Sermon pent 22, 2026

There is an old saying that the best time to plant a tree is yesterday, the second best time is today.

A tree is an incredible being, and one that can transform the world; cleaning the air, housing many creatures, securing soil and generally creating a better place.   However, they take time… but when well established and when allowed to flourish they can live a very long time. 

The church is the same in many ways.  Well established and encouraged to flourish the church will change the world for the better.   It can, however, take time.

And just as you can tell by looking at, and into a tree the world that it is in has a real and lasting effect on it.  A tree can scar, can lose limbs, can regrow in new directions, and adapt to the world around it in order to better succeed at its purpose.   A tree can survive a great deal. 

I have seen trees growing out the side of cliffs, regrowing from severed trunks, and being grafted into a new kind of tree.  There is even a famous grafted ‘Tree of 40 fruit’ that blooms and fruits with 40 varieties of edibles.  Amazing… reminds me of Revelation’s Tree of Life with fruit for every season.  Each twig was carefully selected, grafted, cared for and cultivated and still it took 5 years for the first, very minimal harvest.  It takes time.

And even if you did plant the proverbial tree yesterday; healthy trees live long past the age of the one who planted it. 

Today in our Deuteronomy reading we come to the end of the stories of Moses.  We had been following his story and that of the salvation of the people of God from Egypt and enslavement.  We read how they were led to Egypt in the famine and saved by Joseph of dreams and multicoloured coat fame.  How the new kings of Egypt didn’t know Joseph and grew fearful of the Hebrew population and decided to control them through oppression. 

We read of how Moses was lead to Pharoah’s house after centuries of Hebrew enslavement and called to lead them to freedom.  There were plagues and miracles, heroes and villains and a people delivered and lost.   We read of an entire generation living in and wandering in the desert as they learned to be a covenantal people of God once more.  We read of triumphs and horrific failures, of God’s intervention to save and to punish and throughout we read of Moses leading the people, with Aaron at his side.

Now we come to the end of 40 years in the wilderness, 40 years of transformation, 40 years of Moses struggling to be a leader and lead Gods’ people to a land long promised.

“Moses went up from the plains…to the to of the mountain…and there the Lord showed him the whole land.”   The goal!  The culmination of all that hard work.  Then the Lord said “this is the land of which I sore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacon, saying ‘I will give it to your descendants.  I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”

 

Moses was 120 years old and had toiled for God and God’s people 40+ years…and he was not going to cross into the promised land.   He would die with his work unfinished.

What a disappointment for him.  What an anti-climax for the story.  What a powerful example for all of us.

Moses may have diligently tended that tree God planted with Israel…but he never got to taste the fruit.  That would be for the next generation.  Moses’ work long outlived him and he died in the wilderness… while the people went on into the future God planned.

PSALM 90

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and world, from everlasting to everlasting to God.  For a thousand years in you sight are like yesterday when it is past or like a watch in the night.

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and prosper for us the work of our hands  -- O prosper the work of our hands.

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We know and have had it reiterated ad nauseum that the church is not a building.  Yet, we do continue to have an ordinate fondness for our buildings.   The nostalgia of a childhood and the memories of celebrations and family.  We treasure the beauty and symbolism, the music and liturgy.  Some church I have been to still had congregants to founded the parish and others had generations of family history attending.

However, in the light of the history of the church, some thousands of years, our parishes are more like acorns, than mighty oaks of faith.  The mighty oak that is the church was planted thousand years ago, but each parish lives as a part of the old and also as a budding new growth.  Moses did so much to tend the people of Israel and to bring them into a healthy relationship with God, it was Moses who cultivated the new growth in God’s people.  

 

Deuteronomy tells us “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”  Moses’ ministry brought forth a whole grove of new growth from the diseased wood of Egyptian slavery.  A whole generation of people who had learned how to thrive as people of God.

Yet he never got to see them planted.

It was Joshua, son of Nun, that lead that new growth onward to be planted in a land that God had chosen.  Offspring of the mighty Oak of faith God had planted eons ago.

Now eons later amidst of the forest of faith, that was planted in the heart of Adam, we find our little sapling of St. Andrews. Planted, uprooted and planted again.  Grown and grafted.  Tended with traditions, old and new.  St Andrew’s has weathered the seasons, good and bad, and now we face what the bishop is calling Construction Season.  A time to tear down and to build up.  To prune and to feed.  In order that the healthiest growth will thrive in this Creekside soil.

It is an exciting time, because we wise enough to know that, God willing, this St. Andrew sapling will outlive each of us.  So we, like Moses, are preparing the people, the ministry, the church for a future we will not see. However, we don’t get to glimpse ahead and see our goal, as Moses did; for us the view is decidedly cloudy.

However, there are many things Moses has taught about leading people into a distant future.

 

 Firstly, God is with us on the journey…in cloud and fire, in silence and great thunder.  In the midst of plenty and in the midst of want.  God is always in the midst of us.

Which is fantastic because secondly, it will not be smooth sailing.  People have short memories and worry more about immediate needs than generational planning.  Between complaining about the food and creating golden idols…there will be problems.

Thirdly, God is faithful.  Despite the grumblings and golden calves, regardless of the distance traveled or the enemies that were faced.  We see in Moses’ history God kept the covenant … a covenant we have inherited.

I will be your God and you will be my people, the roots of that great oak.

Finally, From the prophet who spent the most one on one time with God in all of scripture we learn that this is not a solo venture.  God is not aiming for one mighty oak of faith, but a vast oaken forest spanning all the earth. (metaphorically speaking).  That means that each parish, each minister, each Christian cannot be alone.  Moses, when he heard God’s call initially refused his call because of Moses’ problems speaking.  Where Moses’ say problems God saw possibilities for relationships and shared ministry; and Aaron joined with Moses.

When the people in the wilderness grew exceedingly numerous, Moses appointed leaders and elders to share the load of leadership.  To tend, nurture, coax, and chastise the people that they may in turn grow strong.

Finally, when he knew that the ministries he lead were going to outlast him, Moses taught and commissioned a successor, Joshua, to take the lead on the next stage of God plan.

Because in all things it is God plan, not mine, not ours, we are stewards of this forest.  It is our job to prune and feed that with which we have been entrusted to ensure the established tree or parish stays healthy.  Also to plant acorns and the nurture saplings of faith that can be planted in new soil.  We are to be stewards of God church, striving for growth in faith and mission…not only for our own parish, but for all those in God’s creation.  

It is always God who gives the growth.  So, we always acknowledged God’s presence with us.  We tend to the people, the saplings, that are rooted among us and we plant and graft new faiths, new ministries, new generations so that the mission of God does not stop with us.

God is ever faithful, and God’s mission is eternal. 

The view at the moment may be stormy and the wind has certainly laid bare, or blown down some beautiful old trees.  However, the forest remains.  The Great Oak that is God still sends out growth;  and as painful as it is… storms clear space for strong trees to reach up and grow taller.

We, like Moses are on a mountain top looking out…but unlike him we don’t see clearly.  However, like Moses we have God by our side leading and guiding us.

Are we headed to the promise land or the wilderness I cannot tell, but I do know we are not alone and either way our mission does not change.

God grant us the wisdom and fortitude to keep tending and keep planting the soil that God has put before us; So all that comes from God grows as mighty as the oak.

amen