The Bible is filled with images of trees of paradise, and it’s really worthwhile exploring them for what they reveal.
One special tree, of course, is found in Genesis—the Tree of Life. It appears also in the Book of Revelation (chapter 2), and it is multiplied in chapter 22 to include many trees along the river “that gives joy to God’s City” (Psalm 46). Thanks to our liturgy (Breviary, Office of Readings, antiphon for Psalm 1), it is connected to the “tree” (the Cross) of Calvary—which truly brings life.
Enjoyment of one’s “vine and fig tree” (I Kings 5; I Maccabees 14; Micah 4: Zechariah 3) is proverbial for being in paradise, and it is here that Jesus picks up the image (John 1) of a prophetic vision He had of Nathanael “under the fig tree”—a promise of salvation that caused Nathanael to cry out, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”
This weekend’s readings make another association with trees. Ezekiel’s image is of the top of a cedar tree; Jesus’ image is of the growth of a mustard seed. Both promise the same thing—that “birds of every kind”/“birds of the sky” will find rest and shade. It is a mark of peace, but it is also an image of the inclusive nature of the Kingdom—there will be room even for Gentiles (who have been symbolically described as the birds). Salvation in Christ is for all people, though beginning with the Jews.
The salvation and peace (shalom) of the Kingdom promises security, safety, wholeness, joy, contentment. It is (to make an inappropriate quote from Hamlet) “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” It is to be home, with all the powerful connotations that word involves. “Home,” after all, is where I love and am loved, where I am complete and whole. Robert Frost had it wrong, I think, in his narrative poem “The Death of the Hired Hand”—Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. I rather think that “Home is the place where, when it’s time to go there, they’re happy to take you in.”
Vines and fig trees: good, choice wine and delightful, sweet fruit—symbols of blessedness! Mustard seeds and crests of cedar: promises of security and happiness for all. Yes, this certainly is “a consummation devoutly to be wished.”