Jeremiah 8:21-22; Revelation 22:1-2
John was in isolation, cut off from his community. It was not a self-imposed quarantine to protect him from a deadly virus. It was exile, imposed by the Roman empire because John, as a first-century Christian, was considered a threat.
The book of Revelation reflects a time of persecution–for the early Christian church and probably also for their Jewish siblings. John, who had been a leader among the churches in Turkey, had been sent away to the island of Patmos.
There, in isolation, in a time of uncertainty and fear, he had a vision. It was vivid and violent–a cosmic battle with a seven-headed beast, the destruction of the world and, ultimately, creation of a new heaven and a new earth. John wrote his dream down for seven churches in Turkey, to offer them comfort in a time in which they felt powerless. Yes, he seemed to be saying, what you are going through is frightening and painful, and it’s going to get even worse. In the end, though, God will triumph and so will you.
John’s letter, which we know as the book of Revelation, fits into a genre of religious literature called apocalypse. Apocalyptic writings, which tend to arise in times of great stress and distress, reflect a yearning for God to break into our world with power and fix it. Apocalyptic literature is a response to feelings of extreme powerlessness, to experiences of the gross unfairness of the world.
When I was in seminary, some of our professors taught that Jesus may have been an apocalyptic prophet. In recent decades, the scholarly consensus has shifted: Jesus was not predicting the impending destruction of the world. Instead, he was proclaiming something already happening right there in his midst: the realm of God breaking in through acts of healing, through miracles of abundance, through dinner tables where enemies ate together.
It is striking to me how quickly, especially in times of fear and uncertainty, we can lose sight of the heart of Jesus’ message. In the midst of his isolation and distress, John of Patmos’s religious imagination turned Jesus’ dream of a world transformed by love into a vision of violent destruction.
We rarely read from the book of Revelation at Edwards Church: it does not reflect our faith in a God whose power is made known in love. This one passage from the last chapter, part of John’s vision of the new creation, is an exception: crystal clear water flowing through the city of God, with the tree of life bearing fruit. “And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”
This beautiful picture resonates with what I have been learning about the role leaves play in the transformation of our planet. In his book, The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben offer three vivid examples of how leaves actually change–or heal– the world.
Wohlleben describes how beech trees thrive in climates where rain is less frequent. The branches in their canopies angle in such a way that the leaves capture not only the sunlight but also the rain. The leaves create a funnel, directing the rainwater down the stem to the branches and down the trunk, so the roots can absorb the maximum possible amount of water with minimal run-off.
The second example he gives comes from a small forest growing near Bamberg, Germany. The soil there was sandy, dry and lacking in nutrients. Pine trees grew, but were not flourishing, in part because their needles made the soil so acidic it was not attracting beneficial insects. Foresters decided to plant beech trees in between the pines, hoping their leaves would neutralize the acid so the pines could grow.
No one anticipated what happened next. As the fallen beech leaves accumulated on the forest floor, the soil did become more alkaline. It also became more able to store water. The moisture in the air increased, as the leaves slowed down the dry wind that blew through the pines, leading to less water evaporation. Eventually, the beech trees created the microclimate both they and the pine trees needed to thrive as a forest community.
The third insight comes from Wohlebben’s chapter called “The Forest as Water Pump.” He opens with a puzzle. Since land is almost always higher than water, and gravity causes water to flow to the lowest spot, how is it that land has any moisture at all? The answer is that water evaporates from the sea, forming clouds that blow over the land and rain upon it. Those clouds, though, can only travel about 400 miles. Another mechanism is needed to pump the water further inland, or else the center of our continent would be uninhabitable desert.
The water pump, Wohlleben suggests, is the forests, beginning with the ones near the coast. Some of the rain that falls stays on the leaves of the coastal forest canopy, and eventually evaporates. In addition, some of the rain that flows down the tree trunks to nourish the roots ultimately is drawn back up through the trunk into the leaves and is released into the air, through a process called transpiration. The water vapor forms clouds, which are blown on an inland journey to the next forest, where they produce rain, the beginning of a chain effect across the continent. The leaves of the trees not only transform the immediate “microclimate” in which they live, they influence climactic conditions hundreds and ultimately thousands of miles away. This is why the United Church of Christ is so committed to planting trees, especially where forests have been cut down.
John of Patmos, I believe, was mistaken in how he envisioned the realm of God breaking in. He was right on, though, in his perception that the leaves of trees are for the healing of the nations.
We selected this reading from the book of Revelation for this Sunday long before we knew we would be unable to gather in person. I was struck, this week, by the resonance between the times in which John of Patmos wrote and this time we are living right now. We too are isolated, struggling with the loss of physical contact with people we care about. Everything feels off–empty streets, social distancing, good and vital community programs shut down. I’ve heard people say it feels like “the zombie apocalypse.” In a time of crisis, when our best instincts are to help, we are being advised to stay home. It is the best way to help–but we want to do something. We feel powerless. Anxiety about what is coming weighs us down, as experts warn it will get worse before it gets better. Even as we pray for healing, we wonder where God is in all of this.
I am sure that somewhere, someone is writing an apocalyptic letter for our time: a vision of God’s punishment reigning down through a deadly virus, accompanied by the promise that a chosen few will survive in a new world. That is not how I believe God works. It’s not how I understand Jesus’ promise of the in-breaking of God’s kin-dom.
Instead, the science and poetry of leaves offer a different vision for how God is at work through this difficult time. I invite you to envision yourself as a leaf on the tree of life. Even though you are rooted in one place–maybe even stuck in one place right now–, you are here for the healing of the world.
If we imagine God’s love as rain in a parched environment, how then can we point our leaves–our attention, our energy–in such a way that we can be nourished by moments of love and joy? When our typical routines are no longer possible, we have an opportunity to create new practices that can nourish our roots–meditation in a patch of sunlight, a few minutes at a long-neglected piano, a little more time at the dinner table with family, a regular phone call with a friend. What do you need to do to receive God’s nourishment in this time?
Leaves on a birch tree direct rain water to their own roots; they also work in concert with the leaves of the trees around them to create a micro-climate that enables the entire forest to thrive. In this time, God calls us to shape a nurturing micro-climate–whether in our homes, among the neighbors we wave to from a distance, or within this temporarily-virtual but always real church community. I invite you to ask yourself what it might mean for you to be a source of shade, or how you might exhale peace the way a tree transpires water vapor, perhaps to cool the rising tensions of too-close quarters.
When we are stuck in one place, away from one another, it is hard to visualize what it means for us, this grove of trees that is Edwards Church, to offer nourishment and healing to the wider world. And yet it is happening. Edwards Church folks have made at least three dozen cloth face masks for area health centers. The Board of Wider Mission sent special “stimulus checks” from our Seeds of Grace mission fund to local organizations addressing food insecurity. Sam Marcincavage and Kelly Lopez helped Liz Garrigan-Byerly distribute emergency food to vulnerable immigrants yesterday. When we don’t know what else to do, our faith teaches us that our prayers matter: somehow, the love we exhale in our prayers rises as though it is water vapor and is blown by the winds of the spirit in the service of healing.
God is at work. Not the way John of Patmos envisioned in the first 21 chapters of his apocalypse, not breaking in with violence and judgment. God is at work raining love to nourish the leaves on the trees, so that they–so that we–can be for the healing of the nations. Amen.