The Canopy of Creation

“Canopy of Creation”

April 10, 2026 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Luke 24:13-35; Genesis 2:4b-9 Third Sunday of Eastertide

The Walk to Emmaus

¹³ Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles^[a] from Jerusalem, ¹⁴ and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵ While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶ but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷ And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.^[b] 18 Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” ¹⁹ He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth,^[c] who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰ and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹ But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.^[d] Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²² Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³ and when they did not find his body there they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. ²⁴ Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.” ²⁵ Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶ Was it not necessary that the Messiah^[e] should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” ²⁷ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

²⁸ As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹ But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. ³² They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us^[f] while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” ³³ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴ They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Genesis 2:4b-9

⁴ This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.  On the day the Lord God made earth and sky— ⁵ before any wild plants appeared on the earth, and before any field crops grew, because the Lord God hadn’t yet sent rain on the earth and there was still no human being^[a] to farm the fertile land, ⁶ though a stream rose from the earth and watered all of the fertile land— ⁷ the Lord God formed the human^[b] from the topsoil of the fertile land^[c] and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life. ⁸ The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and put there the human he had formed. ⁹ In the fertile land, the Lord God grew every beautiful tree with edible fruit, and also he grew the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

My deepest appreciation to Chris Cash for bringing a message last Sunday.  

Chris’ message on Christ Among Us, set the stage really well for this week.  The scripture lessons that we find in the weeks after Easter move in slow motion.  In fact, the story from last week “Doubting Thomas” happens the day of Easter.  And today’s story, “The Walk to Emmaus” happens on the day of Easter.  We’re still moving through that one day in our scripture.  That’s because a lot happens on that one day.  There is a lot of wrestling with the momentousness of what has just happened.   Many of Jesus’ closest acquaintances are encountering Jesus with their own eyes. 

We vacationed this week with some dear friends.  And I’m going to share with you a story my friend shared while we were sitting on the windy beach of Ocracoke.  The context of this story will make sense at the end but let me just start by saying we were talking, casually, as you do, about Jesus.   

She was telling me that as a little girl she would hear these Easter stories and she would really take them to heart.  And she would go home in the evening and in her little girl most serious prayer, she would pray to God that she, too, would be able to see Jesus with her own eyes.  She would pray so hard with her eyes shut tightly and then she would open her eyes with excitement expecting to see Jesus.  And…Jesus wasn’t there.  She prayed this prayer over and over and over again.  And every time she squeezed her eyes shut tight and then opened them… and nothing.   Well, years passed and she became a teenager.  This time of year would come around and she would occasionally think about her childhood prayer.  One year, Easter came and she thought… you know maybe God thought I wasn’t mature enough to see Jesus as a child.  So she thought, maybe as a teenager, things would be different.  And so she prayed again.  Dear God, let me please see Jesus with my own eyes.  And again, she opened her eyes to find… nothing.  And then she thought…. Maybe God thinks if I’m shown Jesus I won’t keep it a secret.   And she told God, I will keep this the biggest secret of my life.  I won’t tell a soul.  It will just be between you and me.  She prayed again, shutting her eyes tight.  Please, God, let me see Jesus.  And again she opened them and no Jesus.   Years went by and she became a young adult.  She came back home for a visit and found herself returning to that prayer she had prayed when she was a child and teenager.  And she thought, wasn’t that silly.  I mean, who thinks they will actually be see Jesus face to face.  But she also still really wanted to believe in a God who allow her to have a special relationship with Jesus, a face-to-face relationship, just like the people in the Bible did.   And so one more time, she prayed again.  Back at her childhood home, sitting in her yard, she prayed one more time.  “Dear God, please show me Jesus.  I want to see Jesus.”  

She opened her eyes and what she saw before her was… the forest.  The trees around her home place.  The trees that had always, always been there.  She opened her eyes from that prayer and heard the voice of God saying to her, “I am here with you.  I have always been here with you.”  

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase.  “You don’t see the trees for the forest.”   In other words, we miss what we’re really looking for even when we’re looking right at it.  In my friend’s case, she was expecting Jesus, God incarnate, God-with-us, to present to her in the way she had heard about in the Easter stories.  A man with wounds in his hands.  A man who had just risen from the dead.  A man with flesh and blood and yet a divine glow.  But what she had been missing all along was that God lives within all of God’s creation.  God can become real to us in many ways.  God pours God’s self into each piece of creation as we hear that in our Genesis origin story.  For my friend, in this moment, she realized that God was, in fact, showing up with her face-to-face, longing to have a personal relationship with her, and this was made most evident for her when she saw the trees standing in front of her.  

My friend told me this story on the beach because she knew I was planning to begin a series this week called “The Canopy of Creation,” a series designed to see the forest and the trees and the ways they work together to make God’s presence known to us. 

Here in Eastertide, the natural world is waking up around us.  It’s not a coincidence that we’ve oriented our liturgical calendar around the natural rhythms of the earth’s seasons.  The new life we find in Christ is echoes in the trees themselves that are finding their new life after a dormant season of wintering.  

