Well, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today. Prior to being invited to give a talk I had been doing a lot of thinking about the story of Zacheous which we heard during children’s time and how this story relates to Christian discipleship. I have been asking my self questions like:

What is Christian discipleship?

Who is called to Christian discipleship?

How are we called to serve? (I will be using the terms Christian discipleship and service interchangeable)

What motivates us to serve?

Can we follow our own dreams and serve at the same time?

Or do we have to make drastic paradigm shifts in our lives in order to serve?

I will not be directly revisiting these questions in my talk as I do not have complete answers for any of them. And even if I had found answers they would not be applicable to everyone here today. However what I do want to accomplish in my talk is to present some ideas on Christian discipleship/service. Hopefully these ideas will help us generate more questions and perhaps some answers for ourselves.

When I began to prepare my talk I thought that I was speaking on June 8. Looking at the lexionary readings for this date I came across the story of the Oak of Moreh which ties in closely with the story of Zacheous. Thus I developed my thoughts based on these readings. So I apologize for being somewhat off the lexionary although the worship committee assured me that this was fine. Having been given the liberty to use non-lexionary readings I have also included the story of Moses and the burning bush in today’s talk.

Obviously these three stories all have to do with plants. Given that spring is in full swing a discussion on plants seems timely. Also I have an academic background in botany (which is the study of plants) and can provide some expertise in the area. Although Jaime would be the first to point out that it is aquatic botany not terrestrial and I definitely do not have a green thumb.

The scriptures, both Old and New Testaments contain numerous references to plants. Indeed our fall from grace, as the story goes, was due to our tasting of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Plants are also excellent Christian symbols. If we look at Jesus’ life on earth it began with him being born into a wood working family and it was fulfilled with his death on a wooden cross and resurrection from a garden tomb.

 Jesus often used plant imagery in his stories and teachings. I believe Jesus was inclined to use plant imagery and other imagery from nature because it is real. I think as people we often confuse what is real, truly real, with what society and culture tells us is real.

C.S. Lewis in his book “The Screwtape Letters” offers excellent insight to this issue. In one of his letters, Screwtape a senior devil recounts to his nephew Wormwood a junior devil this story related to how he was able to win people over to the dark side of the force, sorry I just had to include the Star Wars reference. Here is an excerpt from one of the letters:

“whatever odd ideas might come into a man’s head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of real life was enough to show him that all ‘that sort of thing’ just couldn’t be true.”

 Here I believe the real life that Screwtape is talking about would be that which society and culture tries to force upon us.  

 We could very easily go off on a tangent discussing what is truly real and what is not. This tangent would obviously expose my bias as a biologist and would involve discussions related to the natural world including plants. This tangent would also discuss how we have strayed so absurdly far from understanding what is real that we now have to assign monetary figures to irreplaceable and essential life giving natural processes such as photosynthesis in order for us to value them.

 However, for now I will focus on plant imagery in the Bible as it relates to discipleship. Specifically looking at Moses’ Burning Bush, Zacheus’ Sycamore and to some extent Abram’s Oak of Moreh. On a side note God also showed used Oak trees, the Oaks of Mamre, as a setting to proclaim to Abraham the arrival of Isaac. If we approach these scripture readings not from a literal or historical context but from a mystical interpretation we see that they are similar in that in all three stories plants helped people see God’s plan not only for themselves but for all of creation. However, the way the Sycamore and Oaks transmit their messages differs greatly from the approach of the burning bush.

 The day that the Oaks and the Sycamore helped show God’s plan to Abraham and Zacheus respectively were no different than any other day. The trees grew that day, although ever so slightly, and photosynthesized just as they had done the days before. These miracles of growth and photosynthesis which is the changing of light energy to chemical energy, resulted, in the case of the Zacheus story, in a tree with limbs strong and tall enough to offer that vantage point for Zacheus to see God’s plan namely Jesus. In contrast, the day the bush helped reveal God’s plan to Mosses was far from ordinary. Prior to that day the bush did not burn with out being consumed and I can’t imagine that it continued to burn after its encounter with Moses. 

 I believe that sometimes when we think of Christian discipleship we have a tendency to feel inadequate unless we have had that other worldly experience such as the burning bush. However, many Christian mystics would caution us that other-worldly or special experiences are harmful if they are confused with the core of Christian mysticism which is understood as inner transformation.

 I think too that there is a danger for us who have not had a burning bush experience to say well I have nothing really yet to offer in term’s of Christian discipleship. I think the Canadian poet, Leonard Cohen either intentionally or unintentionally sums this type of excuse up beautifully in his song Waiting for the Miracle – An excerpt from this song is as follows: 

“I've been waiting night and day.

I didn't see the time,

I waited half my life away.

There were lots of invitations

and I know you sent me some,

but I was waiting for the miracle,

for the miracle to come”

 If we can get to that point where we can truly open our soul’s eyes we would see that the miracle is here with us. The miracle of photosynthesis is no less amazing than the miracle of a burning bush (of course the formula for photosynthesis would not fit as nicely on the United Church of Canada’s crest as an image of the burning bush). Each one of us has been given divine miraculous gifts. We must have been given these gifts for we have been created in the image of God. If we want to live a life of Christian discipleship I believe we need to first learn to recognize and then accept and fully utilize these divine gifts.

 How do we recognize a gift as divine? Well I think that could take on another whole meditation or series of meditations but for now I would offer this quotation from ecologist J.A. Weins that I think is a good starting point

"because we are clever at devising explanations of what we see [we feel], we may think we understand the system when we have not even observed it correctly" Spatial Scaling in Ecology. Functional Ecology 3:385-39

 Have the distractions of what Screwtape would call ‘real life’ prevented us from being able to observe our system correctly?

 Or perhaps we welcome and embrace these distractions because we don’t want to know what our soul’s eyes would see if they were fully opened. Maybe we are afraid that what we would see wouldn’t fit with the comfortable life that our affluence has brought us.

 Episcolepalian priest and author Kate Moorehead offers a story in her book Organic God about a woman who was afraid to observe the system correctly because she thought God might call her to go to Africa. Moorehead goes on to discuss how this person like many of us probably thought that following God’s will was like taking a multiple choice test in that there is only one correct answer per question.

 As a grade 12 science teacher at Aurora College I am currently helping my students prep to write the standardized departmental test in biology. As a class we have been spending a considerable amount of time learning standardized test writing strategies. How much knowledge is missed how much is lost when we confine our students to standardized testing. Thankfully God does not administer standardized tests.

 When I hear people say that they find religion such as Christianity confining I would have to agree. Religions such as Christianity can be like taking a standardized test. They can create a lot of anxiety as people question did they get it right or not. However, if we consider Christian faith, which I would argue should never be confused with religion, we would see a much different situation.

 Jesus says “I am the vine you are the branches” (John 15:5). Another plant reference. If we think of how vines grow and I think of one of Jaime’s plants that was in our kitchen window the plant had a number of options but for some reason grew between the strings of an ornament that was hanging on our wall. A vine does not have a predetermined growth route. It’s not worried about playing a guessing game with God concerning God's will. It does however recognize its miraculous divine gifts such as tropisms which is the growth towards or away from certain stimuli and photosynthesis and uses them appropriately.

 Hopefully we too can learn to recognize and accept our divine gifts and then just as the Sycamore in the Zacheus story we can help ourselves as well as those we encounter to find what professor of divinity and author Bernard McGinn would describe as that:

“mysterious inner realization beyond both intellect and will, where we become

one with God with out distraction.”

 Amen