TREES - It seems I failed to post this yesterday?

TREES

I know what a parable is.  It is a story with an immediate meaning and a deeper, not immediately obvious, meaning.  Jesus used a lot of parables.  People could understand them immediately. They were simple and drawn from everyday life. ‘Para’ comes from the Greek ‘beside’.  Besides the immediate meaning the listener could ponder the deeper meaning.  Often there is not one deeper meaning but each one can come up with a meaning that makes sense to them.    

My brother nearly studied forestry.  We grew up with trees of all sorts and my father loved to explain their different qualities and uses.  Cedars and yews could be hundreds – even a thousand – years old.  Pine and larch had short life spans. We did carpentry and learnt how to cut timber to size and not to plane against the grain.  So if we heard a parable about trees we would understand.

Ezekiel used one about a cedar, the king of timber in the ancient world, where every bird will find shelter.  Jesus took up the image except that he chose a mustard tree. Unlike the majesty of the cedar it was “the smallest of all the seeds on earth.”  Yet when it is grown it too will provide shelter for all the birds.

We see a tree and what do we think? Why should I think anything? It is just a tree! I pass on.  Or maybe I stop to look and wonder.  Here is this tree.  It is alive but it cannot move anywhere by itself.  It is rooted here.  Already thoughts are brewing in my mind.  It is simply there, beautiful in its own way.  I can cut it down, end its life, and use it for something.  I can make paper – or charcoal – or a thousand other things. This tree is there only for me.  It has no other meaning except for the one who sees it or at least knows it is there.

I can think of its branches. St Teresa of Calcutta used to say of Jesus’ parable, ‘the beauty of the vine is in its branches’.  Or in the leaves “which are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2).  Every tree is charged with life and meaning.  Parables tease us to prise out the multiple layers of meaning in trees and in everything else.

The world is full of parables, hidden meanings.  Everything that exists is a gateway into the divine life that suffuses it. The world itself is a parable, hiding from our eyes its deeper meaning lest we be blinded by glory before our time.      

17 June 2018                           Sunday 11 B

Ezekiel 17:22-24                     2 Corinthians 5:6-10               Mark 4:26-34