January 18, 2009

Denise Kelsall

Epiphany 2     1 Samuel 3:1-19     John 1: 43-51

Trees, wonderful trees – so much in the Bible seem to happen around trees. They are personified and given titles like the tree of Wisdom, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Tree of Life. Even God is likened to a tree by the prophet Hosea where it is written “I am like a green pine tree; your fruitfulness comes from me.”

In today’s gospel reading Nathanael is whiling way a bit of time under a fig tree when Philip arrives, tells him about Jesus, and asks him to ‘come and check this dude out man. He’s the one.’ And shortly after when Nathanael meets Jesus he speaks the words for which his people had been longing for so very long – “You are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel.”

There are mysterious bits here though. We might ask how come Jesus could pronounce that Nathanael was without guile or deceit without even having spoken to him – he just saw him under that old fig tree. Commonly we understand that it is the omniscience of Jesus, by which I mean all-knowing or having divine insight or knowledge and understanding - Jesus has X-ray vision might be a more contemporary term, which is all quite right and proper for the Son of God.

So what is the fig tree about then? We can hear echoes of Genesis 3 which tells us of the archetypal ‘fall’ from innocence of humanity. That ole wily snake sinuously coiled itself around a tree and spoke so cool………….Woe - as the movie title said ‘ A Girl Can’t Help It.’ After eating that apple Adam and Eve use fig leaves to cover their nakedness – particularly their private parts if all those pictures and statues from antiquity are to be believed.

All trees are particularly special in the region of Palestine because it is an arid region and trees are scarce. To have wood in your home means luxury and wealth. Trees mean shelter in the scorching heat, they connote life, greenness and nature at its best - the desert oasis wouldn’t be complete without at least one palm tree would it. The fig tree was a very potent symbol in the biblical era. It provided a staple in their subsistence world and in rabbinic literature it was where one studied the Torah – it was a place for meditation. It is also used as a symbol or picture for the nation Israel in the Bible.

If we look at other faiths trees also carry special significance. Buddha achieved enlightenment sitting under a Bodhi or Bo tree. Bodhi is the Sanskrit word for enlightenment and there is reputedly a descendent of this very tree still in existence at Bodhgaya which is also called a wisdom tree.

It is very understandable – I have a very old and magnificent fig tree in my back garden and it provides a delightful shady place where, in the heat of summer, I can sit and read, ruminate, meditate, have tea and gas with friends and have wonderful long lunch parties – and then I get to eat the fruit too. It is about abundance and life.

For us in an abundant land of plenty it is a stretch of the imagination to truly understand how vital trees were and are still, now, in Palestine – we have so much and they have so little.

So little that has been, since 1967, invaded and barricaded and starved and terrorised mercilessly by the modern Zionists of Israel who do not appear to take the call of their God to heart. There is no mercy in them – in their wealth, their weaponry and ideology they appear to have succumbed to the might is right phenomenon personified by their Western ally and main weapon supplier, the United States. It is a foul deplorable and unimaginably bloody state of affairs where, as I heard on BBC radio the other day, humanitarian aid is even being blocked in the current offensive or should I say massacre. Never in contemporary conflict has this happened in the world before. International observers are not allowed into Gaza and my blood runs cold when I think of why.

Ellen Cantarow who has been reporting on the Middle East since 1979, writes that medical personnel report horrific facts about modern day weaponry used by Israel. The illegal use of white phosphorous to strike civilians and schools who have been deliberately targeted - when white phosphorous sticks to flesh its flames continue to burn for 5-10 minutes, often burning the flesh to the bone. Strange and terrible wounds never seen before are emerging including “traumas to the skull, with fractures to jaw, cheekbones, tear duct, nasal and palatine bones all showing signs of the collision of an immense force against the victims face. Inexplicable is the total lack of eyeballs, which ought to leave some trace in the skull, even in the case of such violent impact. Instead, there are Palestinian corpses coming into hospitals without eyes at all, as if someone had removed them surgically before handing them over to the coroner.” What sort of evil weapons are these used by any people who claim any faith or humanity – is this what the Rabbi’s sat under fig trees and envisaged for their descendents?

Cantarow says Gaza is a concentration camp and that this is a shoa, the holocaust promised by Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai just last year. And the world sits by seemingly impotent and strangely muted against this ongoing tyranny, this horror, this immeasurable butchery, this – to use a Jewish word, this pogrom.

In Genesis 3 as I mentioned before the tree is used as a symbol of the fall of humanity from a perfect state into sin and death. Evolution and science have debunked this for quite some time now and the church cannot control people any longer by perpetuating this myth as it has, I believe, innocently and in good faith in times past. Eating of the fruit of the Tree of Good and evil is about knowledge and self awareness. It is not about sin and turning away from God but the gradual and evolving sense of one’s own mortality. Furthermore I would vaunt the notion that it is about increasing ethical and just behaviour based on the awareness of the preciousness, the miracle of our sentient self-aware lives as human beings.

We are not animals who have no knowledge of death or nakedness. Our knowledge, our self awareness of our own finitude is what sets us apart and makes us human. The Tree of Life awakens us to caring and suffering, to the potential for growth, to beauty and understanding, to the deep wrong that is the wanton slaughter that is happening right now in Gaza.

I would like to say that unless Israel can say to the world, like Philip in today’s reading – ‘come and see,’ it remains beyond the pale in the use of barbaric and inhuman weapons to further decimate an already besieged and devastated region full of civilian refugees and deserves nothing but condemnation and shame.

Martin Luther King wrote “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

In spite of politics or allegiances or faiths it is incumbent upon us to condemn the disproportionate actions of Israel and to support the innocent, the suffering and the wounded. Our own Bishop John has sent around a request for the Anglican Mission Board Gaza Appeal at Freepost AMB, PO Box 12012, Thorndon, Wellington. If you can, please respond.