This is a bit of an unconventional approach, but I’d like to use these weeks that we call Eastertide to explore the ways in which God makes God’s presence known to us through the natural world, especially through the trees.  We’re going out on a limb, if you will, to allow God’s first testament, the creation itself to teach us our Easter message.  Those of you who have known me for multiple years will know that I’ve found a way to bring creation-themed series into the liturgical year just about every year I’ve ever preached here in this pulpit.  It’s part of how I root myself to the Good News of Christ.  

But here’s another interesting piece of trivia.  Humans are the part of God’s creation that show up the most in the Bible, you could probably imagine that.  In large part due to the way in which these stories are passed down and written down through oral tradition.  But second to humans, you know what part of God’s creation shows up more than any other?  Yes, trees.  Trees show up nearly 300 times in the scriptures and nearly 4000 times when you consider the way parts of trees are named or used as symbols.  From the passage we read this morning about the original trees of creation to the Cedars of Lebanon to fig trees to the trees on the Mount of Olives to the trees of the fields that clap their hands, the trees of the Bible and the trees of our lives precede us in their wisdom and witness.  They nourish us with their fruits, they protect and shade us with their branches, they create microcosms of community where many different species flourish side by side, their roots intertwine and hold fast against the forces of erosion, and they witness to the possibility of transformation. From the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to the tree upon which Jesus hung, trees in the Bible provide the landscape against which the story of our faith is told.  So we’re going to take a closer look.  What can trees in the Bible and trees that live amongst us now teach us about faith and the life of community?

We heard two scripture lessons today.  The first was the traditional story we hear in Eastertide about the Walk to Emmaus.  How Jesus made himself known to disciples as they walked and broke bread together.  The second scripture we heard was a Genesis account of creation.  There are two creation stories in Genesis.  The first one recites how God created the earth in 6 days and on the 7^th day God rested.  This second account is relational.  Before there was life on earth, God took earth, the soil, the dirt, and formed from it a human.  And God made a garden in which that human could live.  The human is from that very beginning made to be in relationship with the land.  And in that garden God grew two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.   From the beginning of our origin, it is clear God has designed trees to be essential for life.  The Tree of Life is an image that occurs in many religions and symbolizes that which sustains life, providing food but also signaling the presence of the Divine among humans.  Tree of Life imagery bookends our Bible, occurring here in the Garden of Eden and again in Revelation.  We’ll talk more about that in a few weeks. 

The second tree mentioned in our Genesis origin story is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Often depicted in visuals of the Garden of Eden as a tree laden with abundant fruit, hearty and generously full.  This tree is sometimes understood as a temptation placed in the garden by God as God goes on to explicitly direct Adam and Eve to not eat of its abundant fruit.  Yet to understand this tree as a temptation alone is to malign its intent.  As I understand this Genesis creation story of relationships, God placed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil into the garden and into relationship with humans as a way of placing limitations on humanity’s consumption.  

Is it possible to live amongst beauty and abundance and not feel compelled to take it as our own?  Famously, Adam and Eve’s answer to this question was no.  They could not resist the allure of the fruit of the tree and the knowledge it promised.  When this happens, two of our foundational relationships begin to crack.  God’s trust in these first humans has been broken and the relationship of respect for God’s creation has been broken.  God recognizes that human ambition can be unrestrained and so God removes the humans from the Garden.  We continue to carry this story with us as a human race as we continually seek to restore right relationship with both God and creation.  What does it look to understand our place in the garden as one of respect and appreciation, not always taking and consuming?  

My intent with this coming series is to better understand what lessons God has for us when we stop to appreciate God’s creation, rather than just consume it for our purposes.  Trees teach us the possibility of transformation.  The gift of rootedness in the midst of eroding forces.  The mothering capacity to harbor diversity in the midst of monoculture.  And the healing gift of protection and shade for those who are vulnerable.   That, in a nutshell, is our journey for the next four weeks.   May God open our eyes to see Christ among us in new ways, on this day and on every day to follow.  

I invite us to be in a spirit of prayer as we hear a poem.  

Something like a tree by Steve Garnaas-Holmes

In the mist rises something like a tree,

arms outstretched, as a yoke,

in its branches fruit, and blood,

planted by a stream all of life drinks from.

It's missing an apple.

A lynching tree, maybe,

in midday sun,

where the birds of the air

make nests in its branches,

whose leaves are for

the healing of the nations.

A fruitless tree not cut down,

but dug around with manure.

Something like a serpent in it, lifted up,

a tree of good and evil,

a child climbing there,

the root of Jesse,

a woman beneath it, weeping.

Something like a vine

of which we are branches,

embracing everything,

the root and seed and leaf,

the cutting down of the tree

and the new tree all one thing,

a tree coming up in spring

out of a seed that has died,

out of stone, out of a grave,

blossoming in the dead of winter,

in the dead of all of us,

holding up the sky as night falls

and falls and falls.

Something like a tree,

on which is hung our salvation.