Isaiah 55:10-13
What do the following phrases have in common?
• “The sound of the violin was sweeter than honey”
• “The wind howled like a pack of hungry wolves”
• “A mighty ocean wave of protestors surged onto Wall St.”
• “The trees of the field clapped their hands”
Any English teachers out there this morning? Each of these statements contains a metaphor. A metaphor, in case you aren’t familiar, is a figure of speech that uses a tangible image to represent a less tangible thing or idea. So … do trees really clap their hands? No, it’s a metaphor. Trees don’t have hands! And if they don’t have hands they can’t clap. Ellieana likes to sing the Happy Birthday song, and when she finishes she claps her hands with joy. Yay! A creative writer imagines the branches of a tree clapping on a breezy day as a way of expressing the joy of God’s creation like a happy child at a birthday party. A metaphor is not real, but a good metaphor gives you a deeper understanding of what is real. A clapping tree is not real, but the joy expressed by that metaphor is very real.
Sometimes Scripture presents us with rules and regulations, like “Do not steal” or “Do not kill” in the Ten Commandments. Sometimes Scripture offers facts and figures, like the dimensions of Noah’s ark, 400 cubits in length, filled with animals two by two. Sometimes scripture offers hopes and dreams, like in the Book of Micah, imagining a day when all swords will be pounded into plowshares. Sometimes Scripture offers poetry and song, and when we hear about “green pastures” in the 23trd Psalm we can feel the grass between our toes. Sometimes Scripture offers humor or tragedy, like when Absolom the son of David whose vanity is his long hair gets caught by the hair in the branches of a tree while trying to escape his enemies. And sometimes Scripture offers metaphors, like a tree clapping it’s hands.
With a metaphor you have to be thoughtful. If you go out the door after worship this morning expecting to find a tree with clapping its hands you’re going to be disappointed. But if you can feel the joy that a metaphor expresses then you have found something profoundly meaningful, especially if joy is too rare in your life. And when you feel that joy, it will feel like all of the trees around you are clapping along with you.
When we first thought about placing a Giving Tree in our sanctuary to center our thoughts about generosity during October, I knew that I would find a way to use this reading about clapping trees from Isaiah. I pictured all of us standing beneath the tree’s branches clapping with joy because of the generosity we experience in the life of this church, generosity from God towards you, generosity shared between us as we give and receive from each other, and generosity that motivates our involvement in the world around us. Will your generosity solve all of the world’s problems? I don’t know. But I’m very sure that greed and stinginess don’t solve anything. So I’m willing to take the chance that generosity will move our world forward. Not backwards.
Here’s a story of generosity that I came across a few months ago. At first it sounds like a sad story, and at first it’s hard to imagine even a single tree clapping about anything. But listen carefully, and you may hear a whole forest of trees clapping by the time I’m done. This is from a column by Nicholas Kristof in the August 10th New York Times. It’s entitled “Rachel’s Last Fundraiser”:
Rachel lived outside Seattle and early on showed a desire to give back. At age 5, she learned at school about an organization called Locks of Love, which uses hair donations to make wigs for children who have lost their own hair because of cancer or other diseases. Rachel then asked to have her long hair shorn off and sent to Locks of Love. “She said she wanted to help the cancer kids,” her mother, Samantha Paul, told me. After the haircut, Rachel announced that she would grow her hair long again and donate it again after a few years to Locks of Love. And that’s what she did. Then when she was 8 years old, her church began raising money to build wells in Africa through an organization called charity:water. Rachel was aghast when she learned that other children had no clean water, so she asked to skip having a ninth birthday party. In lieu of presents, she asked her friends to donate $9 each to charity:water for water projects in Africa. Rachel’s ninth birthday was on June 12, and she had set up a birthday page on the charity:water Web site with a target of $300. Alas, Rachel was able to raise only $220 — which had left her just a bit disappointed. Then, on July 20, as Rachel was riding with her family on the highway, two trucks collided and created a 13-car pileup. Rachel’s car was hit by one of the trucks, and although the rest of her family was unhurt, Rachel was left critically injured. Church members and friends, seeking some way of showing support, began donating on Rachel’s birthday page — charitywater.org/Rachel — and donations surged past her $300 goal, and kept mounting. As family and friends gathered around Rachel’s bedside, they were able to tell her — even not knowing whether she couldn’t hear them — that she had exceeded the $47,544 that the singer Justin Bieber had raised for charity:water on his 17th birthday. “I think she secretly had a crush on him, but she would never admit it,” her mom said. “I think she would have been ecstatic.” When it was clear that Rachel would never regain consciousness, the family decided to remove life support. Her parents donated her hair a final time to Locks of Love, and her organs to other children. Word spread about Rachel’s last fund-raiser. Contributions poured in, often in $9 increments, although one 5-year-old girl sent in the savings in her piggy bank of $2.27. The total donations soon topped $100,000, then $300,000. Like others, I was moved and donated. As I write this, more than $850,000* has been raised from all over the world, including donations from Africans awed by a little American girl who cared about their continent. “What has been so inspiring about Rachel is that she has taught the adults,” said Scott Harrison, the founder of charity:water. “Adults are humbled by the unselfishness of this little girl.” Yet this is a story not just of one girl, but of a generation of young people working creatively to make this a better world. Mr. Harrison is emblematic of these young people. Now 35, he established charity:water when he was 30, and it has taken off partly because of his mastery at social media. (He’s not as experienced in well-drilling, so the wells are actually dug by expert groups like International Rescue Committee.) Youth activism has a long history, but this ethos of public service is on the ascendant today — and today’s kids don’t just protest against injustices, as my contemporaries did, but many are also remarkable problem-solvers. As for Ms. Paul, she’s planning a trip on the anniversary of her daughter’s death next year to see some of the wells being drilled in Africa in her daughter’s name. “It’ll be overwhelming to see Rachel’s wells,” she said, “to see what my 9-year-old daughter has done for people all over the world, to meet the people she has touched.” Rachel Beckwith, R.I.P., and may our generation learn from yours.
I love this congregation and the generosity we strive to live, with one another and the world around us. I loved hearing us clap our hands as we stood under the branches, and I am sure that some of us will hear the trees clapping as we go out the door in a few minutes!
NOTE: one of the youth challenged my examples of “metaphors” and claimed they are similes!
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