How to Plant a Tree like a King

For us and our salvation, he came down from heaven

The recent royal visit of King Charles III to check in on his loyal subjects in Canada had me pondering another royal visit: Wen the King of Heaven, the Son of God, the second person of our triune God visited his people down on earth.

While Jesus had a complicated relationship with trees, I was quite unsurprised to read that during his official royal visit to Canada to ceremoniously open the new session of Parliament, His Royal Majesty took the time to plant a new tree in the gardens of Rideau Hall. The Royals love to plant trees.

CBC reported that Charles planted a tree on the grounds of the 19th-century regal villa surrounded by hundreds more Canadian royal watchers, (Prime Minister) Carney, (Governor General) Simon and the country's lieutenant governors and territorial commissioners.

It’s funny to think about the King planting a tree, because without YouTubing it, you know exactly how it played out. Even as you think about it now, do you picture the King digging a hole and getting mucky, down on his hands and knees to place the root of this tree into the dirt? Do you picture him packing down the earth and getting that earth caked on his hands and under his well manicured nails? Do you see him giving the tree its first watering, splashing mud all over himself?

No, of course you don’t.

In fact tree-planting is an entire industry in Canada. Forestry companies hire thousands of seasonal workers to reforest huge stretches of land in British Columbia, planting millions of trees a year. What does tree-planting look like for these seasonal workers? Words like back-breaking come up a lot. A very superficial search will give you a number of articles and blogs on what to expect before taking on a tree-planting job with stark descriptions of 12-hour work days, bush camps with no plumbing, rugged landscapes, bugs, extreme weather and very high employee turnover rates.

To be clear, absolutely no one pictured King Charles III in these conditions when they read that CBC article. Everyone understood exactly how it all played out. King Charles III showed up in his tailored double-breasted bespoke suit and his leather loafers, he was handed a shiny shovel that had never been used and did not bear even a speck of dust on it and he moved a small mound of soil from right next to him onto the already packed down and well watered soil around the tree trunk. And then handed the shovel back to his handlers, who congratulated him with Well done Sir, jolly good! as the assembled crowd applauded heartily.

That is how the King of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms plants a tree! The King doesn’t do rugged. Charles doesn’t get down in the dirt.

That is what makes the doctrine of the incarnation so mind-bogglingly counterintuitive. When the King of Heaven came into the world, he did not descend in splendid garb onto a waiting tufted throne with fluffed pillows. No he came into the world the way you and I came into the world, and he experienced all the muck, the dirt, the splashing mud… From the womb of Mary, to the manger, to the mountain, the desert, the garden of Gethsemane, to Calvary, Jesus experienced it all, he felt it all, he submitted to it all, he endured it all…

No handlers, no one to shield him from any of the pains, discomforts, hurts and stresses of this life. He knew poverty and abuse and loneliness and sorrow and grief and betrayal and nastiness and he endured it all…

Why?

The Nicene Creed tells us: For us and our salvation, he came down from heaven.

Jesus came for us, and he knew where to find us. This is where he found us, down here. Not attempting to make our way up to him, but wallowing in the mire. Fully embracing the fallenness of this world, just trying to get a piece of it for ourselves.

We had all joined in, all made ourselves right at home down in the fallen world, like pigs in muck… but not Christ, he felt the temptations too. The Nicene Creed says He was made man. He was tempted in every way. That’s what it means to be made man.

This is important, you would not read that CBC article about the king in the gardens of Rideau Hall and then seek him out for his gardening tips… to be honest I don’t think you could ask him for a glass of water or the time of day. But you can turn to Christ, you can approach Christ, you can depend on Christ and you can seek to model your life after Christ.

Hebrews 4 tells us: Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

You can draw near to Christ, you can let him lead you on his path, and you can submit to his will for your life, because he knows what it’s like to be faced with temptation and hurt and disappointment and betrayal and even death.

Jesus started out the human experience where we all started life, and he did not skip out before things got difficult either. From beginning to end, Jesus lived an entire human life. As we read in Philippians, Jesus became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

The full experience of human life is not experienced unless we experience death. That is the fundamental issue of human life in a fallen world: death. That is the ultimate wage of sin: death. That is the only possible outcome of our sin… death. Don’t be fooled by its promises: joy, escape, fulfillment, riches, power, elation, celebrity… there is only one thing that sin is guaranteed to deliver and that is death.

A life led on our own terms, in rebellion to God is sure to lead to death, the grave, the decomposition of our body, just as our body was built up and grew, it will break down and rot. From dust to dust.

Jesus tasted that death, and not by quietly slipping away into a sleep from which he never woke in the comfort of a downy duvet and feather pillows… He knew that the death that he would have to endure would not merely be the end of a life well lived, but the punishment for a sinful life. Jesus’ death was the capital punishment reserved for the vilest of offenders.

Jesus’ death stands in contrast to his sinless life, because it has to be the death deserved by the most depraved of us, his death must be sufficient punishment for all the sin of the world.

And so Jesus suffered the humiliation and excruciating pain of death on a Roman cross, in crucifixion. He was unjustly condemned by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate for the crimes that he uniquely never committed and he was executed for your sins and for mine, so that we would not have to endure that death. And Jesus was buried.

Jesus’ earthly ministry, his life on earth led to the same place all human life on earth leads… to the grave, that’s what it means to experience human life.

In order to plant a tree you need to get down in the dirt. And in order to save a dead person from the grave, Jesus needed to get into the grave to lift us out of that grave. It was the only way. And he did it out of love for you. He could not bear to see you in that grave. Jesus wept.

As Paul writes in Colossians, you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross!

That was the final blow of his humiliation, the grave. And together with Christ, our guilt was put to death, the penalty for our rebellion against God was settled, our debt is paid, our sin is atoned. Praise God.