There’s nothing quite like having mature trees all around the place where you live. I grew up in the mountains. I’ve lived elsewhere, but home for me has to be where the horizon shows off the contours of the land. Home is where you hang your hammock- and I don’t mean on a hammock stand. Home is where the trees tower over your house and drop petals or leaves or pesky acorns in due season. Home is where it’s green all summer and branches create shadows on my bedroom wall in the winter. Home is where the “good trees” grow tall and proud.

I know that it was all a part of the city’s plan in the beginning – to have trees all around to hide the war effort going on here from aerial view in the days of the Manhattan Project. It was perhaps an afterthought as to how much the people living here would enjoy those trees years later. I don’t so much care how it happened, but I’m most certainly glad it did. As I shared my love of Oak Ridge’s trees with a colleague recently, that person shared with me about the house he grew up in. He told me that his father was adamant that the large oak in the front of the lot not be cut down to build the house, but the family came home to find the builders out in front with a chain saw poised against the side of the tree. Furious, they stopped the crew just as the first nick was cut and asked what was going on. The crew replied that they needed to make room for the driveway. “No you won’t,” was the reply. The driveway was built around that one big tree and although beginning drivers in that family had hit the garage with some frequency, the tree only bore the scar of the time the builders tried to cut it down.

There’s something innate we understand to be important about trees. Jesus and Jeremiah and the author of the first Psalm all talk about good people the way they talk about good trees. Good trees bear good fruit. Good trees are resilient to the heat. They are planted by streams of water so they are constantly renewed. Good trees are an important part of the landscape. Good people just happen to be like that too. At the very heart of them is something good, something to be treasured.

Now scripture has a word or two for bad trees also. These passages also know how to talk about shrubs that wither in the desert, and the chaff that is blown away by the winds of sin, and thorny plants that yield nothing worthwhile. Having traveled through the biblical lands and not having seen many trees while I was there, I wonder exactly what they imagined when they were talking about their landscape. I suspect that people who know the Rockies and the majesty of the Giant Sequoias are not all that impressed with the oaks and pines in my backyard. It’s all relative. I’m sure there are even flat land prairie people who have fabulous wheat analogies that I will never understand.

But trees, I get trees, and I get how good trees and good people can be a lot alike. They are sturdy yet flex with the wind. They have deep roots and branch out in all directions. They are subject to their environment and yet adapt to its changes. But both good trees and good people take some nurturing and require time and patience. Fast growing trees can be brittle. Trees that haven’t gotten enough rain are weak. Trees that succumb to disease break off branches that hit the roofs of houses. They are long living as human beings can be long living, and both can do much for the environment.

Fourth century mystic and environmental theologian, Hildegard of Bingen writes, “The high, the low, all of creation, God gives to humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God’s justice permits creation to punish humanity.” Pretty insightful for that long ago! Whereas today, governments and individuals continue to argue about humanity’s impact on creation, the mystics of old saw a vital link between people and trees or between people and all other living things. There’s something important in this recurring comparison to trees for us to begin to see about inherent goodness.

Now, I’m not one who always links good things with good consequences and bad things with bad consequences. I’ve lived long enough to know that the principles of karmic retribution don’t always hold exactly true, at least not in the ways that we can see them. We don’t have God’s eyes, and sometimes things happen that are really bad, and those very things seem to have no root or explanation. However, the deep students of life like Jesus, like the prophets, like the mystics caught this connection in the bigger picture. Goodness begets goodness, and evil begets evil. We maybe should be looking for the links ourselves, not in a fatalistic way that writes off “bad things” or “bad people” but that looks for solutions and ways in which we can nurture the good.

Goodness in scripture is linked up with trust, with following God’s law, with behaving in ways that bear good fruit, and with being less fearful and anxious. Being good is also paying attention to the world around us and being mindful of the need for clean water, rich soil, and fresh air. There are those out there who want to define goodness in narrow lists of “shalls” and “shall nots,” but scripture gives us different way to talk about goodness – that it involves ancient wisdom, and freshness, and deep roots.

This world was given to us as a gift. Ancient wisdom prevails that it is a precious gift to be nurtured and loved rather than misused and abused. Creation can turn on us according to Hildegard, and according to the many times in scripture that natural analogies are utilized to help us understand that we are dependent on our world just as our world is dependent on our care for it. This is not just an issue of planting more trees in hopes of reducing global warming, but it is a reflection on how we ultimately make our mark on our planet in all the ways that we live.

In the 70’s there was a famous painting show that aired routinely on PBS with Bob Ross as the instructor. He became known for his paintings of “happy little trees.” His background growing up in Alaska was his inspiration for his paintings. His work was soothing and almost hypnotic. While working on the canvas he would say, "We don't make mistakes; we just have happy little accidents." In an imaginary world, we can easily change the stroke of our brush and make all things new, but in the real world, we have to account for real mistakes in order for our trees or for our fellow human beings to stay happy.

Most of us can only strive for goodness, and the goodness of trees is really our own personification of what we see in them. Nevertheless, Jesus speaks to both the good and bad in us in the sermon he gives in Luke’s gospel. He tells us about blessedness. He calls us to love our enemies. He tells us about giving and loving the unlovable. He warns us against judgment and condemnation. These are all the practical things, but then he gives us the intuitive knowledge as well. “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its fruit….The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” Goodness is not about following a formula, it’s about following your heart, and letting your heart speak always in love.

Oak Ridge has some amazingly good trees, and my favorite time of year here is just around the corner. The trees should be unfolding in all their spring wonder in just a few weeks. Pay attention to them. Let those trees show you how to grow in your faith.

Amen.