Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
By the Rev. Alanna C. Sullivan
Associate Minister and Director of Administration
The Memorial Church of Harvard University
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Feb. 16, 2024)
I, like many of you, have found myself overcome and appalled by the onslaught of news over the past few weeks. The torrent of regressive executive orders, transphobic legislation under the guise of protection of women, the gutting of the federal workforce, the richest man in the world taking away medicine and food from the poorest, people being taken to Guantanamo Bay out of sight so that we cannot know what is happening to them. Threats to halt life-saving medical research. I could go on, of course. The regrettable list of unprecedented actions grows by the day.
I also have found myself disturbed by the quick submissions of leaders and institutions around the world. Many seem more worried about their proximity to power and survival than standing up for what is right and just. Companies dismantling their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Institutions of higher learning, such as this one, removing statements of support for trans students. And to be sure, there have been many important movements of resistance. For instance, this week, the Massachusetts Council of Churches joined over two dozen Christian and Jewish institutions in opposition to the federal government's rescission of a policy that exempts places such as schools and houses of worship from ICE raids. Efforts such as these are essential and we should put our full support behind them.
I would not be truthful, however, if I did not acknowledge that in this moment in our society, it can feel overwhelming and disorienting. Often these days, I'm not sure where to plant my feet as the earth shifts beneath them. I find myself asking, in this time what can provide me or any of us with a sense of safety and meaning? Many of the places that we have relied upon seem to be capitulating or at the edge of crumbling. Government, institutions of learning, scientific research, how tenuous and shaky their foundations have proven to be. This is a sobering and chilling realization.
It is tempting, always tempting to put our trust in military power, technological innovation, social status, economic achievement, or intellectual expertise. It's alluring to believe that such sources will provide us with security and meaning in our lives. And yet, as the prophet Jeremiah warned, and as our lived experience reveals, often their stability and strength is an illusion. As a reminder, Jeremiah lived during a time of societal upheaval. His time as a prophet began in the shadow of the first temple in Jerusalem and ended in exile. He, along with others, lost his home. When the Holy city was conquered and destroyed by the Babylonians, he was forced to flee to Egypt.
Jeremiah knew about living with difficult choices. Questions of safety and security. Questions of who is trustworthy and who is dangerous. Frequented his mind. First hand, he knew how hard it was to remain open and trusting when one's life was in tumult. As the military might of the Babylonian empire approach Jerusalem, Jeremiah saw people place their trust in human force and witnessed them trying to find security in human-made ideas and institutions. And yet that reliance upon human endeavors and institutions is futile. They cannot bear fully the weight of a human life. They are too fickle and flimsy.
And so he warned that reliance upon these apparent sources of power and control can leave us insufficiently rooted for the tribulations that face us. It is not uncommon for other prophets in the Hebrew Bible to condemn the hearts and minds of those with religious, political, and military might. To rail against structures and systems that represent idolatry. Jeremiah, however, takes his people to a more intimate place, to a strikingly personal level. The problems between God and God's people would not merely be resolved in palaces or by armies. Jeremiah stated that the path to wholeness and restoration of relationship with the holy begins inside. Deep within the heart.
Then in Jeremiah's poetic imagination, the curse quickly gives way to blessing. Blessed are those who place their trust in God and whose faithfulness comes from God. They shall be planted by the water and send out their roots by the stream. They shall not fear when the heat comes. Their leaves shall stay green. And in the year of drought they are not anxious and they do not cease to bear fruit. Jeremiah tells us to stay close to the source. Close to the source for nourishment that makes us fruitful. These are the connections upon which everything depends.
One commentator suggests that the phrase planted by the water might be more aptly translated as transplanted by the water. Meaning that the tree that Jeremiah has in mind was moved to the source that gives it life. Because of its deep rootage, the tree manages some leaves and fruit even when water is lacking. This brings to mind for me a related image. Every year my family travels to the Elk mountain range of Colorado to spend time with my husband's extended family. And one of my favorite sights in this beautiful corner of the world is the quaking aspen trees with their bright white bark and fluttering leaves. These trees indigenous to Colorado can blanket entire mountainsides.
Come to find out those aspen trees are all part of one giant organism, connecting entire groves throughout an extensive root system. The individual trees have roughly human length lifespans, but the organism that root system can live for thousands and thousands of years. 80,000 is the oldest one we have on record. And this fascinating thing happens. At some point, every tree in the organism might die. The whole thing can look hopeless for years, decades even. But through this intricate system of roots, grounding these trees and connecting them to sources of sustenance, when the moment is right, new trees emerge. They will be green and full of new life once again. It's what happens in the soil in the dark, in the midst of decay, that they find one another. They survive by their rootedness and their interconnectedness.
It's one thing to think that you are the branches being broken, being moved by strong, changing winds, subject to the harsh current climate, and it's another to realize that you are the roots. You can be sustained and nourished for what is to come. Perhaps it sounds naive to talk about finding sustenance and nourishment in a time such as this, when everything feels unstable and urgent. But it remains true that to fight for something different, we have to go below the painful surface of what we are being subjected to. To go deeply to that place where we know we are the tree planted by the water. To go to that place where the deep meets, the deep. Where God meets us. The place where we become unmoved and unmovable. This is how we remain okay when everything is not okay. We shall not be moved because we know who we are and whose we are.
Howard Thurman, theologian, civil rights leader and a prophet in his own right, put it this way, "All around us worlds are dying and new worlds are being born. All around us life is dying and life is being born. The fruit ripens on the tree, the roots are silently at work in the darkness of the earth against a time when there shall be new leaves, fresh blossoms, green fruit. Such is the growing edge."
May it be so.