The Tree as the Bearer of Fruit

“The Tree as Bearer of Fruit”

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

Ezekiel 34:1-6; 47:6-12; Matthew 7:17-20

Sixth Sunday of Eastertide

Ezekiel 34:1-6; 47:6-12

34 The word of the Lord came to me: ² Human One, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: To the shepherds—thus says the Lord God: Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? ³ You eat the fat; you clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatted calves, but you do not feed the sheep. ⁴ You have not strengthened the weak; you have not healed the sick; you have not bound up the injured; you have not brought back the strays; you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. ⁵ So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and scattered they became food for all the wild animals. ⁶ My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.

47 ⁶ He said to me, “Human one, have you seen this?”

Then he led me back along the bank of the river. ⁷ As I came back, I saw on the bank of the river a great many trees on the one side and on the other. ⁸ He said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and when it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water will become fresh. ⁹ Wherever the river goes,^[b] every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish once these waters reach there. It will become fresh, and everything will live where the river goes. ¹⁰ People will stand fishing beside the sea^[c] from En-gedi to En-eglaim; it will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of a great many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea. ¹¹ But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt. ¹² On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.”

Matthew 7:17-20

¹⁷ In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus you will know them by their fruits.

If you were to draw a Venn diagram of gifts for a mom on Mother’s day and Bible-related products, you find a pretty big overlap.  Turns out Mother’s Day Bible Gifts are a popular option.  You may have even received something like this before.  

But, as it turns out, not every passage of scripture in the Bible is the kind of scripture that you would decorate with flowers and put in a Mother’s Day card.  

And so, I’ll start right off by saying the scripture for today may fall into that category.  As Paige was making the PowerPoint for today she said something to the effect that this scripture isn’t all sunshine and butterflies.  But hear me out because what we’re talking about today goes beyond the flowers and flourishes of a day when we celebrate mothering and gets into the inner workings of what makes for a world where everyone is nurtured.  Let’s start with everyone’s favorite book of the Bible, Ezekiel.  

The Book of Ezekiel is not what you would call light reading.  Like many of the prophetic texts in the Bible, there is sharpness to these words spoken by a prophet to a people who were in exile, captives away from their land.  The prophet and the people are wrestling with the complexity of their situation.  There is a real sense of fear of not being in control and there is also a call from the prophet to reckon with the ways they live in systems that are broken.  How have their actions and the actions around them contributed to making the world they live in a difficult place?

One of the ways Ezekiel does this is by pointing out, through the example of shepherds, the ways people in positions of power (shepherds over their sheep, for example) use their power to enrich themselves instead of care for the most vulnerable in their flock.  Ezekiel, as the prophet, shares a message from God that this is not right.  It’s oppressive to live as a sheep in a flock where the shepherds only care about their own needs.  This makes life hard for everyone except the one in power.  

By contrast, the later part of Ezekiel takes a different tone.  

“Human one, have you seen this?”

A utopian vision in the midst of bearing witness to an oppressive empire.  And in the vision God gives Ezekiel is a landscape humming with life and vitality.  There are no hungry or lost sheep here.  There is a river full of life and alongside the river are trees of every kind.  And on those trees are branches full of fresh fruit.  Fruit that never fails to be nourishing or go out of season.  Leaves that heal.  Life is easy for everyone.  Goodness is equally accessible.

Do you see the contrast?  The 6^th century BC prophet is living in the midst of dystopia.  A world where shepherds harm their own sheep.  And in the midst of that, the prophet sees a different possibility.  A world, God’s world, where there is a provision of abundance not for some, but for all.  

Biblical references to the fruit a tree bears occur more than once.  The Tree of Life in Revelation bore fruit that was nourishing, we read that passage last week and it had many overlapping themes from Ezekiel.  We also heard about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and this tree was also full of fruit.

