Looks can be deceiving however, for this tree is actually the cut Christmas tree - quite dead, though appearing very much alive - that decorated the sanctuary during the advent/Christmas season.
On the day of Epiphany, to the sounds of "We three kings of Orient are," a few of u
s gathered to remove the Christmas decorations from the sanctuary. Christmas was over, it was time to move on. So the banners came down. The wreaths followed suite. The ornaments which decorated the tree were safely packaged away. But what to do with the tree itself? As the focal point of the the season's truth, "Behold your light has come!", it just felt wrong to arbitrarily dispose of and summarily dismiss it from our lives. Truth is not conveniently just discarded!So it was "planted" in the bleak landscape of the Jerusalem Cross Garden, in winter a forgotten place around the church. From its' branches will be hung birdseed "ornaments," offering food and nourishment to the birds of the area. The Light of the World, having come at Christmas, now moves out into the neighborhood in an act of compassion, helping to care for creation. And over the winter months the tree will proudly give life and purpose to the Jerusalem Cross Garden as it feeds the birds in a way that would make Saint Francis proud. In its' own symbolic way it will quietly challenge us members to do the same - to say to the world, "Behold, your Light has come!", and show just how this is true - a call to mission and service for the year?
Soon Spring will arrive. The Christmas tree will need to move again as we prepare the garden for vegetables and wheat. But what to do with this "friend" of both sanctuary and now garden too? We will have journeyed with it through the seasons of fall, winter and early spring, advent/Christmas, Epiphany and Lent. It heralded the Light as it bore the star at its' peak, then engaged the world as bird feeder. How might the Christmas tree each year, sanctified by it's presence for several weeks in the sanctuary as herald of God-in-the-flesh, continue to inspire and beckon us?
Proposal: cut the branches away and cure the stem; then carve it as a staff, that symbol of St. Christopher, used by Friar Tuck and many a pilgrim down through the centuries. Let the staff be "consecrated" by some major missional action undertaken by members to demonstrate Christ's light and love in the world during the year. Then to commemorate this Christmas of 2009/10 and the mission trip it encouraged us to take, let's use the staff as a dowel rod to hang one of our liturgical banners from as a continuing reminder for many years to come of how God has moved amongst the people called Methodist during the 2009/10 liturgical year.
It will take us twelve years to have enough dowel rods for each of our 12 liturgical banners. That should be enough time for the task of becoming a congregation of discipled Christians who together strive to "grow God's kingdom" for the purposes of "transforming the world."
Best of all, Jerusalem Cross gardening will have happened again, turning the sod of our souls, in spite of, or perhaps because of, a bleak, white winter's landscape.
