Like a Tree Planted by Water

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
    whose trust is the Lord. 
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
    sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
    and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
    and it does not cease to bear fruit.
(Jeremiah 17:7-8, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

I’ve been thinking a lot in recent months about the prophet Jeremiah, “to whom the word of the Lord came” in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. Before the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, before the subsequent siege by the Babylonians and the destruction of the First Temple, before the years of captivity and exile, Jeremiah tried repeatedly to sound the alarm.

Israel was facing a disaster it had brought upon itself.

“My people have changed their glory for something that does not profit,” the Lord said through Jeremiah. “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, crooked cisterns that can hold no water.” And the Lord has more to say in that vein—much more. “How can I pardon you?” God demands:

 “Your children have forsaken me
and have sworn by those who are no gods… 
Shall I not punish them for these things?
…and shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?”

Although modern sensibilities may recoil from what we could easily read as victim-blaming by an abuser, God’s position makes sense when viewed in covenantal terms. Yes, the Lord had promised great things to Israel, and, yes, as the biblical scholar John Goldingay writes in The Theology of Jeremiah, “Yahweh’s grace and commitment were not conditional.” Still, he adds, Israel had to offer God its own commitment in return; “otherwise the relationship wouldn’t work.”

If you don’t trust God to honor the covenant, you won’t enjoy its benefits.

The Quakers of late seventeenth-century England must have seen in Jeremiah’s messages a mirror of the years of chaos following the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy and the execution of King Charles I. One Friend, Edward Burrough, believed “the present Condition of the People and Rulers, in this the Day of their Trouble,” had been caused by the same thing that brought down Jerusalem:

“Alas! they do not behave themselves towards the Lord that his Judgments may be turned away, they do not seek him in Truth and Righteousness, they do not turn unto him with all their Hearts, neither do they tremble at his Word; but they the rather reject his Counsel, and despise his Visitation, and they seek themselves, and exalt their own Horn, and love the Honour of this World, and their hearts are hardened, and the great men seem to be utterly insensible of what the Lord is a doing; but seek great things for themselves…”

Burrough did not view the situation as hopeless. He knew that people didn’t have to live that way. “Hadst thou, oh Nation, walked in the Light of the Lord, it had been better with thee,” he said. “Had every one obeyed the Light in his own Conscience… then this day had not been a day of Trouble, but it had been a day of Joy.” And though he cast his message in the past tense, he held it out as an option for the future. 

Jeremiah saw a similar path out of Israel’s crisis.

Yes, Jeremiah wouldn’t stop talking about how Israel had abandoned God. But he also wouldn’t stop talking about how, if the people of Israel would put their trust in the Lord once more, their society would once again flourish. “Return, [and] I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful,” God promises. “I will not be angry forever.” Like a tree planted by water, its roots deep in nourishing soil, a tree that has what it needs to survive through adverse conditions, a people that hold up their end of the covenant will enjoy the abundance of God’s grace.

The earliest Quakers took comfort in that promise. So can we. And, to anticipate an objection, I get it—talking about how a people should come back to God, especially at the level of entire countries or societies or cultures, raises a lot of eyebrows these days, with good reason. I’m not advocating any kind of Christian nationalism. I’m not saying that Christianity, even in its most Quakerly form, can save “Western civilization,” whatever that means. (Neither will non-theistic Quakerism!) I can’t even say for sure that “Western civilization” deserves saving.

But the lessons of the Inward Teacher, the Light that shines into our own Conscience, as articulated by Friends for nearly four centuries, provide one of the most robust models available for a beloved community. All around us, we can see what happens to the world when people turn away from that Light. But we can also catch glimpses of the world that people who face that Light squarely can create working in unity. And we can, in turn, plant our own roots near the living water that will nourish us as we join in that world’s creation.