The metaphor of trees bearing fruit is one of abundance and vitality in the Bible.  And who could argue with that?  I remember the first time I walked around Clinton Circle over here in the month of August and saw the peach trees that stand in someone’s lawn.  The branches were so full of peaches they were literally bending toward the ground.  And not just one tree, several trees!  All covered with beautiful, perfectly ripe peaches.  I marveled at how anyone could possibly harvest and eat so many peaches before their prime passed, and yet I also imagined that maybe they shared them with friends and family.  Maybe they made jam for the cold winter months.  Maybe they gave some to a food pantry.  Orchards at their peak season, whether it’s peaches or apples or cherries or figs, are a sight to behold.  

Stories in the Bible often bring  in agrarian imagery because the language of the land and the rhythms of trees and the fruit they produce are a language people have always understood over time.  In the 6^th century BC and also in Jesus’ day.  

It’s hard to preach a series about trees in the Bible and leave out this scripture from Jesus in Matthew 7 about the trees that bear good fruit and the trees that bear bad fruit.  Jesus knew his 1^st century audience would relate to the idea that sometimes something happens to the tree and the fruit doesn’t turn out perfectly.  Maybe it was a beetle that did damage to the tree trunk.  Maybe it was a fungus that covered the leaves.  Maybe it was a flying bug that put holes into all of the fruit.  Maybe it was an early frost that nipped all the blossoms.  Sometimes trees stop making good fruit.  Jesus uses the trees in this passage as a metaphor to illustrate something much larger than botany.  But it’s perhaps not what you think.  

We’ve probably all heard the saying, “the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree with that one,” as a way to describe the ways children are like their parents.  In good ways and sometimes in not so good ways.  Today being Mother’s Day, we often think about the positive gifts our mothers have given us and the ways we are like them that we celebrate.  

But in Matthew 7:17-20, even parenting wasn’t on Jesus’ mind when he used the metaphor of trees bearing fruit that is good and bad.  It was a bigger metaphor than even that.  What Jesus is trying to say here is that a tree bearing bad or good fruit is a way to describe how a person’s inward character will become evident in the kinds of outward things that they do.  In other words, what do your actions say about you?  

Your actions are your fruit.  Galatians 5:22-23 describes good fruits—fruits of the Spirit—as being the visible manifestation in your life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Traits that make for good parenting, don’t get me wrong, but traits that are also universally applicable to a life of human decency.  Parenting, and being a mother specifically, are individual roles we take on.  But the act of living our lives in a way that produces care for those around us is something every human on earth is capable of.  Mothering takes on new meaning.  Whether it’s a large tree that sends nutrients to its neighbors through its roots or a Sunday School teacher who pours their heart out for their students each week or a good neighbor who looks after every animal on the block.  Mothering is a way of nurture that bears good fruit.  Mothering is a way of being in the world that provides for all, not some.  

This idea of collective mothering stands in sharp contrast to the world that Ezekiel named where even the shepherds harm their sheep.  Ezekiel recognized that there was bad fruit being produced by people who were inwardly focused more on themselves than those around them.  

And yet, this is the good news that waits for us.  Ezekiel was a prophet who was called out of a very difficult time for the redemption of his people.  They felt abandoned by those who were entrusted to nurture them.  The people even felt abandoned by God.  It was into that moment of great pain that God gave Ezekiel a vision of trees.  Trees laden with good and nurturing fruit that never even went out of season.  No one had to scramble to pick and preserve what would only be offered briefly.  God’s provision of nurture will come, new and fresh, season after season.

What strikes me most about this scripture reading for today, is that the capacity for seeing a better world begins in a place of pain.  It was into a broken system that Ezekiel saw hope.  Ezekiel saw a people who had agency to be the hope they wanted to see.  A people who could change their ways.  And when Jesus came to be with us and teach us, he also told us we have agency to be the hope we want to see in the world.  He taught us that the kind of fruit we bear has consequences.  When our actions in this world are nurturing and good—loving, kind, joyful, gentle, patient, self-less— when we are more concerned about lifting others up than we are about lifting ourselves up—when we adopt a “mothering” mentality in every interaction we have… this is what transforms the world from its present pain to its future provision.  

What kind of fruit do you bear?  What do your actions day in and day out say about who you are inside?  Friends, let those with ears hear.  

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna