Isaiah 40:1-9
A few years ago we took a family vacation to Yellowstone, which is an amazing place unlike any other. It was a fun place to explore with its geysers and steaming landscape, its wildlife and amazing vistas.
One afternoon we were down in the West Thumb geyser basin and Rob and I hooked on to a guided ranger walk on the boardwalk that goes to a wide variety of various hot pools, fumaroles and geysers. As we walked we noticed this clump of dead pine trees there in the middle of all those thermal features. When we got to a certain point the ranger asked, “Now, why do you suppose those trees are dead or were even growing here in the first place?”
He went on to explain that Yellowstone sits on top of a super volcano – a caldera under which hot molten rock lies just two miles below the surface – a “hot spot”. As a result, things are constantly changing at Yellowstone – they have an average of some 2,000 earthquakes there every year, most of which are imperceptible to us but happen none the less. The ranger said that the constant movement of the earth makes constant changes to the pools and geysers there in the basin and throughout the park.
He said, “These trees started out as happy little seeds who blew into this area and said to themselves, ‘What an awesome spot! We’ve got a view by the lake, it’s warm, bit of a breeze. Let’s plant here.’ So they did, and thrived and grew to be about 10 feet tall. All was well until an earthquake in the early 90s. The shifting earth caused a once dormant hot pool to reignite and begin pumping out 200 degree water on the slope above this little family of trees. Over time, the hot water streaming down the slope scalded the trees, leaving a monument to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But then the ranger said something that stuck with me. “I just goes to show you that you have to be careful where you put your roots because things can change – change is the only constant out here.”
I have thought about that ranger’s words often. Be careful where you put your roots because the landscape can easily change.
We can all except that life brings change with it. We would just rather it be predictable change. We might call that “continuous” change – change that’s expected: kids grow up, we grow older, the seasons come and go…that’s change we can handle. We may not like it, but we can expect it. Given the right conditions, we can expect a tree to grow in its place.
But it’s the other kind of change that often really throws us—the unpredictable change that interrupts our lives in ways we didn’t expect. We might call that “discontinuous” change, or non-incremental, sudden change that drastically alters the landscape of how things have been done and understood for years.
In just the last week we’ve seen all kinds of discontinuous change. The Waldo Canyon Fire, of course, has altered our local landscape permanently. Many people have been living in different homes this week and will be living elsewhere all because of it. Today is also the day that United Methodist pastors officially start new pastoral appointments (mine is two years today). I’ve talked to many friends who have moved their families, trying to sell and buy houses, etc. all in a shot time. In the last week I’ve also visited someone in the hospital who hadn’t planned on being there, a family going through trauma with an adult child. Last week we were talking about fall programming here at the church, this week we’ve been talking about relief efforts.
On an on it goes. Change is happening to us every day whether we like it or not, whether we cause it or not, whether we fight it or not. It can shift the very landscape under our feet.
So the question I want to address with you this morning is this: With all this change going on, how do you know where to put your roots?
In Isaiah 40 we read the prophet’s words to Israel about a big change that was coming. Isaiah warned the people that they were going to be invaded and taken away from their homeland as slaves in exile. This passage, also often read at funerals and, ironically, at Christmas time, is a word of hope in the midst of that warning. Seismic discontinuous changes were coming and Isaiah urges the people to prepare a “way for the Lord” – leveling mountains, smoothing out rough places – a metaphor for changing their ways and allowing God to come among them.
But then come these words beginning in verse 6:
All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. 7 The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”
Catch that…surely the people are grass – planted, rooted, like those trees – subject to environmental changes, temporary, tenuous, vulnerable, prone to whither and fall. we are all in the process of change – we’re all in the process of dying. In fact, the only time you stop changing is when you die.
But in the midst of all that change there is one and only one constant: God – “The word of the Lord stands forever.” Everything changes but God and God’s faithfulness. The writer of Hebrews in the New Testament puts it more succinctly in chapter 13 verse 8 – “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
The only thing that really lasts, then, is God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and the only thing we can truly count on is God’s faithfulness and our relationship with God – a relationship that helps us see beyond ourselves, beyond our lives, beyond the changes and crises we experience every day, even beyond death.
To put it simply: Our roots must be firmly planted in the rich soil of God’s love for us and the knowledge and practice of his Word. Anywhere else and you’re bound to end up in hot water.
The Psalms, the prayer book of ancient Israel, begin with this idea of rootedness. Look at Psalm 1:
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 (rooted) by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
It goes on to say that the wicked are like dry “chaff” that blows away because they have no roots. Those who are rooted in God’s faithful love are those who bear fruit with their lives and don’t whither in the face of adversity.
