The trees on Easter morning

 John 20:1-18

Jesus Christ is risen today! Alleluia!

And far be from me to cheapen anything about this day, but there is a little secret you should be aware of: Jesus Christ is risen every day! This is merely the season when we feel it most acutely—when we celebrate Easter, and when the green shoots rise from the earth, and COVID-19 vaccines show us hope for a better tomorrow, and the long winter (which wasn’t that long this year but it’s North Dakota, so, hey, it feels that way regardless) gives way to spring, and the birds fill the skies on their way north, and the ice breaks apart, and the trees start to show their buds. It is a season of resurrection.

Now, about those trees…

You can trace trees through all of scripture if you want to. In the beginning, there was the tree of the life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—one tree to give life and one that was a harbinger of death. A few chapters later, there was the ark—God’s salvation in the form of Noah’s advanced woodwork—and then in the prophets we hear whispers of a root of Jesse—a reference to a royal “family tree” foreshadowing Jesus. Moses had a staff; Psalm 23 mentions a staff and a rod; the ark of the covenant was acacia wood; and Jonah hides under a shrub to protect himself from the elements. There are ships and bows left and right. You will not get very far in the Old Testament without running into a tree or the product of a tree, but it is the New Testament where the importance tree really comes into relief.

Two days ago, we remembered Jesus crucified on a tree. The cross is the tree that stands in the gap created by Adam and Eve tasting from that first tree long ago; it stretches back to the tree of life and the garden where we were created to roam. And let’s be clear here: it was not just Adam and Eve that put us in this predicament. Each of us tastes of that fruit—every day—all of us yearn to be like God, to become God, and that’s why Jesus had to come in the first place. If not for us, the tree of the cross would be unnecessary. That is the weight we feel on Good Friday; I suppose it is also the reason so many do not worship on Friday and skip ahead to Easter. It is much easier to imagine it is all fluffy bunnies, especially when the world out there is so full of brokenness and loss and grief.

But God knows us better. God knows what is required to bring us to Easter morning with a heart and a mind open to the resurrection. The only thing in the world required for resurrection is death; it is the thing we fear, yet the very thing that gives Easter its power. The cross should be preached not only on Good Friday but also on Easter morning because on this side of Eden, the bridge to the tree of life is the tree of the cross.

A new covenant: God will show up

 Jeremiah 31:31-34

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors… a covenant that they broke… but instead it will be like this: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

            God goes on to say, “You don’t need to teach one another about me anymore, because all will know me, from the least to the greatest.”

            Wow! This is the God we worship—a God who is always doing new things. When the covenant was once only for those in power, God came on to the scene and said, “Now, it is for the powerless.” Later, when the covenant was only for those of pure blood, Jesus came along and told a story about a Samaritan who showed mercy. And when the covenant was still only for those who could claim a little Jewish ancestry, God came on to the scene and said, “Now, it is for Gentiles, too—for all of us here today, I imagine.” Then, in the centuries since the Bible was written, God seems to be up to the same business—taking those we believe to be outside the covenant and welcoming them in, not as subservient but as equals. This is the God we are dealing with here—a God who makes all things new, who welcomes in the lost and least and the ones we have rejected.

            I come to you this morning representing Red Willow Ministries, and I can tell you that right now it feels like a new covenant moment. We spent the better part of a year, alongside churches like yours, assuring that the least and the last are remembered and cared for, and it hurt because we have rarely had clear answers, and we are missing so much of what we feel we once had. At Red Willow, we come back to camp this coming summer thirsty for what we have been missing, longing for something familiar but also for something new, because the pandemic has also revealed many of the ways that things have been broken. God is going to do a new thing and it always starts now.

            I love how the new covenant in Jeremiah is simply a promise about knowing God, because that is exactly what we are about at camp. Camp cannot be the arbiter of good theology; we are not here to delve deeper into Luther’s catechism or to spend a lot of time talking about church practices and rituals. Rather, we are a place where God is made known to us. We are a place where you go to meet Jesus on the way, and this happens to the least and the greatest of us, each in our own way. And we have one tremendous advantage at camp both in the days of COVID-19 and as we seek to be a place where people meet God: at camp, we spend so much of our time outdoor. Outside, God’s presence comes alive. The Christian faith is a faith open to the skies (a “hypaethral” faith). We are a faith that comes alive outdoors where the miraculous does not seem so miraculous anymore; where the yearly migration patterns and the green shoots rising, where campfires and songs bear witness to something magical.