MEET KRISTEN DEEDE JOHNSON
Shortly after our move to Toronto this summer, my kids and I decided to pop into Roots as one way of getting to know our new Canadian context. In the midst of browsing hoodies and sweatpants, the saying on the front of a T-shirt caught my eye. “Deep roots stand tall.”
In the little town of Holland, Michigan where my husband and I had been rooted since graduate school, we had cultivated deep community and meaningful callings. Both of our children were born there and they felt deeply rooted in church, school, sports, and the beauty of the Lake Michigan lakeshore. So this was a poignant phrase given that we had just uprooted ourselves from a community in which we had deep roots, a place we’d called home for the past 20 years, to enter into the new community of Wycliffe College, which has its own deep roots.
“Deep roots stand tall.” This phrase also struck me because of how often I talk about the importance of deep roots for Christian discipleship. My decades-long passion for considering the nature of Christian formation has led me to conclude that Scripture passages related to trees may be our best biblical guide to understanding the call to follow Jesus.
When it comes to discipleship, I know it’s more common to consider passages like the Great Commission, or Jesus’ words captured in the gospels that call us to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order to follow him. And these teachings of Jesus are, of course, central to any consideration of what it means to be and to make disciples.
At the same time, we find tree imagery all throughout the biblical narrative. The opening pages of our scriptures describe the good and beautiful trees that God made in the garden, including the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The closing pages of the Bible paint a picture of the tree of life on either side of the river of the water of life, and we are told that the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations (Rev 22: 2).
And about halfway between Genesis and Revelation, the book of Psalms—the prayer book of the Bible—opens with a description of the people of God being like trees planted by streams of water (Ps 1:3).
What happens when we consider our calling as God’s people to be like trees?
Early on in my Christian life, I often felt overwhelmed as a type-A person who thought that as a new Christian I now had to do everything I could for God. The pace of life I was keeping on a daily basis was not sustainable. Even though I was doing these things for Christ, I was doing them by my own strength, willpower, and discipline. And I was exhausted and full of worry because there was not enough time in the day to do all the ministry that needed to be done.
I remember wrestling with verses like Jeremiah 17:8, wanting to feel and experience the kind of trust that Jeremiah describes of those who are like trees planted by streams of water. They do not need to fear when the heat comes or be anxious in times of drought, per Jeremiah’s description. Rather, because of their firmly planted roots, their leaves remain green and they continue to bear fruit. How could I become that kind of deeply rooted Christian?
For me, it was discovering the richness of the triune God of grace that changed everything. This is part of why I believe so deeply in the significance of theological education. Theology helped me come to see that not only was I saved by grace, but I continue to live by grace. We now live in union with Christ by the Spirit, who gives us the power both to abide and to bear fruit.
In the gospel of John we see Jesus using this language of abiding and bearing fruit. By God’s grace we are branches that are called to abide in Christ, the vine, living in utter dependence on Him. As Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, NRSV).
In The Spirituality of Wine, a beautiful study of Scripture and wine, theologian Gisela Kreglinger reminds us that the original hearers of this passage in John, living in an agricultural context in which vineyards were prominent, would have understood why branches needed to abide in the vine. She writes, “it is the sap that the rootstock produces and brings up through the vine into the branches that sustains the branches of the vine and keeps them alive.” Rooted in Christ, we receive the gift of sustaining life and we are able to bear fruit in the world.
Just like trees, we are called as God’s people to be deeply rooted. With these deep roots in Christ, we can bear fruit in the world. As followers of Jesus, we are to offer life-giving oxygen within the ecosystems in which we live. Like trees, we can offer beauty and shade, rest and places of play to a weary world.
And, like trees, we have to remember that our growth is usually slow. I remember going to a fair when I was about six years old and getting a small pine tree in a Styrofoam cup, which I then carefully planted in my family’s backyard in the suburbs of Washington, DC. I wanted to be able to see it grow, but day by day it looked like nothing was happening. Year by year, however, it grew by inches and feet—excuse me, I mean by centimeters and meters—until it was a towering tree, secured beneath the soil by deep roots. I loved checking on that tree in the backyard when I would visit home, remembering how small it was when I had planted it, and how tall it became through the years.
Maybe the Roots T-shirt is on to something profound. “Deep roots stand tall.” Rooted and grounded in the love and ongoing grace of God in Christ, we can trust that God’s redemptive love is at work in our lives and in the world. We can become reliant on Christ, rather than ourselves, to bear fruit and offer life to the world, until the return of Christ when the whole world will experience that the leaves of the trees of life are for the healing of the nations.
