“Thus says the LORD:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the LORD.
They shall be like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see when relief comes.
They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
Blessed are those who trust in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit”
(Jeremiah 17:5-8)
Context matters. That is, where you place your life matters. Contrary to the American narrative of individual industriousness, where you are largely determines who you are. A shrub planted in the wilderness will wither and die, no matter how big their bootstraps are nor how hard they pull on them. A tree beside a river will thrive, almost with no work at all.
This biblical insight is central to the Church’s understanding and pursuit of justice:
Plant a life in poverty and it won’t grow…
Plant a black or brown body in systems of white privilege and they’ll wilt (which, in the twisted “logic” of white supremacy only reaffirms the baseless claim of racial inferiority and thus justifies further white privilege. In academic circles, this process is known as “reification”)…
Plant a gender non-binary person in a cis-gendered world and they’ll wilt…
Plant a woman in (as the old sang crooned) “a man’s world” and they’ll crumble…
Plant a gay or lesbian person in a heteronormative context and they’ll wither…
Plant a foreign-born person in a nationalistic context and they’ll falter…
Plant the Church in the midst of the empire (be that Pharaoh’s or the Babylonian’s or the Roman’s or the American’s) and it will die.
Thanks be to God, then, that he uproots our lives and plants us in the garden of His glory, the fields of His mercy, the gables of His grace, and by streams of His ever-flowing justice. Thanks be to God that He claims us in our baptism, declares us citizens of His new Kingdom and gives us the Body of Christ and the comfort of the Holy Spirit in which to live, and move, and have our being. Only then, can we live our lives through any drought and still be “not anxious.”
And so, God has done the hog’s share of the work for us. What He asks in return is that we – as the Church, as the Body, as those whose lives are marked and sealed by our baptisms, both in water and by the Spirit – that we create a community in which all other lives can escape the barrenness and parched places of the wilderness. There is a reason, after all, that we call the space in which we worship a “sanctuary.” A sanctuary from what or whom? A sanctuary away from capitalist greed, racial prejudice, cis-hetero normativity, sexism, nationalism, and every competing empire to God’s new Kingdom.
The call of discipleship is to be and create the sort of community that provides sanctuary to all God’s children, with a preferential option for the poor, abused, neglected, and reviled because they are the ones most yearning for a sanctuary in which to plant their lives and “not cease to bear fruit.” Amen.
