Psalm 1;John 17: 6,8,9

The two texts before us are part of a different Testament and were written in a different time.  The Old Testament Psalm takes us to the time when all the people had was the Law. By the Law is not just meant the Ten Commandments or all the instructions for religious rituals we find in Leviticus, it is the whole five books of Moses, the Torah.  Religious leaders used to debate this.  The first Psalm tells us that the Law, God’s Law, is a source of life.  The author compares it to streams full of water.  A person reading staying true to the Law is healthy, like a tree with access to water which is firmly rooted there.  Not long ago Carolyn saw a house for sale across the street from her mother’s.  It is a simple three bedroom house which has had many inhabitants over the years.  But we were its first inhabitants in the late eighties.  The garage floor and the walls and the roof were obviously in disrepair. We had a chance to walk around the house and look inside. To our delight the inside of the house, including the linoleum, looked pretty much the same.  We also looked at the plants in the backyard.  Everything was dried up, except for a tree we had planted ad which curved upwards. It seemed healthy, even though obviously the backyard water supply had been shut off. Then we figured it out: the tree was so firmly rooted that it had access to the water from the neighbor’s sprinkler system.  It got its water from the other side of the fence.

In Peru lack of moisture has turned huge swaths of the country into a virtual desert.  In some place there is a lot of moisture in the clouds and in the fog.  Some farmers have found a way to capture that moisture in metal tracks hanging from the trees.  On the Hawaiian island of Molokai similar moisture poor areas of the island have been turned into a desert. Roughly the eastern, windward, third of the island is lush and green from the prevailing easterly tradewinds. The others two thirds is parched, destroyed by pineapple plantations that moved away after the land had become less than profitable.  An organization called Permaculture from Australia has been helping the locals to dig channels and change the contours of the land so that rainwater can be captured and retained and plants can grow in the soil and the rain does not run off into the sea and destroy the fish ponds and reefs.  Most of us at one point or another have identified places in our yards were plants do not receive water or too little of it.  We still have to fix the sprinkler system along 8^th street so that Bill Nagata finally can stop watering the plants in the new courtyard.

Friends, the text in Psalms makes it clear that the tree and the water and the roots are a metaphor for our spiritual life.  God is in the business of bringing life and health to people in as many ways as possible.  This is what God wants and God must find ways to do this.  The water has to get to tree. The Law has to get to the hearts of the people.  Now in the New Testament Jesus is praying an honest prayer.  He tells God that His disciples understand now that the words of Jesus are really words that come from God.  Jesus is dealing with the same question: how do we get God’s words to the people the way water gets to the tree.  But now the Law has changed. Jesus has summed it up in “You shall Love the Lord God with all your heart and your mind and your soul and your neighbor as yourself.” The law has become simpler but at the same time harder to live. Gone are the many regulations.  Friends, we must understand that in the New Testament Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law. In other words: not those who follow the law will be like the tree. No, those who follow Jesus will be like the tree with plenty of water to draw from.  Jesus is even called the “Word,” for the name Jesus represents the last and most important word from God.

So, friends, our texts already knew thousands of years ago what we find out on a daily basis every day: that to draw life from God is not always the easiest thing.  To draw health from God has its challenges.  Like a tree, we may be in a wrong place. We may not go to the right place to find God.  Perhaps we are looking for God in consumerism or in the blessings of technology. Perhaps we are looking for God in bad relationships or with beautiful people.  There is a song that laments that the singer “was looking for love in all the wrong places.” In a same way we may be looking for God in all the wrong places.  In those places what we receive may even be toxic for us, like a stream poisoned with chemicals. Then there are the roots, perhaps where we go is not a place where we can sink spiritual roots.  That is why a community such as this is so important, for we try hard to provide a setting where fragile spiritual plants can sink roots.  Finally, we may not give God time to reach us, giving God a minute here or a minute there or we may expect instant gratification and fulfillment. Friends, God wants us reach us as the rain wants to reach the leaves and fruit of the tree.  Let’s be where God can find us. Amen.