THE SURVIVOR TREE

trees are the most mentioned living beings in all of Scripture. And at this moment, we should be thanking God that He's got a soft spot for sick trees. From creation to redemption to renewal, trees play a prominent role in the Bible's story of salvation. That's Dr. Michael Ziegler's message coming up next here on "The Lutheran Hour." ♪♪ I'm Mark Isher. Thanks for making "The Lutheran Hour" part of your day. This program is listener supported to learn how your gifts and prayers help in bringing Christ to the nations and the nations to the church. Go to lutheranour.org. Now with a message titled "The Survivor Tree," here is Lutheran Hour speaker, Dr. Michael Ziegler. ♪♪ Every day during that construction project, Polly would walk past it and say to herself, "Why is this ugly tree still here?" It was summertime in Oklahoma, when a tree ought to offer y'all some welcome shade. But the leaves of this one had all fallen off, along with most of its branches. All that was left was a gnarled old trunk and a few fruitless twigs. Polly used to say it was an abomination of a tree. "Chop it down," she thought, "spare us of the cursed memory." She couldn't see any logic in letting it stand blighted by some disease. But the disease wasn't in the tree. It was around it. In the air, the tree was just another victim. It was, or had been, an 80-year-old American elm tree. Rooted at what turned out to be ground zero of the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, which took the lives of 168 people, 19 of whom were children.

The man accused of the crime were found guilty. One received life in prison, the other, the death penalty. That man went to his grave with no remorse and no apology. He believed he was a freedom fighter in some war against evil. What sort of disease must blight the human soul for a person to believe that righteousness means murdering people that came to work to process social security checks, or to manage programs that help farmers plant crops or provide childcare for the people who work there? At the site of the bombing today, there are 168 empty chairs to remember and honor the victims. And overlooking them all is that elm tree that Polly used to pass under. Somehow, it survived. Today, it's over 100 years old, and he's crowned with a full canopy. More than just another victim, the survivor tree, stands watch over all those empty chairs, and offers a welcome space for every visitor. I have not yet visited the Oklahoma City Memorial, but I hope to. Maybe this summer. I wonder what thoughts come to mind in a place like that. The heroism of the first responders who searched for survivors and honored the dead, the horror of what people are capable of, anger, fear, hatred, hope. In October of 1998, three years after the bombing at the dedication of the memorial, then Vice President Al Gore quoted the Bible in the opening of his speech. He said that he believed with St. Paul who said that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us, or to us, as some translations of Romans, chapter 8, verse 18, habit. The Vice President also saw a challenge that the memorial posed for all future visitors.

A challenge for each one of us to "recognize that careless words and bitter emotions breed the worst in the human spirit." We must seek to replace meanness with meaning, hate, with love, ugliness, with grace. Our nation's second in command at the time wanted future visitors to say say not only look at what those evil men did. [BLANK_AUDIO] The implication is that the spiritual poison that pollutes the air, the disease that causes evils like this is not just outside of us, but also in us. And yet it need not have the last word. The vice president ended his remarks on a hopeful tone. He said, quote, "I believe that there is hope in this place, like flowers that push through the winter's barren soil." I'm surprised he didn't mention the elm tree, but I suppose at the time, just three years after the bomb, it didn't look very hopeful. It was still the ugly trunk poly passed by on our way to work every day, wondering why someone hadn't chopped it down. Jesus of Nazareth once told a symbolic story with a similar plot line. There was once a fig tree, he told a gathered audience, a fig tree that had been planted in a man's vineyard and the man came looking for fruit on it, but found none. He said to the property manager, to the vine dresser, "Look, for three years now, I've been coming looking for fruit on this fig tree and I find none, chop it down. Why should it waste space on the earth?"

But the vine dresser answered and says to him, "Sir, let it be for the season. Also, until I dig around it and put down manure next year, if it bears fruit well and good. But if not, then you can cut it down." Luke 13 verses six through nine. Jesus doesn't tell us what happens next, which serves his point because he's comparing the human project to this fig tree. He told the story in response to a question that had come to him. The questioners were assuming that some people were more evil, more diseased than others than that they deserve to be cut down. Jesus' responses blunt, "Do you think they were worse? Do you think their offenses were more serious?" No, I tell you, but unless you all repent, unless you turn back to God, you all will likewise perish. And at this moment, we should be thanking God that he is patient like that stubborn, long-suffering vine dresser, that he's got a soft spot for sick trees. In the Bible, the plight and the promise of trees and people are intertwined. Next to God and humans, trees are the most mentioned living beings in all of scripture. There's a tree on the first page of the Bible and on the last page.

