May 8, Easter 7C (Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26)
In the 19th century, a number of American printmakers popularized the image of the tree of life (you can see these on Google Images). Currier and Ives designed one, with each fruit of the tree labeled as one of the Christian virtues; Victorian angels with eyes upcast are standing in attendance at the tree, and in the distance is the city of God, shining like a magnificent Walt Disney castle. In another depiction, two angels are protecting the tree from a devil who is brandishing an axe. Heavenly rays, shining from above, are labeled Grace.
But the lithograph most appropriate for this Sunday was produced in 1847 by the Kellogg brothers and Horace Thayer. In the foreground are people milling about in a city, standing on The Broadway and engaged in all manner of sin, labeled drinking, extortion, usury, chambering, and wantonness. Babylon, Mother of Harlots, wearing her low-cut gown, beckons the people toward the open door to hell. Meanwhile, two Methodist preachers are trying their best to call the crowd toward the gates of the city of God, and inside these gates is the tree of life. The fruits of the tree are, as expected, labeled with the Christian virtues. Above the tree is God, represented by the classic triangular design. And on the trunk of the tree is the crucified Christ.
During Eastertide we have read not the blood-and-guts passages of the book of Revelation, but rather its resurrection songs. Today’s reading concludes these songs. The baptized are wearing their white robes, entering the city by its gates and enjoying the fruits of the tree of life. (Remember that in C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, the witch has to climb over the wall to lurk near the tree in the center of the garden.) But the tree of the book of Revelation is not merely one of the countless archetypal trees that religions and cultures everywhere have imagined. This tree is the risen Christ, the Alpha and the Omega not only of this book but of the whole of Christian life.
