They Just Know

It’s hard to believe that another school year is almost over.  As cherry blossoms burst forth in all their glory, and tulips blanket the landscape, I can’t help but think that this year’s theme of Rooted has come full circle.  Throughout the dreary, rainy, cold winter months, we sometimes forget about the beautiful colors and warm days of spring, and yet throughout that time, seeds were in the ground, taking root so that lovely spring time flowers might blossom.  During those dark days, trees of various shapes and sizes relied on their roots to hold them steady and to give them the nutrients that need for dazzling displays of color come April.  I remember asking my Dad once how the trees know how to blossom all at the same time.  “They just know,” he said.  How zen of Michael Bancroft.  In light of our theme, I’d like to offer up that “they just know” because they are deeply rooted and that some level, their rootedness in the earth connects them in a way that is deeper than any of our human understanding.  To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, the trees are rooted in a “magic deeper than time.”

This entire year we have been rooting ourselves in the gospel of Matthew and all it has to tell us about God’s special revelation to us in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.  This week in worship we will hear Jesus’ challenge to “go therefore, and make disciples” and we will also explore Ephesians 3:14-21 in which we are challenged to root and ground ourselves in love.  Just as ancient trees survive and thrive and offer a pageantry of colors for the enjoyment of all creation, so we are called to root deeply in God’s abiding love so that we might survive, thrive, and offer a vision of God’s beautiful love to the world.

Matthew 28:16-20
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

Ephesians 3:14-21
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. ¹⁶I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, ¹⁷and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. ¹⁸I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, ²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.