Prayer:
May this eternal truth be always on our hearts, that the God who breathed this world into being, placed stars into the heavens, and designed a butterfly's wing - is the God who entrusted his life to the care of ordinary people, became vulnerable that we might know how strong is the power of Love - a mystery so deep it is impossible to grasp, and a mystery so beautiful it is impossible to ignore. Amen
I would like to share three stories about trees tonight.
Story (1)
Part of the joy of being the Priest of Christ Church over the last year has been getting to know better the community in which Christ Church is situated. Part of how I do this is to engage in a ministry I call – ‘loitering with intent’ – having an early morning coffee at Briki’s café just up the road. I wear my Priestly uniform of black clerical shirt and collar and have my long black coffee and do my daily journal and plan out the day. Four days out of five, people would come up and introduce themselves and I would end up in an interesting conversation. Over the last year I have met and chatted with many locals, most of whom, while knowing about Christ Church, would not consider themselves members of this church. Several of the people I have met are members of the St Lucia Community Association. An association of like-minded local people endeavouring to preserve and improve the social and built environment of St Lucia. One of their projects is the formation of the community garden next to the St Lucia golf course. But another significant activity has been the formation of a project called “Bows for Bough.” Like many suburbs in Brisbane, there has been a rise in the number of ancients trees being cleared for new development. The St Lucia Community Association have a group that has started a project of attaching yellow bows to significant trees in St Lucia to make people look twice and help them appreciate what an incredible asset our precious trees are. The project is called ‘Bows for boughs.’ This group has identified a number of significant trees in our suburb and devised three walks where one can wander around and enjoy the ancient trees that we would otherwise take for granted, including the beautiful tree on the round-about – just out these doors – over 350 years old, and the tree just up the road near the corner of Central Ave and Hawken Drive. If you do nothing else in preparation for Christmas, may I suggest doing one of the ‘Bows for Boughs’ walks.
Story (2)
The Communion Forest: The Communion Forest is an exciting new initiative of the world-wide Anglican Communion to join together in tree growing and ecosystem conservation, protection, and restoration throughout the world. It was first conceived in late 2019 when the Lambeth Conference Design Group asked for ideas for a lasting legacy of the forthcoming 2022 Lambeth Conference. An Anglican Communion eco group including ‘Eco-Bishops’, the Anglican Communion Environmental Network (ACEN), Christian Aid, the Anglican Communion Office at the United Nations (ACOUN) and the Anglican Alliance suggested a “Lambeth Forest”. This formed the basis for the Communion Forest initiative that the Anglican Church has today.
There is no doubt that we have been gifted a world of breath-taking beauty, astounding abundance, and intricate interconnection. It is a world God declared good and loves. But, the integrity of creation is under threat and at risk of collapse. The life systems of the earth are under severe strain from the triple environmental crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
The world’s forests and other plant communities are imperilled, along with the great diversity of species which rely on them, and humanity itself. We are in a climate and ecological crisis.
The environmental crisis is an existential threat to millions of people and species of plants and animals across the globe. Slow onset disasters, such as drought and sea level rise, as well as rapid onset disasters, such as catastrophic flooding and bushfires, take lives, destroy habitats and beloved homes, devastate livelihoods, cause food shortages, force migration, disrupt communities and break up families. The impacts of the crisis are costly, both financially and in terms of the trauma they create.
The Communion Forest is a practical, spiritual, and symbolic response to the environmental crisis, and an act of Christian hope for the well-being of humanity and all God’s creation. The Communion Forest is a global act of hope which involves a wide range of creation care activities. Together, these projects will form a virtual, global “forest”. For example, in our own Diocese, our new Archbishop, Jeremy, has been giving a tree to each confirmation candidate presented to him. So far, he has gifted over 170 trees in the last two years and encourages all parishes to embark on tree planting projects. At his installation service yesterday, the Brisbane City Council gifted the new Archbishop with 50 trees, on the spot, and it was a hopeful sign to see these being taken and knowing that their planting is a small sign of the greater solution.