If your faith is dependent on circumstances, on sameness, on routine and ritual, or even on a certain person, a home, a job, a particular church or pastor, know that those things are always changeable and have a tendency to whither. It’s only the word of the Lord, the faithfulness of God that sustains us over the long haul.
Now it’s important for me to say here that while God’s nature is changeless – or “immutable” as a seminary prof would say – at the same time, God is a change agent – always creating, always at work in the lives of people, always calling people like you and me to be change agents in remaking and renewing the world. Simply having faith in God isn’t enough – we have to act on that faith and live it out, working to be change agents ourselves. For whatever reason, God wants to partner with us to make the world a better place for his glory. We can only do that when we are rooted, joined together, connected to him.
A farmer purchases an old, run-down, abandoned farm with plans to turn it into a thriving enterprise. The fields are grown over with weeds, the farmhouse is falling apart, and the fences are collapsing all around.
During his first day of work, the town preacher stops by to bless the man’s work, saying, “May you and God work together to make this the farm of your dreams!”
A few months later, the preacher stops by again to call on the farmer. Lo and behold, it’s like a completely different place — the farmhouse is completely rebuilt and in excellent condition, there are plenty of cattle and other livestock happily munching on feed in well-fenced pens, and the fields are filled with crops planted in neat rows. “Amazing!” the preacher says. “Look what God and you have accomplished together!”
“Yes, Reverend,” says the farmer, “but remember what the farm was like when God was working it alone!”
We musn’t let God work alone! To embrace God is to embrace change, knowing that with God, as Paul said, “All things work together for good.”
That’s good news and a reminder that change, even painful discontinuous change, can be a catalyst for new life and new opportunity.
While we were in Yellowstone I noticed a lot of other trees. There you can still see the devastation that was wrought by the huge forest fire in 1988 when more than 739,000 acres, 36% of the park, burned. Just about anywhere you go in the park you see the blackened trunks of lodgepole pines sticking up out of the ground or cast like matchsticks on the now thinned forest floor.
But what you also see is a lot of green…a carpet of small pine trees now springing up amidst the burned out giants. It’s quite stunning, actually, to see the resurgence of these trees coming back – some say even more brilliant and beautiful than before. At another ranger program we learned why this was happening. See, lodgepole pines actually need fire in order to thrive. Lodgepole pine cones are very tightly closed and will only open when exposed to intense heat, as in a forest fire. Only when exposed to heat and destruction do the pine cones open up and let loose their seeds, which then are planted and thrive in the now rich soil. Fire – destruction – change – can bring new life and new opportunity for growth.
It’s hard to imagine that after this week, but we were living a story that I think illustrates that beautifully. My friend Dave Hiester and his family moved last week from Utah to begin a new pastoral appointment at Wilson UMC here in the Springs (at Vindicator and Centennial). They moved in on Friday. On Tuesday, they evacuated ahead of the flames of the fire that was roaring down the mountain. While they live in Rockrimmon and their home wasn’t in immediate danger, the Wilson Church certainly was, standing right next to Flying W Ranch.
The Hiesters came and stayed with our family while they were evacuated and we watched the news and internet intently. Tuesday night I saw this picture (that's Wilson in the lower right hand corner):
We thought it was most certainly lost along with many of the homes around it. Several members of Wilson lost their homes. On Wednesday, however, a CSPD officer who just happens to be the son of our lay leader called and told him that, miraculously, the church was still standing with green grass all around it!
I said to Dave that while this isn’t how you want to start a new pastoral appointment, it’s also a dynamic opportunity to be a beacon of light and life in the midst of pain and destruction. The Wilson church is rooted in that neighborhood and they will be a source of hope. As they worship for the first time today (at Trinity UMC), that’s what they are focusing on even as several of their members have lost their homes. They are grieving with their neighbors about what was lost, but they are also bringing a new rootedness to their community.
You know, I think that’s what every church has been called to be—fire or no fire. As Joe said so powerfully last week, we are the church of Christ who is always seeking ways to bring new life, to bring God’s kingdom, into the world. We can only do that if we are deeply rooted in God and his Word.
Another lesson we learned at Yellowstone is that it’s always the trees that have the strongest roots that survive a fire. It’s those who are rooted deep in God and his word who will see discontinuous change as an opportunity in the midst of challenge. That rootedness take Is a daily process of nurture and growth.
May we be a people whose roots are deep, nurtured and bearing fruit for God’s kingdom!
