"Ever seen a tree growing out of a rock?"

“Instead of the thorn, a cypress”      Isaiah 55.10-13

Pastor Tom Johnson, July 10, 2011

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Have you ever seen a tree growing out of a rock? When you first spot one, it seems impossible. You wonder what sort of joke nature is playing. You look away and look back again to make sure your eyes aren’t tricking you.

Have you ever seen a tree growing out of rock…its leaves green with life…its trunk is thick, solid, and stable…its roots plunging down deeply out of sight into the rock…its branches spreading out to heaven in glorious praise?

Have you ever seen one? Once I started to pay attention, I began to have one sighting after another. I recently saw trees growing out of rocks high above the timberline in the Colorado Rockies. Just a week earlier I spotted them at Starved Rock State Park not too far from here.

Several years ago, my family and I took the architectural boat tour of Chicago. The guide pointed out building after building along the river. He gave historical and interesting facts about the buildings and river.

But in the middle of the tour, he stopped talking about the buildings and the river and told us to look off to the side. He pointed out a big slab of concrete on the river. And out from that concrete a tree—growing tall and strong.

The tour guide said, “I’ve given this tour many times. And that tree amazes me more than anything every time I look at it. Can any of you tell me how a tree can grow out of cement and rock?!”

In our Old Testament reading from Isaiah, God gives us the same remarkable vision. He sends his word like rain and snow from heaven. His word nurtures the soil of the earth like water falling from the heavens.

As a result, God provides seed for the sower and bread for the eater. He gives strength and sustenance through his word. He works miracles. And the picture he gives of his love and his grace are trees growing out of a rock.

“Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

God will help us picture and remember his love and his grace—and the vision he gives is of trees growing in unlikely places—a tree growing out of rock. He wants to remind us that he can make trees grow anywhere.

It’s easy to pick up the newspaper and read about what’s going on in our world and in our communities and grow cynical—so much resistance to God’s Word—so much hatred and violence—so much materialism—so many fractured lives.

It’s hard to believe that God wants to do anything with the dry, rocky terrain of this world. At first glance, it appears hopeless and void of God’s activity… “a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8.11).

And at times we may feel that we going through our own dry spells. We may not realize our constant need for the Word and how thirsty we have become for God to work in our lives.

There may even be times when we seem impervious to the Word—our hearts like stone—like rocky soil under the rain and snow of God’s word.

I think that is what is so encouraging about this Scripture today—that it is okay to doubt our own receptivity to God’s Word and work. It’s okay to be disillusioned with the human heart and our capacity to change for the good.

The encouraging message of this Scripture is that God sends the rain and the snow to transform the soil itself. He does not just provide water but also makes the ground fertile soil.

He provides water for the thirsty land, seed for the farmers to plant, and bread for the hungry. And he also makes cypress and myrtle trees grow where nothing but thorns and briers could grow before. He reminds us that “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible” (Mk 10.27).

Have you ever seen a tree growing out of rock? I have. Its roots are slowly moving—so slow that its movement is invisible to our impatient eyes. Slowly, but powerfully, its roots breaking apart solid rock, sending rock and sand down the hill. It pushes its roots deep into the earth and transforms the landscape forever.

Have you ever seen a tree growing out of rock? The followers of Jesus did. They saw him, the Word himself, planted on top of a rocky hill called Calvary. There he died and there he was also planted deep into the stony tomb.

And it was there that he did the impossible—it was out of his rocky grave that he sprang out of the ground to life again. And beginning there, Jesus sends us out like the tentacles of a oak tree out into the world to break up the landscape forever bringing the assurance of God’s love and the certainly of eternal life.

Have you ever seen a tree growing out of rock…its leaves green with life…its trunk thick, solid, and stable…its roots plunging down deeply out of sight into the rock…its branches spreading out to heaven in glorious praise?