The Tree of Life – Advent Midweek 3
The Tree of Life
Texts: Ezekiel 17:22-24; Rev. 22:1-5; Matthew 27:45-54
Grace, Mercy, and Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In my former life on the farm there was a certain rhythm to life. Every march I would spend hours in the sheds on the farm at the conveyor belt putting plastics inserts into empty trays for planting. The conveyor belt dumped potting mix into the trays, which my cousin would then grab, level off, stack up by fives and set them on a palette and repeat. We did this for days on end. The whole point was to get ready for the spring season, for another round of planting. We’d poke a little hole in the soil, drop a seed or two in there and set them on the bench in the greenhouse. Then they’d be watered and eventually the seed would sprout. Over days and weeks it turned into a beautiful plant of one variety or another.
This is a rhythm to life. A seed is planted, watered and it grows. Many of you who tend to your own fields or garden know what I’m talking about. You keep good company too, indeed, God is also a gardener. He planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and created Adam and Eve to care for it. They were given to the authority to name the plants and animals, they were stewards of God’s good creation, created to manage the garden and to grow themselves into the Image and Likeness of God they were created in.
In the beginning there was no sin or death, indeed, Adam and Eve were perfect but they were not perfect in a way that means they didn’t change or grow. This is the only way to fully understand their fatal choice. Created in the image and likeness though they were, this young farm family weren’t created *stuck*. They were created to grow, just like the plants and animals they were given to care for.
It is because they were not matured that the devil was able to take advantage of their innocence and simple ways to deceive them into planting a seed that they could not control or contain. The seed of the tree of death.
It is the seed of the tree of death, grown to full maturity, that we see on display in Matthew’s Gospel, for the cross is the tree of death. It is Adam’s disobedience at harvest, it is the crop, the fruit of his sins, it everything God never meant for Adam to become at its fullest height.
What is rather shocking about the scene in Matthew is that this tree of death has someone on it, namely Jesus. Rather than taking an ax to the root of the and throwing it into the fire Jesus does something that seems strange and unusual. He climbs the branches of the tree of death and takes His place there, because only by the wounds that he suffers there, by the shedding of His blood, can He make the tree of death into the tree of life.
All the Old Testament was pointing to this, all the spilt blood of animals sacrificed, the symbol of blood and it’s source of life for the creature. The life is in the blood. God’s life is in His blood. His blood can take what is dead and bring it to life again, by His blood He regenerates the tree of Adam.
His body and blood are the fruit that turns the cross from a tree of death into a tree of life that gives life to the world.
At the hour of His death, when He yielded up His life, Matthew says that He released His Spirit. The release of His Spirit causes earthquakes and the dead saints to rise. This is the moment. His passion is where Jesus fulfilled all righteousness, where His ministry, begun by His baptism by John in the Jordan, is brought to fruition. In yielding His Spirit on the cross He baptizes the world in His Spirit through the shedding of His blood. In His crucifixion, His passion and the whole point of His birth are brought to completion. He dies that we might live.
The cross has been made into a tree of life. Only by being united to His death on the cross can we have new life.
By His death Adam’s curse is undone. Eden was lost but now paradise awaits for Adam and all his children, for you and me. We have a restored Eden to look forward too, a place where our labors will not be burdensome, there will only be life and joy with all the saints who have gone before us.
There the curse on our growth will be gone! We will be free to grow towards God and one another instead of always growing away from God and towards destruction. The garden is made new and the tree of life stands at the middle.
While I could try to say it myself, I thought the apostle John describes it best in the book of Revelation. Hear what He says.
“22 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”
Come Lord Jesus. Amen.