Sermon: "The Three Trees" by Rev. Will Burhans on 5/25/25

Many of us these days are managing the fear, the anger, even the hatred that stirs in us with the news of current events and with the way that media manipulates our emotions, so it’s important as Hildegard reminds us to look to God’s goodness and power, to breath in the sweet air that God gifts us with, and to remember God’s mercy and God’s son who redeems even us, even me, even you.

That story of redemption is a deep and beautiful one in the Bible that reaches from the very beginning to to very ending, and within it there are 3 trees that stand to mark that beginning, the great hinge-point in the middle, and at the end of the overarching story. 2 of the trees are of the imaginary, not that they aren’t real but they are of the imaginary, images that represent deeper and truer realities at play, and then the tree in the middle of the story is as material and hard as nails. 

Three trees. The first tree is the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil that stands in the Garden of Eden in the creation story of Genesis that Marisa read for us. The third tree is mentioned at the beginning but really comes into the story most gloriously at the end in the new Eden, the New Jerusalem, and that is the Tree of Life, of which Maggie spoke and the middle tree that is the hinge-point of the narrative is the cross-tree on which hangs the God-man Jesus, a divine victim of human violence.