Transplant
"You are both the sprig being plucked from the tree and transplanted, and you are looking to the tree for the shade, for the centering that the mountain top may bring."
Based on Ezekiel 17:22-24. Preached at Leeds Church in Markham, VA on May 11, 2025.
My youngest daughter, Wrenley, is finally without casts or braces for the first time since she was 5 months old. You can imagine her relief, as she is nearing 2 years old now, in being able to explore the world more freely. We are also in the midst of planting our garden, and so we brought her outside with us. She sat in her shorts, and touched the dirt with a bit of apprehension at first, but very soon she started to shower her legs and hands with the dirt. The feeling was clearly exciting to her in all its newness, texture, smell, and sensory.
In our first reading this week, we hear the story from Ezekiel. God is taking a shoot from a cedar tree and planting it high on the mountain. God promises that it will become a tree that will offer shelter and shade. If you’ve ever been around cedar trees, you know that the smell will envelope all your senses. I can imagine the way God must sigh as the scent moves through the air. The way the sprig must feel as it breaks off and is planted again. And God promises, “I myself will transplant it…”
This is a God who is actively creating, that is actively living amongst us. This is not the God who is far off, unaffected by the world. Earlier in this chapter, we hear the promise that the “soldiers will fall by the sword and the survivors will be scattered to the winds.” (Ezekiel 17:21) And the Old Testament is filled with stories of destruction on behalf of God and against God’s people. What we see here in this portion is the promise that God is still creating. God is not destroying, or allowing the destruction to overtake everything and everyone. This is a God of relationship, of promises to Israel, and to us, who is actively participating with us. To transplant something takes great care. There is great intention when transplanting something as fragile as a sprig onto a mountain top. The weather, the harshness of the sun, are all elements that threaten to destroy it.
And perhaps your faith feels like this small sprig right now in the midst of all the elements on a mountain top. You feel a bit plucked from the top of a tree and put in the ground, but perhaps instead of feeling cared for in the tender way of God, you feel more like you were dumped upside down and told to hope for the best. And I wonder, when we feel like we are just hoping for the best in the middle of the mess, where is the mountain top? Where is the sprig that is growing into a splendid cedar that we can rest in the shade of?
For some of you, Leeds Church has been the shade in the midst of the chaos that has threatened to take over your life. For some of you, it has been the fishing trips and the moments spent with God in nature. For some of you it might be moments spent watching your children raise babies of their own, or the way your grandkids laugh when you make silly faces. For some of you, it’s the joy you spark when teens come running into your house or your yard, take some photos, teach you a dance, or sing a song, and then in a flash, they are gone again. You are both the sprig being plucked from the tree and transplanted, and you are looking to the tree for the shade, for the centering that the mountain top may bring.
God is our resting place, just like the trees are for the birds. God cares for us even when we don’t see it. God is building a new kingdom, disrupting the destruction and chaos around us, and filling us with the capacity to create as well. God is at work planting sprigs to give us the shade we so desperately long for. And sometimes, God is also plucking us out to transplant us somewhere new and beautiful. Into a new ministry, into a new understanding of who God is and what God is up to, or into new relationships with the most surprising of people.
I wonder this week, if you might find new cedar trees growing where you least expect them. If you might sit in the middle of all the dirt and start to feel it against your skin in wrapped fascination for all of its sensory qualities and life giving properties like Wrenley did. My hope is that when you hear the birds in the morning, chirping outside your open window, may you remember the image of God planting the sprig at the top of the mountain. Like a rainbow, I may the tree become a reminder of God’s promises, of God’s faithfulness and hope with us. That no matter where you turn, the top of the mountain with the tree, planted just for you and for me, and for the birds, is there. Reminding us of God’s hope and promise for each new day, for each newly created thing. Amen.