple clogged up this space of prayer. Jesus clears the clutter, and in doing so he also addresses social-economic injustice of corruption that exploits worshippers through a system of bait and switch, price gouging, and fees for currency exchange.
As we gather on a Sunday in a sanctuary space, this one indoors, we can also request the Holy Spirit’s action and activity to examine the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts, we can invite the zeal of Jesus to clear out the clutter in our inner life and ask for guidance to help our outer life match up with integrity as soul-work shapes daily living. It’s on us to make sure we have those daily connections with God, to guard against the tables getting set up in the first place, obstacles to original, Divine intent.
May God help us find groves of grace, either literally or symbolically as the basics of faith invite us to renew our commitment to the LORD, God Almighty, even as we come alongside the Psalmist and pray that God clears us from hidden faults, from the ways we deceive ourselves or rationalize counter-productive attitudes and actions, especially if they affect others. The LORD is our “rock and redeemer” who goes to the root to help energize the core of our being, our True Self in God, our Larger Self.
So this week, pay attention, especially to trees. One prayer practice you may try is this: walk up to a tree, touch the trunk with your hand, feel the bark as you look up into the canopy, then look down around your feet to imagine what you cannot see, the roots underground. As you stand there, greet the tree, saying, “Hello tree,” or “Greetings, brother.” Maybe sister? Also, say thank you. “Thank you, tree, for the air I breathe.”
Then do this: take a deep breath and exhale with the intent of sharing your breath with the tree. Trees take carbon dioxide that we breathe out and they use it or store it for energy, then they release oxygen, which we need to live. Imagine your breath becoming part of that tree, stored as carbon in a ring of the trunk, cells within holding onto it until it’s needed at just the right time, a time that is on the scale of trees. Now you are connected to a larger reality, bonded within an Earth creature that has much to teach about multiple perspectives, modes of perception, loving your neighbors, and time freedom.
As you go through your life, you can reflect on that prayerful moment of unity, breathe deep again, and know the connection remains and those moments are connected as past, present, and future intermingle with a quality of intensity.
So, that is a good step, a prayerful action, along this Lenten journey. As we walk in the woods, may God bless us as we clear the clutter of our inner critic and trust the Lord’s blessing in the basics of breath, prayer, and the Divine intent of connection. Thanks be to God, now (deep breath), and always (breathe again). Amen.