The Tree as Shelter

“The Tree as Shelter”

May 17, 2026 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Micah 4:1-5

Ascension Sunday

Micah 4:1-5

4 In days to come    the mountain of the Lord’s templeshall be established as the highest of the mountains    and shall be raised up above the hills.Peoples shall stream to it,²     and many nations shall come and say:“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,    to the house of the God of Jacob,that he may teach us his ways    and that we may walk in his paths.”For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.³ He shall judge between many peoples    and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;they shall beat their swords into plowshares    and their spears into pruning hooks;nation shall not lift up sword against nation;    neither shall they learn war any more;⁴ but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,    and no one shall make them afraid,    for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

⁵ For all the peoples walk,    each in the name of its god,but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God    forever and ever.

Friday mornings are busy times at this church.  There is constant movement in the wing of this building with people coming and going from our thrift store and our food pantry.  Often people will stop into the office to say hi and on Friday I overheard one chatty neighbor visiting with Paige.  I’m not exactly sure how the conversation wound up discussing life in Hoboken, New Jersey, but it did.  And I’m also not sure how it happened but this neighbor started talking about a tree she loved in Hoboken.  During her childhood, there was a tradition in the town.  Every spring when the cherry trees bloomed for the first time, everyone would come and share a picnic underneath them.  Everyone would come from wherever they were and everyone would share whatever they had.  I’m sure this neighbor who stopped by the office didn’t know we were doing a series at Cobleskill UMC right now on trees, but it speaks to the ways that trees can form landmarks in our childhood and how whole communities form rituals of gathering around them.  

Last night it briefly crossed my mind to move our worship outside today.  How gathering around our beloved tree would be a fitting way to wrap up our series “The Canopy of Creation.”  And then I thought about all the logistical challenges of bringing that surprise news on Sunday morning.  While it certainly is finally warm enough to be outside, I then also realized that for a series called “Canopy of Creation,” our Catalpa tree is noticeably without its canopy, still, in the middle of May.  We wouldn’t have gotten much shade.

Today is the last Sunday in our series where we look at trees in the Bible and learn the lessons God offers us through their imagery.  Today is also Pride Sunday when we celebrate the way God includes, affirms, and loves everyone as a child of God.  In our world today, that boundless love of God is worth celebrating as much as we can.  It becomes a place of shelter in the midst of a storm. 

Let’s recap just a bit about the trees.  Trees as images and metaphors occur in the Bible over 300 times, more than any other single part of creation (aside from humans).  So far we’ve talked about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and humanity’s desire from the beginning to consume God’s gifts before appreciating them.  We talked about the ways some of the Gospel writers describe the cross Jesus died on as a tree and how this allows God’s creation to be a witness to the harm us humans can do to each other… and also the transformation possible.  We talked about how trees, like communities of faith, take root in their neighborhood and resist erosion and help the canopy to spread wide.  And last week we talked about the ways a tree bearing good fruit is a metaphor for the ways our own actions, our own fruit, reflects our inner character.  

Many of these Biblical tree images have come in the midst of fantastical utopian visions of what a future in God’s world can look like. Trees that bear fruit in every season.  Trees that heal nations.  Trees that span rivers of life. Trees that clap their hands.  Today’s reading from Micah is kind of like that, again.  Micah, another prophet, is speaking about a future hope and restoration for his people.  A time when the stress of their present situation will be resolved.   We hear a lot of “they shall” and they will.”  Notably for our series, in Micah’s vision, everyone will have their own fig tree and they will be able to sit under it.  Fig trees have big leaves and a dense canopy and they grow in climates that are hot.  Their shade is legendary.  It’s no wonder this tree makes it into the utopian vision of Micah. 

