2025.08.10 | The Peace of Wild Things

“The Peace of Wild Things”
A sermon preached at Eden United Church of Christ

in Hayward, California,

on Sunday, August 10, 2025, 
by the Rev. Brenda Loreman.
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture:  Revelation 22:1-5
Copyright © 2025 by Brenda Loreman

Throughout the summer, we’ve been exploring what the trees of the Bible have to say to us about the fruits of the Spirit. Over the last nine weeks, we’ve read from the Psalms and the Prophets; we’ve explored trees in the Torah, olive grafting tips from the Apostle Paul, and watched Zacchaeus climb a tree to see Jesus. We’ve studied the trees of creation in the first book of the Bible, and now we come to the end, and a vision of trees in the book of Revelation. We’ve also heard wonderful testimonies from nine different congregation members who’ve bravely shared their stories about kindness, patience, generosity, faithfulness, joy, love, gentleness, self-control, and peace. Thank you, Aisha, Sam, Yuliana, Jim, Bob, Viki, Jeffra, Jan, and Julio!

And thank you to all of you, who have bravely shared the words on your hearts each week, helping to create a tree here on the pulpit and out in the narthex that has been growing new leaves throughout the summer. We hope that this worship series has and will continue to bear fruit in you.

If you were here last week, today’s scripture may seem suspiciously familiar to you. This image from the last chapter of Revelation, of the river of the water of life, and the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, and its leaves for the healing of the nations, is straight out of the book of Ezekiel and the passage that we read last week. It’s apparent that the author of Revelation, John of Patmos, was intimately familiar with this earlier prophetic text, written nearly seven centuries earlier. I imagine that for John, this image from Ezekiel must have been one that gave him hope and a sense of peace in the midst of the turbulent and violent times in which he lived. It spoke to him of a world restored by God.

For me, this image has echoes of all the trees we’ve studied this summer: I see the tree of Psalm 1, putting down roots by the flowing stream, and the tree that Zacchaeus climbed to find his own healing. I see Isaiah’s trees of the field clapping their hands in joy. And I see the trees of life and knowledge that are at the center of the lush and abundant Garden of Eden.  

This image of peace and restoration in Revelation doesn’t bring us back to the Garden of Eden, but instead brings the garden into the city, the place of communal life together. It reminds us that we must live in community with our fellow humans, but we must also never forget that we are part of creation, and it is in the natural world that we find full expression of God’s creativity and love. We must have both to be fully at peace. And for me, at least, it is in the natural world that I feel closest to God and most at peace. 

One of my favorite poems is by the writer Wendell Berry, a writer and farmer and passionate environmentalist whose work often comments on the intersection of nature and human life. It’s called “The Peace of Wild Things”:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

For Berry, who has spent the majority of his adult life living close to the land on a farm, being among “the peace of wild things” is not an escape from reality or the concerns of the world, but rather a powerful reminder of the interconnectedness of our world. Peace can come when we remember that we are creatures among creatures—not separate from God’s creation, but part of it. I know that when I, as Berry says, “rest in the grace of the world,” not only am I filled with peace, but I am better able to offer that peace to others.

Friends, may we seek and find the peace that the Holy Spirit offers, whether that be the peace of wild things, or the peace found in community. And may we carry that fruit of peace into the world, offering it to a world hungry for restoration. Amen.