October 19, 2025
• Rev. Mindie Moore
The Faith of Trees Week 3: A Spring Awaits
John 12:20-25
We are in the final week of our series called “The Faith of Trees.” And in this series, we have been focusing on the health of our souls, and some of the spiritual rhythms we go through. Today, I want to start off by reading you a poem. It’s called “Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke: (SLIDE)
The leaves fall, fall as from far,
Like distant gardens withered in the heavens;
They fall with slow and lingering descent.
And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls
From out the stars into the Solitude.
Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine must fall
And lo! the other one:—it is the law.
But there is One who holds this falling
Infinitely softly in His hands.
Autumn by Rainer Maria Rilke
That poem by Rilke speaks to one of the constant truths in our lives—fall and then winter will come, both in the seasons and in our own personal rhythms. And reading this poem made me think about a season of my own life where we sort of got away from that rhythm. Zack and I lived in Southern California for 4 years, and one of my favorite things was, you guessed it, the weather. For the MAJORITY of the year, especially when it was cold and snowy back home in Indiana, it would be around 70 degrees and sunny. The air was fresh, it was a cold day if I had to wear a little knit hat and a puff vest. Perfect.
BUT, here’s the weird thing that Zack and I discovered once we moved back to Indianapolis and we would reminisce on different events from that time in our lives...we couldn’t quite remember WHEN they happened. I never realized what a backdrop the four seasons played in my memories, but once that got taken away, it became really hard to pinpoint the way that time passed. AND when we moved back to Indy, the harsh reality of having all the different seasons was very apparent. A knit hat and a puff vest wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
And so it sort of raised the question for me...do we NEED the seasons? I don’t know. Does it matter that without them time was a bit blurry? Maybe, but I also really enjoyed wearing sandals in January. But whether or not we NEED seasons...the fact is, in most places, they are a reality. And when we moved out of the perpetually 70 and sunny, we had to figure out how to deal with it. I quickly realized that if we were going to live back in the Midwest, it wouldn’t really be helpful to be constantly longing for perpetual summer. We had to embrace the Fall and the Winter because we were going to go through them whether we liked it or not.
The same concept is true in our spiritual lives. We’re going to have seasons where things are sunny, and we feel like we’re thriving and growing and we LOVE those seasons! AND. We’re also going to have seasons where we don’t feel that way at all. There are going to be stretches where it seems like we’re dormant. Like we’re waiting for what’s next. Like all the leaves have fallen off the spiritual tree and it’s just bare and a bit desolate. We might feel like God is really quiet and we don’t know if the conditions are right for anything to grow in us at all.
These can be some of the most difficult seasons of our faith. And I think part of what makes these quiet, dormant seasons so challenging is that it sort of pushes against what we might envision the “right” way to do faith is. In the American Christian culture, we have this undercurrent, sometimes we might not even realize it, of something called Christian Triumphalism. It’s this overemphasis of our faith bringing us victory, success, that those who call themselves Christians are superior to all other belief systems and that because of that...our lives will reflect that superiority in the things we have, the success we enjoy, basically in this elevated status. And I didn’t necessarily think I subscribed to this way of thinking, in fact, I would say that I try really hard to REJECT that kind of theology, but one of my mentors in the past, as I was trying to work through a difficult and disappointing season—very much a WINTER in my life—she called out how this was showing up in me, in ways I didn’t even realize. She told me, “you have this view of what faith and ministry should look like—it's this constant up and to the right trajectory, and you think it should move up and to the right as fast as it can...and maybe there’s actually a different way. Maybe God is going to use this season to teach you things you couldn’t learn any other way.”
And I needed to hear that because in that season, things really didn’t seem like they were moving at all. My faith felt really stagnant. I felt like some things in my life were either being taken away or changing or even pretty dormant. I had some big grief over that too. And so I had to figure out then, and we often have to figure this out throughout our lives—how I was going to hold on to hope, and look for spring, even when everything around me looked like the opposite of that.
The passage we’re reading in John today provides an interesting, and sort of complicated, commentary on that very thought. What Jesus is doing here in this teaching is he’s preparing the disciples for their own winter season. They don’t really know what is coming next, but Jesus can see what’s on the horizon. As busy as they’ve been, as much as Jesus’ name and reputation have been growing, something is about to happen that is going to disrupt this growth moment. Things are going to grind to a halt. They’ll find themselves devastated by the turn that their story will take. And the disciples are going to have to figure out what this means for them and how to keep going.
It’s interesting because the catalyst for this conversation is that a group of Greeks—which for our purposes reading this story means “non-Jews,” so people outside of the primary group that Jesus had been trying to reach—these Greeks have come to see Jesus. They’ve heard about him, they want to learn from him. And in this moment, Jesus has this realization that his message has grown beyond the smaller audience of “his” people. Now it’s starting to draw others in, now it’s beginning to usher in this new season that Jesus understands is going to contain his death and resurrection.
And when his death comes, Jesus knows that is going to do something to his followers that is going to be hard to come back from. Even despite the miracle that will happen with his resurrection, it’s not going to be the same. It’s not going to be dinners together and walks between towns. It’s not going to be moments of prayer, it’s not going to be all the things that have made up Jesus’ life with his closest friends. God’s going to be at work in the next season, in ways that are absolutely stunning and amazing...but there’s also going to be a profound sense of loss. There will be a season of regrouping. A moment where it’s going to be really difficult to see what God is up to.
