Dogwood, True Story

As a boy in West Virginia, my first-grade teacher in parochial school taught us a truth about the dogwood tree. A certain kind of truth. And she taught me, and maybe others, a little piece of how to notice the natural world in the light of Christ.

Our religion lessons included learning how to say certain christian prayers, the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, and ‘Hail Mary’, and combine them into repetitive prayer of the rosary.

And our lessons included crafts. In Advent all the elementary classes made ornaments to decorate a Jesse tree. In Lent, our teacher asked us to bring in sticks, with which we were to make crosses for the wall. And our teacher told us to look for dogwood flowers, and bring them in. Dogwoods begin to bloom in parts of N. America near the time of Easter. The timing of their emergence and their form very beautifully serve as symbols in that Christian season, when the symbol of the cross figures some importantly. Here is a dogwood, cornus florida, in bloom.

By Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA - Flowering Dogwood, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81216901

But that year, and maybe in northern west virginia generally at that time of year, the flowers were still in the bud. They looked more like this.

But whenever to this day I see a dogwood in bloom, and even in the bud, I think of how my teacher first invited our class to look for dogwoods.

She also taught us that the cross on which Jesus died was made of the dogwood tree.

She told the story that the dogwood used to be a big tree, like a chestnut oak, or tulip tree. But a dogwood was cut up to make the cross on which Jesus died, and the tree felt great sorrow for this. The dogwood felt compunction for its involvement in this terrible event. Jesus saw and felt this on the cross, and had compassion upon this creature, the dogwood tree. He made it so that the dogwood would never grow so large again that it could be cut into lumber. And then, when Jesus died and rose again, the dogwood began to bloom with blooms unlike it had ever had before.

And that is why the dogwood doesn’t grow as big as chestnut oak, or tulip, and why it blooms so beautifully.

Of course, a biologist, botanist, historian or even theologian might say this is not true, can’t be true. For starters, dogwoods aren’t native in the middle east, and certainly didn’t grow there in Jesus’ time.

And yet this story grew up somewhere in the forest and lands where these dogwoods grew, and the eyes and hearts of human people saw the blossoms emerge in the understory of a grey-brown hillside as the church calendar told of life that comes from, transforms death. And they began to see and tell something that is indeed true.

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Third Sunday in Lent, (readings link) St Benedict’s, Lacey WA (recording)

Homily, The Rev. Evan G Clendenin,

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The law of the Lord is perfect/ reviving the soul. Psalm 19, v.7

 The psalmist affirms that law of the Lord is perfect. It is perfect, full, entire, making our lives whole. I know that many of us mainline christians get squeamish when it comes to the law, the old testament in general and the ten commandments especially. We’ve progressed beyond all that stuff, right? And besides, people are basically good individuals, and who make our own decisions,… right? Until some of us realize how interconnected we are with the gifts and liabilities of the present and the past, the sins and sufferings of the ancestors, which we must recognize these are part of us, and we are part of them. The law of the lord is perfect, making life whole because it maybe be one of those few stories that invites us into a more truthful and whole picture of who we are. We hear there ‘honor your mother and father’, and ‘remember the sabbath.’ Honor your father and your mother. Maybe because the impulse to blame them and hold them accountable for everything that is bad and frustrating grows quite hot now and again as the generations come and go.  The commandment offers us a practice that can lead to a bigger, stronger heart, a holy house within with more room for wisdom, love, humility and forgiveness for others and ourselves. So, the law is good, it revives the soul.

And Jesus is the lawgiver. He appears today in John’s gospel among other ways, in the disciples’ memory of him as the one who spoke words to them. Now, we think of this as the money and social reform passage. And, tt’s the first one that people reach for when they feel angry when the church asks them for money! But there is more than money here. Jesus calls God his father. No small thing! God, who gave the law to Moses, now reveals the words of life, the words that revive and make whole, in Jesus. And I’ve been wondering about other things here. Why does Jesus come down so hard on these people in the temple? We like, sometimes too much, to cast Jesus in the light of a social reformer or revolutionary. So then-He’s attacking the unfair exchange rate on temple currency, turning the neat and orderly tables of the currency traders, rebuking the motivations of people getting and spending too near the holy of holies. I’m less sure of that now than I once was, or maybe I just have a little more room in my heart to see it in additional ways. For, does Jesus not have along with his righteous zeal, a sense of compassion for these low-level traders, whose work is not after all that different than that of the tax collectors and sinners he often shared table with? The person selling the doves was trading in affordable little doves, as stipulated in the law of Moses, “two turtledoves or two pigeons, such as he can afford, one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering.” (Lev. 14:22)  Selling in order to get keep a tiny business perhaps, selling to some person making a bucket-list pilgrimage to the temple, buying a dove, a singular sacrifice and duty of great significance in their eyes. Well, the scripture doesn’t describe Jesus wrecking the dove seller’s table. Instead he says to the dove sellers “stop making my father’s house a market place!” Jesus does not mean only accuse, placing all wrong and sin on these people’s ledger. No, he invites them to repent, hear again the perfect law that revives the soul. He invites them again into a holy time and place, larger than themselves, that will make more room for God in them.

The law of the lord is perfect, it revives, makes life more whole. It says ‘remember the sabbath and keep it holy.’ Keep a place, a time, a day, holy, devoted to looking and listening and praying our way back to this one matter of death and life,- paying attention to the life God has given within us and put us within, and responding to it from a revived soul. Everyday in body, mind, heart, in rest and in working, we can practice this awareness. We can keep daily appointments for silence, praying with scripture, singing, reaching out to God. And we can devote one, whole, entire day, to what helps us remember better the life that God has put within us, and what helps us keep it holy. Maybe this is a foolish proclamation. Consider those who feel little opportunity for rest, to whom prayer seems as best a luxury and at worst an unreality we can’t afford. Consider yourself. Foolish maybe, but hear this: the one thing we all need is to hear the voice of God that revives the soul, helps us to make room for the whole of who we are and who others are with truth and love. What kind of place, what kind of time can you devote to this. And is it a place, a time, you can invite others, despite the claims and pressures they experience, to also be?

Osoberry/Indian Plum, flowering, 3rd Lent