But imagining the fig tree as a future utopia is not isolated only to our Bibles.  The reference has been picked up in pop culture, most notably in the musical Hamilton where Christopher Jackson, plays the model of a modern major general, the one and only George Washington.  And for a musical set during the Revolutionary War and the immediate aftermath, we’ve caught George at a pretty stressful point in his life.  Finally, after serving one term in office, Washington plans to retire.  In the song “One Last Time” Washington sings about stepping back from the stressful life into a life of respite.  Within the song is this phrase: “I wanna sit under my own vine and fig tree. A moment alone in the shade.”  It was a reference to Micah 4:4.  A synergy with the prophet who projected peace and tranquility in God’s care represented by the shade offered under a vine and fig tree.  Washington’s association with this phrase wasn’t just an artistic move by Lin Manuel Miranda, who wrote Hamilton.  George Washington mentioned Micah’s vine and fig tree over 50 times in his personal writings, always in the context of anticipated respite and freedom from the stress around him.  

The shade of a tree is a powerful image.  One living thing offering a gift to another living thing.  Relief from the heat and the feeling of being looked over by something created by God.  

In God’s beloved community, to which Micah points, this imagery signifies not only respite and shade, but the promise of peace and respect between people.  The imagery of the fig tree is immediately adjacent to another image we recognize:  a tool of violence transformed into a tool for growing things.  Swords into plowshares.  

Several years ago, an artist named Spencer LaJoye took these words and formed a powerful song, which Teri and our choir just sang for us.  Lyric after lyric names vulnerable people and situations.  Mothers of black sons, parents who have lost children, queers and their closeted peers, those who have lost spouses.  These lyrics give dignity and respect to people who have experienced some kind of sword in their own life, something that has caused them harm.  Spencer wrote this song to name those hurts and offer them as a prayer that seeks to grow something, like a plowshare.  

Spencer seems to know, in writing this song, that sometimes prayers themselves can be swords.  Words of religious institutions used to harm people who don’t fit into a narrow box they’ve defined as “right.”  Sometimes churches, in their pursuit of their own righteousness, in a narrowly defined way, lose sight of the broad spectrum of life created by God; the many kinds of love and life that God dreams.  

Four years ago this week, this church decided to be different.  Instead of prayers that were swords and church polity that excluded, Cobleskill United Methodist Church became a Reconciling Church…  Reconciling the harmful history of Christian churches that have discriminated against our queer siblings and endeavoring to find a new path forward toward growing love, not fighting love.  Toward loving each individual as they are; not fighting for some kind of narrowness when God creates with broadness.  

A Reconciling Church is one that embraces, affirms, and works for the full participation of all people in the United Methodist Church, including full equality in membership, ordination, and marriage for God’s LGBTQ children. Reconciling Churches make a public declaration welcoming all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, to participate fully in its congregational life, and they work for change within the denomination for full inclusiveness and equal rights and privileges for all.

This is a re-crafting of something sometimes used to harm into something used for healing, is slow, deliberative work.  It didn’t end that day four years ago when we signed and hung our Welcome Statement.  It began that day.  This church is not unlike a fig tree.  A shelter in turbulent times.  A place of respite and restoration when you are weary from the world.  A place of protection from the harmful exposure you may have experienced in your life.  A place of healing from past wounds.  

But it is not that way by a stroke of God’s hand.  It is that way and it is still becoming that way because you dedicate yourselves to the hard work of drawing bigger circles.  Learning from one another how we can do better.  Listening to one another to hear what God may be saying through one another’s experience.  Committing to mutuality and growth together even when it’s hard.  …Even when we have to work together through conflict together and speak the truth in love.  The work of reconciliation is not quick or easy work.  It’s the slow transformation of hard metal being bent and re-worked and reformed into something completely different.  

Our Catalpa Tree is still waiting for its time to leaf out.   It’s slow and deliberate work.  It’s not a fig tree that keeps its foliage for most of the year (it’s too cold for fig trees in New York.)  It’s not a maple (though they are looking full and leafy everywhere right now).   It’s a Catalpa Tree and it’s time is both now and coming.  When my Grandmother would come to visit me here in Cobleskill she would marvel at the size of our Catalpa tree.  She grew up in the plains of Kansas and she told me Catalpa trees were often planted in long rows around the houses.  “Shelterbelts” they were called.  Because of the strength of their roots and their big lush leaves that would come out just in time for tornado season, the trees were a gift of strength and resiliency—shelter—in the midst of turbulent times.  Every tree is different and has its own gifts. Every person is different and has their own gifts.  And we love them all just the same—especially for being themselves.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna