Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
(Psalm 1:1-6)
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This past spring was a bit of a nightmare for the Davis family, with the nightmare revolving largely around house hunting. At the best of times, as many of you know, house hunting is not fun. These are not the best of times to be house hunting in the GTA. From March through May we scoured the area over a number of visits. We spent countless hours looking at real estate listings. We exchanged email after email and phone call after phone call with our real estate agent. Things were looking pretty bleak. Our home in Port Colborne had sold after only a few days on the market, and homelessness was beginning to look like a real possibility! I was wondering if I should ask about pitching a tent somewhere on church property! The reality is that we were simply priced out of the market. After looking from Pickering to Port Hope, we finally decided that anything in south Durham was just beyond our ability to pay, and we decided we’d have to start looking to the north. Finally, we found a house. As most of you know it’s in Beaverton. A quiet little town that, for me, makes a kind of a nice contrast to the busy-ness of Ajax. A bit more of a commute than we had anticipated, but on the other hand I haven’t seen a single traffic jam heading north, and I probably wouldn’t be saying that if I had been making an east-west commute. Some are concerned about winter driving. Folks, I’ve lived in Central Newfoundland and Northern Ontario - and even Niagara is known to have its fair share of wicked winter weather. That doesn’t frighten me. So it worked out pretty well. And what I especially love about the house we bought was the land that it came with. Anything in this area even remotely close to our budget came with a backyard the size of a postage stamp. In Beaverton we have an acre and a half; a backyard filled with trees. That’s what I love the most about it: the trees.
At the back of our backyard we have two tall pine trees. They reach up far into the sky. Although the driving may not frighten me, like most Canadians I still look forward to the coming of winter as much as I would look forward to a tooth being pulled, I’m nevertheless looking forward to those pine trees during the winter. While everything else looks drab and dreary those two pines will still be standing tall and proud, reaching to the heavens, green and beautiful. Now, that’s nature. And evergreens can live seemingly forever! There’s a bristlecomb pine in the White Mountains of California that’s estimated to be over 5000 years old. It’s the oldest living organism in the world that we know of. That makes Methusaleh seem like a kid! That must come from from God! The Elder Amphilochios (a priest who was the head of the Greek Orthodox Annunciation monastery on the Island of Patmos - the island on which the Apostle John wrote the Book of Revelation) once wrote that “whoever does not love trees does not love God.” There’s a lot of truth to that. Trees have a lot to teach us about God, and about the life God has given us.
This morning, we read Psalm 1. Psalm 1 is in some ways a strange psalm for Christians. It’s a celebration of God’s law, and of course we think of ourselves as a people under grace. What would this psalm possibly have to say to us? Well, it may be a celebration of God’s law, but it also strikes me as a celebration of God’s love, and very definitely as a celebration of God’s grace. What I find here is not a dour command combined with a threat to obey God or else. What I find here is an invitation to be delighted by God’s law, to meditate on it, to reflect upon it. To reflect upon God’s law is to reflect upon God himself; it is to invite God ever deeper into your heart and into your soul. God’s law, God’s words and God’s ways are the things that lead us to abundant life - the kind of life Jesus wanted his disciples to have. Understood as Jesus understood it, God’s law is the seed, in a sense, that doesn’t trap us in meaningless legalistic observances but that rather sets us free to be what God wants us to be; to become what God wants us to become. That’s how Jesus saw the law - not as a static unchanging taskmaster, but as a call to grace and love. That’s how Jesus summed the law up - “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.”
Psalm 1 is an invitation to reflect and meditate upon God’s law; to be challenged by it, and to be changed by it; to grow strong in faith and commitment because of it. Those who delight in and meditate upon the law of the Lord, Psalm 1 says, “... are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.” I might want to suggest that those who delight in and meditate upon the law of the Lord are like the mighty evergreen that stands firm and unyielding against the often inhospitable Canadian winter but that does not wither and that does not fall, but that stands proud through blinding snowstorms and freezing temperatures - a bit of green in the midst of the white and grey around it; a sign of life at a time of year when life seems tenuous and uncertain.
Is that not what God’s people are called to be? Is that not the call of Christians today? To be a sign of vibrant and abundant life to those around us, many of whom for one reason or another seem lost, fearful, uncertain? Many of whom feel outcast, rejected, forgotten? Are we as Christ’s people not to be the ones who stand in a world that for many is often inhospitable and unwelcoming and even frightening and who proclaim that in God and in Jesus there is a welcome; in God and in Jesus there is acceptance; in God and in Jesus there is grace; in God and in Jesus there is abundant life - and that all these things are offered by Jesus even to those whom the world is often willing to cast aside or throw away? These are evergreen lives we’re called to live - lives that stand against the bleakness of the world and our culture - lives that proclaim the mercy and grace of God - lives that proclaim the presence and love of Jesus. That is our calling! That is our life of faith! That is what the Holy Spirit empowers us to do every single day: to be the mighty evergreen that stands in the midst of it all and still proclaims, “Do not fear! God is with you! God loves you! God will hold you close and God will not let you go!”
Today we baptized two children. Baptism isn’t an end; it’s a beginning. It’s a seed that has been planted. Our hope is that the word of God will become known to them and that it will nourish them and that it will turn them into people of faith who live the good news of the gospel. My hope is that Ella and Liam grow up to live evergreen lives that bear witness to the presence and the work of God, and that offer a glimpse of hope to others even in the most hopeless of times, just as the mighty evergreen offers a glimpse of life even in the dead of winter.
“The evergreen,” Jane Austen wrote. “How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen! When one thinks of it, how astonishing a variety of nature!” As that is true of the evergreen, may it also be true of all of our lives as we stand tall as children of God and as disciples of Jesus in a society in which the good news of the gospel is so often tragically drowned out because there are so many all around us who have precious little good news in their lives.
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