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Our Tree

samuel kee —  January 8, 2012 — 2 Comments

The tree is the portal through which we find God.

The summer after my second grade year, I fell from a tree.  No one knows how far up I was, it’s estimated that I was thirty to forty feet above the ground.  At least that’s what they tell me.  I can’t remember any of it.

Evidently, an ambulance came and picked me up, taking me to Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio; again, I’m sorry I “missed” that.  It would have been cool to see an ambulance drive through our yard.  Then I was unconscious at the hospital for a week or two, I’m not sure how long exactly.  Again, I can’t remember any of it.  I’ve seen some pictures of me in the hospital, but that’s about it.  The fall knocked the memory of this event clear out of my head.

I’m usually a very careful climber, so I’m not sure what went wrong that summer afternoon (or was it morning?).  My brother and I were playing in the woods together, as we usually did.  My guess is that a branch broke, in my zeal to get to the top.

While I don’t have a memory of “the tree,” my guess is that you do.  You remember the tree, though not the one in Northeastern, Ohio.  The tree that we all remember was in the Garden of Eden.  It’s the tree we’re aching for and, therefore, searching for.  It’s the Tree of Life, which God banned our first parents, Adam and Eve, from discovering.

The Tree of Life is in the collective memory of humankind.  It’s “home.”  It’s the place of longing, the place of dreams, the place we’re searching for, beneath and behind everything we do.  Love.  Life.  Joy.  Meaning.  Significance.  Relationship.  Eternity.  Beauty.

Unlike my tree, none of us can shake the memory of our Tree.  Though we’ve fallen from it, we desperately want to find it.  But is it still there?  In other words, can any human have the deepest desires of the heart met?

It’s curious to note that the cross of Jesus was also known as “the tree” (Galatians 3:13, 1 Peter 2:24, Acts 5:30).  Jesus died on the tree.  Jesus was broken by the curse on the tree.  The tree meant death for Jesus—but life for us.  At the same moment, it was both a place of cursing and blessing, of death and life.  The tree of the cross is the new Tree of Life, the portal through which we return to the Garden of Eden, the very Paradise of God—home.

Through the cross, we find God.  We find life.  Our longings and dreams meet their object at last.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

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Kiss

samuel kee —  January 20, 2011 — Leave a comment

We fake our love with him because we have other priorities.

I bet you remember your first kiss.  No doubt it meant something to you; you did it to show affection, in other words.  Perhaps it meant a little more than you think, as that moment was a moment when you felt like somebody who was worthy to be loved.  It was not just a kiss, but also a mirror: each person reflecting to the other a sense of worth.

The most famous kiss in history happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Judas brought the authorities to arrest Jesus.  So that the authorities might arrest the right person in the darkness, Judas said to them, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard” (Mark 13:44).  Actually, in this verse, the writer, Mark, cannot even bring himself to call Judas by name, but simply refers to him as “the betrayer.” 

So it says that Judas led the mob of authorities to the Son of God, carrying swords and clubs, greeted him with a friendly “Rabbi!,” and then kissed him.  Directly after kissing the Son of God, the Son of God was seized, arrested, and led away to be executed.

Judas did one thing and meant another thing.  He gave a sign—the kiss—that meant loyalty and affection, but he used it for the opposite reason, to betray and be cruel.  He used his intimate access to Jesus, as a friend and disciple, in order to stab him in the back.  The betrayer turned a kiss into a killer.

Even more, Judas did it for the money he was going to receive from the authorities.  There were only a few people on earth who had “access” to the face of Jesus, Judas being one of them, and he used this privilege for financial gain. 

I wonder how often I give this kind of lip-service to the Son of God.  Do I use my access to him for selfish reasons and not because I love him?  Would I kiss him just to get my way? 

Sometimes we tell God things that we know are not true, only because we have an agenda.  We fake our love with him because we have other priorities on our minds.  We tell him that he’s the best and call him all sorts of wonderful names, all the while, we’re leading him to a mob of our own intentions.

We treat Jesus like a piñata, blindly swinging at him in order to get him to produce candy for us.  I know that’s a pretty harsh thing for me to say; but know that I am just as guilty as Judas.  Judas was blinded by the money that he was promised; we are blinded by a host of other false gods.

My prayer is that we would not use Jesus as a means to an end.  Rather, I want my kiss to be full of worship and my intentions full of love. 

© 2010 by Samuel Kee

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