There's a tree in the first Psalm and on the first pages of the first gospel. A tree marks the spot in nearly every significant turning point in the biblical narrative. Genesis says that humanity's original purpose was to cultivate and to care for the trees of God's garden, to delight in their beauty and eat of their fruit. And in the middle of that garden was the most beautiful, most bountiful tree of all, the tree of life that would give life on going, never ending life to the humans as long as they ate from it. But to get to that tree, you had to walk past another one. This tree, God said, was the only one that was off limits. Out of all the many trees they were invited to eat from, just this one was out of bounds, God had said. Don't take from that one. Because if you eat from that one, trust me, it'll kill you. It was a simple command. Another sacred moment to trust God. To take God at His word and sow to bear fruit, the kind of fruit proper to human trees, fruit born from a life-giving relationship with God. Perhaps God was offering them something of an opportunity, a welcome space to trust God and become trustworthy caretakers with God. Some people react negatively to this account in Genesis. Why did God test them with that other tree? They wonder, wasn't He setting them up for failure?

A test, however, isn't necessary. mission for his kingdom. But before he gives you the job, he wants to see how you handle a much smaller job. Faith with little, faithful with much, as the saying goes. But then, suppose there is this rebel who wants nothing more than to thwart the will of the king, and he goes after the king by going after you, his servant. He calculates that if he can trip you up on this small, seemingly insignificant task, eventually he'll be able to bring down the whole kingdom. So what the king intended as space to grow, the rebel turned into a setup. He turned a test into a trap. In scripture, we meet this rebel, a serpent, later identified as the devil, a servant who had been created by God for good, but fell into the trap of his own pride, thinking he knew better than God, and he led us humans down the same path. And suddenly, the one thing we couldn't have was all that we wanted. And God's good tree, the tree of life God made for us, it looked to us like an abomination, an offense. We fell into the devil's trap, but the devil had not anticipated how much God loves people and trees. He couldn't begin to calculate the depths of God's stubborn love. Before the sinands in Genesis, God promises that a son from the family tree of Adam and Eve, those first humans, a seed born from Eve will come to do battle with the serpent, and he would sacrifice his life to destroy the work of the devil, more than just another victim. This son would pass the test and restore the way back to the tree of life. The drama of the Bible continues then as it traces the branches of this first family with each new son born. There's hope that he might be the one who can walk past that other tree and pass the test. God calls this man Abraham. God promises the seed will come from one of Abraham's branches, and God marks the spot in the welcome shade of an oak tree. I'm telling you, God really loves trees. Abraham and his sons have some good seasons. They bear fruit from their faith in God. But in time, they each turn aside to do what is good in their own eyes. They take matters into their own hands. They take from what God said is off limits. The whole family eventually ends up enslaved in Egypt. And another son from Abraham's family is born. Maybe he's the one who can pass the test. Moses is his name. God speaks to Moses out of a small tree on a mountaintop, a little thorn bush of a tree that's on fire, but not consumed. And hearing God talk slowly, Moses begins to bear the fruit of faith. But eventually he fails the test too. He uses his own tree, the branch of a tree, his staff to do what is good in his own eyes. Moses also fails to trust

and obey, to take God at his word. On it goes, Abraham's descendants keep failing. And at the end of the Old Testament, it's all empty chairs and barren branches. They were supposed to be the best hope for all of us who look more and more like dried up fig trees. It just won't bear fruit. Then comes Jesus. All the writers of the New Testament present him as the promised seed. The shoot from the dead stump of the family tree of Abraham, the one who will pass the test. Early on, before his work in public begins, we hear how the devil, that same ancient serpent, tested Jesus, a test in the sense of a setup, a temptation, a trap. And you've got to admit, it's an attractive deal. The devil offers him, "If you bow down and worship me, all the kingdoms of the world, all this authority and their glory, it will all be yours." He tells Jesus, "But it's a false tree of life." He's on a mission from God. He's on his way back to God's tree. It was just a preliminary test, though. The devil's next big opportunity would come three years later. Jesus knew that this was it. Feeling the weight of the moment of all the places, he goes into a grove of olive trees to pray. "Abba, Father," he says, "all things are possible for you. Take this cup from me. That is, take away this awful judgment over the poison that is accumulated through countless generations of human failure. Let it pass from me, Jesus' praise. But if it cannot pass unless I drink it, this is the only way to restore our fruitless little fig tree. Your will be done. Not my will, Jesus' praise, but thy will be done." He passed the test. Crowned with thorns, he went up to the tree of life. But for those who saw it that day, it looked like an abomination,

