John 13:34-35, 1 John 4:7-21

 Introduction to the Scriptures:

I've always loved trees. So I wept long and hard the day they came and cut them all down. I was young. My mother and I stood at the front window. I saw the tears fall from her eyes too. When you turned into the small lane that was our street growing up, the large Poplar tree branches stretched over you like the ceiling in a cathedral. I had spent hours and hours playing around the trunks of those trees - some times snuggled in between the roots with my back against the deeply rutted bark, reading a favorite picture book in their shade, sometimes watching bugs scurry in and out and over the hills and valleys of the bark. The tree that stood in the front yard of Polly Lewis's house across the street was the tree we always hid our faces in as we counted 5,10,15, 20 . . . up to 100 and then shouted "Ready or not, here I come!" in our endless games of Hide and Seek. And so it was also the tree to which you ran like the wind to touch before the person who was "it" saw you and beat you there. Their wide, deep green leaves twinkled in the sunny breezes and in the fall they fell golden to carpet all our yards in splendor. So, as I said, I wept long and hard the day they came and cut them all down.

I've always loved trees, but this Lenten sermon series on the Tree of Life as given me an even deeper appreciation of their complexity and beauty and their ancient wisdom. This week I learned about the leaves. In elementary school we learned about leaves. Remember? One of the first scientific words I remember rolling around in my mouth has to the leaves making food for the tree. Remember? I bet the kids here today can tell us that word . . . yep, photosynthesis. Feels smart to say it doesn't it?

But, ah, do you remember what it means? Sure you do! It's the way the leaves use the energy of the sunlight with water and minerals and turn them into starches and sugars that are the food for the tree. Leaves are the food factories or the power plants for trees. It's amazing. They produce their own food. Green plants are the only living things that make their own food.

What I didn't know, or didn't remember from 5^th grade is that the leaves are mostly water (like us, about 80%) and that the shape of deciduous tree leaves maximize their efficiency for water in dry spells, for soaking up as much sun as possible and minimizing the possibility of the growth of fungus. Evergreen needles offer a minimum surface to the drying, cold winter winds. Their food carrying veins are protected in the center of the needle beneath a thick outer layer.

The veins in the leaves have two chambers or tubes in them. One carries water and minerals that the roots send up through the trunk and branches into the leaves and the second one carries the food back out the leaf and into the branches to the trunk and to the roots.

And I had almost forgotten that the trees are lungs of the earth. They breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen . . .our partners in life as we breathe in the oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.

In deciduous trees the leaves get their green color from the chlorophyll that is the green pigment that absorbs light energy for the photosynthesis. When the leaf ages and dies, the green is gone and the true colors of yellow, orange, red or purple are revealed in the glories of autumn.

Did you make leaf collections as a kid at summer camp or for science class at school? Leaves help identify the type of tree by shape and color and form. Even if you find a leaf far from the tree, you know what kind of tree it came from by that shape, color and form.

Well, there is much more to tell about the leaves, but I think I'll stop there and wonder with you about what these leaves might symbolize for us in our spiritual journey this Lent. For me, these leaves are symbols for each of us, connected to one another and to God in our Tree of Life, alive, green, growing and nurturing. For me, these leaves are leaves of love.

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

We - you and I - are the leaves, living out the love of God that flows from our roots and nourishes us that we might spend our lives giving life, feeding others, reaching out in the light of love to our world.

And, like the leaves we can easily identify no matter where we find them, no matter how far they are from the tree, we too bear the identity of the tree of Life, the Tree of God from which we are sent out into the world to love, marked with the identity of followers of God.

I've been thinking and praying about love and peace this week as we come Tuesday to the 4^th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. I, like you perhaps, find myself overwhelmed by the violence in our world and wondering if peace will ever come. But again and again, I find that ultimately I must choose hope over despair and believe that we can each make some difference by how we each live.

I recall that lovely verse from book Revelation when it describes the Tree of Life in the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city and it says, "and it's leaves are for the healing of the nations." "It's leaves are for the healing of the nations." The leaves - you and I - are for the healing of the nations. Each kind act, each loving contribution, each compassionate gesture adds to the healing that we seek. "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."

The leaves of this congregation are scattered throughout our community, daily working toward justice and love, one step, one small but powerful and essential step at a time. You maples and elms, oaks and poplars, birches and dogwoods, cottonwoods and magnolias, you locusts and lilacs, you crabapples .. . . and hickories, pecan and hawthorn and beeches and walnuts and sycamores, you apple trees and cherry trees, plum, peach, fig and apricot, you white pines and red pines, jack pines and cedars . . . .

You -- you leaves -- you are for the healing of the nations. Amen.