2025.06.15 | Like a Tree

“Like a Tree”
A sermon preached at Eden United Church of Christ

in Hayward, California,

on Sunday, June 15, 2025, 
by the Rev. Brenda Loreman.
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture:  Psalm 1
Copyright © 2025 by Brenda Loreman

If you read the Bible from cover to cover, you’ll notice that it is full of trees. From the beginning, in Genesis, we read of the bountiful garden of Eden, with the tree of life the tree of the knowledge of good and evil right in the middle of it, to the end, in Revelation, with its image of the New Jerusalem, and the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, and the leaves for the healing of the nations. And in between, there is the wise judge Deborah, dispensing her wisdom from beneath a palm tree. And there is the prophet Elijah, fleeing into the desert in fear for his life, collapsing under a broom tree, telling God he just can’t go on. And there is Jesus, who curses a fig tree that bears no fruit. And there is Paul, who says that we are the trees, that we bear the fruit when we are filled with the Holy Spirit.

We begin today not with one of these stories, but with a psalm, right from the very center of the Bible. As the first psalm in the book, Psalm 1 kind of sets the tone for all 150 of the psalms, and it communicates how we are to be grounded in the Torah, the way of life of one who listens to the wisdom of God, rather than the false teachings of the world. Like Paul, the psalmist compares us to trees. When we are in alignment with God, Psalm 1 reminds us, we are “like trees / planted by streams of water, / which yield their fruit in its season, / and their leaves do not wither. / In all that they do, they prosper.”

What better image to play with for a church named Eden, on the corner of Birch and Grove, beside a creek and a redwood forest, settled in a neighborhood called Cherryland, named after the orchards of William Meek—many of them cherry trees—planted in the 1860s? Like the psalmist's tree-–and like Paul’s tree of the Spirit—we are planted by a stream, bearing fruit.

For at least the last 20 years or so, the only cherry trees we’ve had here at Eden have been ornamental. But we now have a fruit-bearing cherry tree, planted in front of Pioneer Chapel; it’s a parting gift from Pastor Arlene and Stephanie. We’ll have to wait a few years to see if it bears fruit. Most of our trees, though, are a California native–Sequoia sempervirens, the coast redwood. They were planted after the 2001-2007 campus renovation cleared out the old shrubbery along San Lorenzo Creek. For such tall trees, redwoods are unusual in that their root systems are relatively shallow. The roots only go down about 10-15 feet, but they spread out up to 100 feet, and they twine together with other redwoods in the forest. They prefer to live in community; they are stronger together, sharing the structure and nutrients of their intertwined roots.

Eden Church wasn’t always here, on the corner of Birch and Grove. For the first two years of its existence, the church met on the second floor of a dry goods store on the corner of Watkins and B St., across from where Hayward City Hall is now. Pioneer Chapel was built in 1867, and stood on the southwest corner of A St. and First St., which is now Foothill Blvd. The chapel was moved here to Birch and Grove in 1947 after the congregation bought the land for a new church in a quieter location, eventually building the campus we have today.

In the late ‘90s, after the church had learned it was to be one of two primary beneficiaries of the Oliver estate, but before the assets of the trust had been transferred to the church, the congregation spent some time discerning if this spot in Cherryland was where it should continue to root itself. We were a small congregation without a lot of capital, and we knew it might take years to see the assets of the Oliver Trust. The building was falling down around our ears. The neighborhood had changed in the last fifty years, and we weren’t drawing new folks from Cherryland. We wondered if we should sell and move somewhere else. Over several weeks, the congregation met in small discernment sessions and weighed the options. 

The consensus that came out of those discernment sessions was clear. We honored our roots; we stayed. We’ve now been here at Birch and Grove almost as long as the chapel stood at the corner of A and First. I think we’re here to stay.

We rooted ourselves with even more commitment than before, building community with our neighbors and making all of us stronger in the sharing of support and nourishment, just like the redwoods we planted by the creek. 

And, as all churches do-–especially one that has been around for 160 years—we have come to another crossroads, another time of transition and discernment. What is the Holy Spirit stirring in our hearts as we move forward into a new season? What fruit is waiting to ripen in us? What new shoots will spring forth from our deeply planted roots?

Throughout the summer, we’ll be exploring what the trees of the Bible have to say to us as we discern together. And you won’t just be hearing the pastors’ thoughts about this. We’ve invited you to offer your testimonies about the fruit of the Spirit. I can’t wait to hear what the Spirit is stirring in you. 

To begin, I invite Aisha Knowles to offer her testimony on one one of the fruits of the Spirit the world could use a lot more of right now—kindness.