Story (3)
Apart from the ancient trees that surround us in St Lucia, and the new trees that we are needed to be planted to help stabilise our environment, there is another type of tree I want to talk about and to do so I need to give some background - In Nagasaki, there once stood a Buddhist house of worship called Sannō Shrine. Within what were the temple grounds there stands a camphor tree that has no business being there.
On August 9, 1945, it stood less than a kilometre from ground zero of the atomic bomb blast radius, which exposed it to temperatures 30 times hotter than the sun. It was incinerated, and yet somehow... it’s still there.
Around a blackened irradiated inner core is now fresh bark and a green canopy of leaves. It is, frankly, miraculous. Even more startlingly, I’m read and researched that there are many of these trees in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – over 150 in total. They call them hibaku - jumoku. Survivor trees. (hibaku – bombed and jumoku – tree)
Some 7000km away, here in Brisbane, many of us have unboxed dusty plastic trees and plumped them back into their annual glory, as decorations for Christmas. I can’t help but reflect and feel that the Camphor tree of Nagasaki might have more in common with the origins of the Christmas story.
This service of carols and lessons – remembers the coming of Jesus in a nowhere backwater town called Nazareth. The empire of the time saw his arrival as a threat to its power. They executed a brutal genocide of every boy under two years of age to suppress the possibility of revolution.
We had tonight, as our 8th reading, the wonderful Christmas story as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew – the well-known legend of the wise ones coming from the East – following the star – giving their presents to the newborn King – gold, frankincense and myrrh. But reality needs us to read on in Matthew’s Gospel – just five verses later – we read “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Chillingly, the Gospel of Matthew goes onto tell of the screams of mothers echoing throughout the countryside: The Gospel quotes Jeremiah 31.15 when it says, “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.” This hits harder tonight with our knowledge that Ramah is now known as al-Ram, a little Palestinian town just a few kilometres north of Jerusalem behind the separation wall. Rachel still weeps for her children. One every 10 minutes, so we are told.
The arrival of the Christ child had no fanfare, no tinsel, no carols. He came amidst the cries of a desperate people longing for liberation. His family fled to the south over the border into Egypt as senseless violence chased them from the north. They ran terrified from the might of empire.
When I consider the origins of this time of year, it confuses me that this has become a season where broken-hearted people feel so out of place and unwelcome. It seems to me that this is the season made not for further comforting the comfortable or filling the bellies of the full – but for offering hope to those who have none.
It’s about the possibility of life emerging in the most hostile environments. This is a season not for plastic trees, but for the hibaku-jumoku tree.
Surely there could be nothing more final than an atomic blast ripping through the fibres of a camphor tree. No one would have believed that one day people might pray and stand in the shade of it as an enduring symbol of hope.
And yet there it still stands, with new life wrapped around its charred trunk.
Perhaps we resonate so deeply with the hibaku - jumoku tree because it’s a familiar story to us. As followers of Christ, we stand at the base of a tree of death and wonder how it became a place of life. I wonder how the crucified God was able to breathe again and rise in hope. And I am filled with wonder that this moment continues to offer shelter to me and so many some 2000 years later.
Around the splintered wood of the cross has grown something totally new and unexpected. Many of us enter this season without the comfort of hindsight. We still sit in the ashes – whether a mother who has lost her son in Gaza, a wife who has lost her husband to old age, or those of us who have lost things which feel less extreme, like friends, jobs, houses, and income.
Amid our grief, the invitation of Advent comes naively and suggests that maybe, somehow, amid all of this, we could end up more alive and not less. Our hearts could become softer, and not harder. Our resolve for change could become deeper, and not weaker. It begs us to look at the incarnation of Christ not as a fabled legend of years past, but as God becoming one of us to show us the way to true life. And when the world rejected Christ, as it seems to be wanting to reject us and the entire Christian faith, it begs us to look to the camphor tree and to Christ, and to wonder if death really needs to have the final say. The Lord be with you.