A Gospel for the Trees
As we gather today in the Season of Creation, we are reminded that the first testament of God’s love wasn’t written in ink on parchment, but spoken into being through light, soil, water, and breath. All around us, the natural world—from the towering tree canopy to the ground beneath our feet—is continuously offering its own prayer of praise to the Creator.
The prophet Ezekiel gives us a vision of this holy sanctuary: he sees a river of living water flowing out from the temple, and on both banks of the river stand trees whose leaves do not wither, whose fruit never fails, and whose leaves are meant for the healing of the nations. Ezekiel shows us that trees are not mere scenery; they are sanctuary plants, rooted directly in the flow of God’s grace.
Trees are sanctuaries and praisers of God! Our world sometimes encouragers us to think trees are merely backdrops.
Yet, staring at our church building and noticing our surroundings, it is easy to understand how trees become captured backdrops in the rush of daily life. Keeping trees as a backdrop is dangerous because it leads us to feel disconnected from the truth that trees are living, breathing, God-created beings—crafted and cared for just as God crafts and cares for us. Even outside of New England, trees are routinely stripped of their sacredness and captured as a mere resource for human gain.
This season, we step back to listen to the voices of Creation, to give thanks for the delicate web of life that sustains us, and to ask how we might live not as consumers of the Earth, but as faithful and compassionate stewards of God’s extraordinary creation.
Yet across our nation, that delicate web is being threatened. Millions of acres of forest are being targeted—threatening 193 million acres of national forest with mandated 25% increases in timber sales on public lands. Trees have fallen victim to a world of extraction; they have lost their sacredness in our hearts. The scale of what stands to be lost is staggering. It is not just an economic choice; it is a spiritual crisis.
Trees are more than beautiful pictures and resources used to build. They are a living community that offer their leaves in praise of God the Creator. They are living, beloved creatures in the realm of God’s Kingdom. They are community-oriented beings who teach us to take better care of our neighbors. They are faith ancestors we can learn from if we take the time to see beyond the backdrop. The Earth is our greatest sanctuary crafted at praising God; we cannot be the ones who harvest and commercialize God’s creation. Trees don’t stand to serve our human consumption. They stand tall to glorify our Creator and sustain this divine web of life.
And I know how easy it is to fall into the trap of seeing trees as backdrops. In my own weeks surrounded by these divine creatures, my sight of them has faded at times. I don’t notice them as much. But it is a necessary reminder to slow down, to breathe, and to witness how trees praise God—to remember they are spiritual beings we can learn from. It’s easy to fall into earthly thinking where humans sit at the center of all things, assuming we hold absolute control over the earth. But for the sake of Creation’s life, we must see how we were created alongside nature, as neighbors in God’s household.
Like Nicodemus in John’s Gospel, we often come to God under the cover of night—seeking truth, but trapped in a rigid, human-centered logic. We struggle to comprehend how a world can be born anew. But Jesus reorients us toward the Spirit—the Pneuma—that blows where it chooses, pointing to a love far greater than our human structures.
For God so loved the world—not just humanity, but the kosmos. The universe. God so loved the sun and moon and stars, the rivers and babbling brooks and oceans, the sandy land and mountain tops and prairie grass, the fading hues of each sky; God so loved the fruits and vegetables, the wild animals and creatures, and finally, God loved humankind. God placed us alongside one another in the image of God—divine, beautiful, sacred, and beloved. With this wisdom, we pave the way to restoring God’s beauty instead of prioritizing its perishing.
Trees are more than their wood or the seasonal chore of piling leaves. Trees are practitioners of community building that connect us deeper to God. In a world that tries to sever our connection to the soil and forest, God invites us to see how trees breathe life into the Kingdom.
In echoing the psalmist this morning, just as God knits us together in the dark depths of the womb, God knits the forest together in the depths of the soil. In that earthy, divine darkness, God works a miracle of profound connection. Mycologists call this the mycelial network—a vast underground web made of microscopic fungal threads weaving beneath the forest floor, connecting root to root, tree to tree.
Through this underground sanctuary, trees do not compete in isolation; they share nutrients, nourish vulnerable saplings, and send signals of distress to protect the whole forest. What science calls a subterranean ecosystem, the eyes of faith recognize as the very breath of God—the Pneuma—knitting Creation together in hidden grace.
When Jesus told Nicodemus that the Spirit blows where it chooses, Christ was inviting us into this exact mystery. The Gospel is not an individual escape route out of the world; it is the breathtaking revelation that God’s love holds the whole kosmos together in an unbroken, underground web of grace. Beneath our feet, right now, the trees are actively practicing the Kingdom of God. They show us that strength is not found in standing alone, but in belonging to one another.
So how do we, who have been reborn from above, live out this subterranean wisdom in a world bent on clear-cutting God’s sanctuary? We begin by stepping out of the role of consumers and stepping back into the sacred web as faithful, compassionate neighbors:
- Practice Sacred Seeing: Stop treating the trees outside this sanctuary—and in your own backyard—as idle scenery or seasonal yard work. Let them become your teachers. Slow down, breathe in the oxygen they freely offer, and offer your own quiet prayer of thanksgiving back to the Creator.
- Cultivate Reciprocal Stewardship: Shift from extraction to protection. Honor the biblical call in Genesis to guard and tend (shamar) the earth. Seek out concrete ways to support local conservation, protect mature canopy trees in our community, and advocate for the protection of public lands that cannot speak for themselves.
- Live as the Connected Body: Emulate the forest floor in our daily discipleship. Just as the root systems share resources with the fragile saplings, let our lives be marked by radical generosity, feeding those who are vulnerable and standing together when the storms of life hit.
Trees call us to remember that God’s sacredness is in all things. Many of us know the classic story of the Lorax, who steps forward with a prophetic warning: “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.”
The trees cannot defend themselves from the hungry consumption of our society. Our faith must speak for the trees and defend God’s greatest sanctuary. Just as the living waters of God’s grace nourish our trees and inspire their praise, that same living water flows through us to shape our actions. May we use God’s breath to breathe life back into an exhausted world.
When we leave this place, remember we do not step out of God’s presence; we step directly into God’s living sanctuary. Hear this poem, The Sanctuary, from St. Catherine of Siena:
It could be said that God’s foot is so vast that this entire earth is but a field on His toe, and all the forests in this world came from the same root of just a single hair of His. What then is not a sanctuary? Where can I not kneel and pray at a shrine made holy by His presence?
Now go, and walk gently on the soil, listen to the whisper of the Spirit, and honor the sacred web that holds us all.
Amen.