a curse, an ugly fruitless tree that ought to be cut down and forgotten forever. Him writer, Stephen Starkey, captures the whole story in simple poetic verse in the hymn, The Tree of Life. He writes, "The Tree of Life with every good in Eden's holy orchard stood, and of its fruit so pure and sweet. God let the man and woman eat. Yet in this garden also grew, another tree of which they knew, its lovely limbs with fruit adorned against whose eating God had worn. The stillness of that sacred grove was broken, as the serpent strove with tempting voice Eve to beguile, an atom too by sin defile. O day of sadness, when the breath of fear and darkness doubt and death its awful poison first displayed. Within the world so newly made, what mercy God showed to our race a plan of rescue by His grace in sending one from woman's seed, the one to fill our greatest need. For on a tree uplifted high, his only son for sin would die, would drink the cup of scorn and dread, to crush the ancient serpent's head. Now from that tree of Jesus' shame flows life eternal in His name for all who trust and will believe salvation's living fruit receive. And of this fruit so pure and sweet, the Lord invites the world to eat, to find within this cross of wood, the Tree of Life with every good. For years after the bombing in Oklahoma City,

Polly went back to work, walking past the wreckage in the rebuilding of her city. She herself was a survivor. That morning in April of 1995, she had been working in a nearby building when the bomb exploded, a piece of shrapnel from the explosion had lodged in her throat, a breath closer and she wouldn't have survived. After her recovery, Polly devoted two decades of her life to leading the effort to raising nearly $30 million to build the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, which included the preservation and care of a certain American elm tree that had once been bombed into a barren stump. Today that tree is flourishing, crowned with a full canopy of resurrected glory, has become a central symbol of hope. Polly remembers walking by it all those years thinking, you are so ugly. Now she passes under the tree and says, I am so sorry. You have brought me such a wonderful lesson. And when she talks about it to her grandchildren, And she reminds them that it's the roots. The Oklahoma City Memorial's mission is to help us look back and to look forward. The inscription at the base of the survivor tree reads, "Our deeply rooted faith sustains us." Faith in what, or whom? It leaves unsaid. For me, for my community, it's Jesus. But I admit, compared to a handsome, 100-year-old elm tree, Jesus may not look so appealing.

There is a sickness in our human nature, a poison that distorts how we see things, and sometimes God's wisdom looks to us like an abomination, that he would bear our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. It looks ugly, but it's not what it looks like that matters. It's all in the roots. So come and take from this tree of life, come and take God at his word, be baptized, be grafted into the roots of Jesus because he passed the test for us. He has resurrected our fallen nature so that you can just keep on walking past that other tree and come under the cross of Jesus, then go. Forgiven, rooted in his resurrection, y'all go bear fruit for his kingdom. Amen. Amen. You're listening to the Lutheran Hour. For free online resources, archived audio, our mobile app, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. That hymn Dr. Ziegler quoted in his message comes to us now in a setting by David von Kempen. This is The Tree of Life. The Tree of Life, with every good, it's only winter soon, and all its roots of pure and sweet, God let the landmen wait, yet in the sorrow so woo, another tree of which I knew, it's only limbs with throat and dawn, and yet to see, in God alone. The stillness of that sacred love was broken as a serpent's tomb, With empty eyes saved to be gone, and led up to ice in the fire. The whole day of sadness, when the birth of fear and darkness doubt and death, It's half a noise and first display within the world so wooly may. What mercy caution don't you are raised, oh, so glad of rest, who by His grace is descending, while a moment see, oh, want to feel our greatest need. For on a tree of lifted high, there is only some who sin would die, who would drink the cup of corn and bread, to crush the age and serpent's head. Now from the tree of Jesus shame, those I've returned, in His name for one who trust and will be his salvation's living, who we see, and all they do.

Our Lord in night, Someone to read, To find within this cross of war, The tree of life with every good. The tree of life with every good. Daily devotions from Lutheran Our Ministries are a great way to start or end the day with thoughtful reflections on God's Word each day of the week. These devotions are available in print and audio, online and through the connected by LHM app. Thousands of people around the world enjoy receiving these inspirational messages written by Carol Geisler, Kerry Vo, former Lutheran Our speakers and others. Every Friday, the devotion provides a preview of Sunday's upcoming Lutheran Our message. There's also a tab called TLH Sermons. Click on that and you'll hear this week's entire Lutheran Our program. You can have these devotions sent to you via email or get them on your phone with our connected by LHM app. Look for connected by LHM, wherever you find your apps or go to our website, LutheranOur.org and look for daily devotions. Talked by Jesus and trusting in His promise, let's pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord look upon you with His favor and give you peace. Amen. The Lutheran Our is made possible through the support of faithful listeners like you. To learn how your prayers and gifts can extend the worldwide outreach of the Lutheran Our, go to LutheranOur.org. Our sermon series continues next week with guest speaker Dr. Glenn Nielsen. Hear how God makes us to be fruitful trees in service to others. I'm Mark Eich. This has been a presentation of Lutheran Our Ministries. [Music]