So Jesus uses this metaphor of wheat to illustrate how they can prepare their hearts and minds for what comes next. And the wheat isn’t all that different than the tree metaphor we’ve been using in this series. He tells his followers (SLIDE):
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit. John 12:24
By giving this image of the wheat, he gives a different way to view what might seem like the end of things. Because when we look at a stalk of wheat, having it like this (hold up wheat) seems ideal. It looks good, if it was in the ground and not a fake floral arrangement, then it would be growing. But Jesus says, actually, it’s when the wheat dies and the seeds get scattered and it is taken OUT of it’s growth stage, that’s when something important starts to happen. You won’t see it at first. In fact, it’s going to look like a dormant mess of seeds just laying there...but wait. Because something good and fruitful will come out of this.
A lot of times, when Jesus spoke in these metaphors, his disciples had a hard time understanding the meaning behind what he was saying, especially in that immediate moment. It was usually AFTER the fact, with a little time and space and experience, that what he was getting at would make more sense. I’m telling you that because my guess is that when we are in our own seasons of grief, of loss, of dormancy, of just blah, that we probably can’t see the good and fruitful pieces of it when we’re in it. And if we can’t...that doesn’t mean we’re doing it wrong. It doesn’t mean our faith is weak. It means that it’s winter and winter claims it’s only 3 months long but I really do think somehow it manages to hang out longer than the other three seasons!
So if you’re in your own season like this right now, and you’re thinking that you are not in a place to see what good and fruitful and faithful things God is up to, that’s not only ok...but you’re not alone. In fact, I would guess that if you look around this room—in fact, please look around this room—I would guess that at least one of the people you just saw is in this kind of season too. I would guess that so many of us in here are grieving something and wondering what could be next. It might be the loss of a person we love. It might be having had to say no to an opportunity. It might be that you have a kid who is a senior in high school and you’re going through all the “lasts” of fall with them and even though it’s exciting it is also breaking your heart. It might be that you’ve had a relationship end and you’re trying to figure out what life looks like now. It might be a challenging mental health moment and you’re longing for things to just feel easy.
Whatever this season looks like, whatever our unique situations are, it can be so difficult to see beyond it. And sometimes all we can do is hold on to the hope that God is working even when we can’t see it or feel it or even hardly believe it. Sometimes all we can do is hold on to the hope that something unexpected can grow out of the times when our faith is being tested and the wait feel so very long.
What the disciples can’t really know in that moment is that as Jesus talks about the scattering of the wheat seeds and the fruit that will come from them, he’s describing what will become The Church. He’s presenting a vision of the ministry that they have been doing continuing long after his death, but in an even wider-reaching way. The Greeks have come TO Jesus in this moment, but after he’s gone, his followers will be going TO people who they may never have anticipated they would share faith and community with. This thing is going to grow and flourish, but it’s going to take some time.
The truth is, sometimes we are preparing to experience growth and flourishing, but it’s going to take an awful lot of time. And because it takes time, we can’t immediately see the fruit that will come after the dormant season. But even when it takes time, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.
Our Communications Director, Sam, told me a story about this butterfly bush (SLIDE) that he has. And the first year it was planted, it looked pretty sad. They wondered if it was dying, if they had planted it wrong. But what they realized was that a butterfly bush has to have a year to establish itself. They say with a butterfly bush, the first year it “sleeps” which means most of it’s growth is happening underground, establishing roots, doing a lot of internal stuff that no one else can see.
In year two, it begins to “creep.” The growth is slow, but it’s there. You get more leaves, maybe even a few flowers. It starts to look ok and you feel a little bit more confident in your gardening skills.
Year three though...that’s when they say “it leaps.” That’s when you really start to see the growth and the blooms. It’s not a quick process. And the temptation to give up on it and rip it out in favor for a fast-blooming annual from the garden center is definitely there. But if you can make it through the dormancy, the underwhelming, even the sort of ugly...there’s something really beautiful to be had.
If we can let ourselves resist giving up in those winter seasons, we will find spring again. We will see life begin to return, hope to start to sprout. And maybe we just need to remember that when we’re in these seasons, that they are exactly that—(SLIDE) it's a temporary season, not a forever reality.
Sometimes acknowledging that simple truth is enough to help us keep going. It’s enough to help us remember that spring WILL come again and that we’re going to make it through.
A couple of years ago, Glenn McDonald wrote about hope for the daily devotional he send out. I want to share his words with you:
In the Bible, hope is not a maybe. It is not a shot in the dark—something that may or may not happen. It is the assurance of a secure and unshakeable future in which we are going to be blessed. It is based on what GOD is doing, not on anything that WE can do.
We can survive the loss of many things. But we cannot survive the loss of hope. It is the spiritual fuel that keeps us going in the midst of a broken world.
A few years ago I came across three sentences that were written by a young woman in our community. She was in the midst of an exceedingly hard time:
“I know things will be ok in the end. Things don’t feel ok now. So this must not be the end.”
That is a statement of immense hope.
Hope is the conviction that God is real and at work accomplishing GOD’S purposes for OUR sake, even when we can’t yet connect all the dots to see exactly how God’s pulling it off.
We can’t always see what God is doing. Especially not in the winter seasons.
But we can hold on to the hope and the TRUTH that God is doing something.
In your bulletin, there’s a leaf. On one side you’ll see that it’s printed: this is not the end.
On the other side, we want to invite you to write whatever the “this” is. What is the winter you are going through right now that you just need a reminder that it’s not forever? It’s not the end of your story? As hard as it is, it’s not the thing that is going to take away your hope?
We’re putting these on a leaf so you can remember—even when the spiritual trees of our lives seem bare, even when we’re tempted to believe nothing will ever bloom again where we are...hope will spring up again. It always does. It always will.
And the cycle of the trees remind us of the cycles of our faith and the faithfulness of our God. As you watch the leaves begin to fall more and more over the next couple of weeks, as bare branches start to make up our landscape, as you start to reach for your knit hats and puff vests, let yourself remember: spring will come. It’s just a season.
Prayer.