The Secret of the Bristlecone Pine

Isaiah 55:10-13   |   7/14/2002

The Methuselah Tree, a bristlecone pine that popped up before the Pyramids and has now lived more than 46 centuries, offers some survival strategies that can help the church to grow in even the harshest of conditions.

The marathon mentality.

It's what you discover as you get older, according to Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. He observes that when you're young, deferring gratification is not a common skill. But as you age, "you get better at the marathon mentality."
If this is true, Methuselah must have had the ultra-marathon mentality. After all, he lived a record 969 years, according to Genesis (5:27).

Still, the biblical Methuselah was a mere babe compared to the tree named after him, a bristlecone pine that is now more than 46 centuries old. The "Methuselah Tree," part of California's Inyo National Forest, was a seedling way back before the Egyptian Pyramids went up -- and it's still alive today.

What's its secret? Is it the marathon mentality? Or something else?

The conditions under which the Methuselah Tree has accomplished this extraordinary feat are surprising. At least they were to Robert Mohlenbrock.

A few years ago, this professor of botany visited the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, part of the Inyo National Forest. "At the time I thought that any organism that lived longer than the norm had to have optimal conditions going for it," he wrote in Natural History magazine. For plants, that would mean moderate temperature, shelter from extreme weather and plenty of moisture and nutrients.

Mohlenbrock was in for a shock. "When I stood looking at Methuselah," he recalled, "I knew I had been wrong." Though it was midsummer, a bone-chilling wind ripped right through him, and the scarce patches of soil at the site appeared to contain little -- if any -- moisture. Conditions turned out to be horribly harsh at the 10,000-foot elevation where Methuselah and other ancient bristlecones grow.

So, what's Methuselah's secret? How can it survive, much less thrive, in a place that would strike fear into the trunks of virtually any other trees?

It turns out that the bristlecone pine has evolved survival strategies that help it to cope with one of the most austere and unfriendly environments on the planet. Methuselah's adaptations include slow growth, extensive roots, disease resistance and small size.

These strategies are the basis of the tree's marathon mentality. And maybe Methuselah has something to teach the church today.

The prophet Isaiah certainly wasn't afraid to look to trees for inspiration. In today's passage, he speaks of God's Word as a force that comes down from heaven like the rain and the snow, bringing refreshment and growth and nourishment to the earth. God's Word always accomplishes its goal, according to the prophet, inspiring us to go out in joy and be led back in peace, and joining our jubilation are mountains and hills that "burst into song," and trees of the field that "clap their hands" (Isaiah 55:12).

The cypress tree and the myrtle shrub shall grow up, says the prophet, and they "shall be to the LORD for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off" (v. 13). These plants are a sign of the wonderful new things that God is doing in human life -- the days of judgment are over, says Isaiah, and new life is now available to all who repent.

It's probably no accident that the tree growing up in this passage is a cypress. These particular trees were used extensively for shipbuilding in the ancient Middle East, and grew abundantly in the area. Many believe that Noah used cypress wood for the ark -- a vessel that carried faithful people safely through a time of judgment, and delivered them to a place of new life, just like the church today.

So what is the secret of the bristlecone pine? The marathon mentality expressed in the four principles of slow growth, extensive roots, disease resistance and small size.
Slow growth. In many ways, bristlecone pines are like our nation's numerous small churches -- congregations found in remote rural areas, in aging suburban neighborhoods and in decaying urban centers. They are miles from high-growth areas, located in spots that feel rocky and lifeless. Bristlecones have to survive on less than 12 inches of precipitation a year, and most of that falls as snow in winter. In addition, they experience only about six weeks of a warm growing season, and they are rooted in a substance called dolomite, a limestone substrate with few nutrients.

With so little rain from the heavens, so little time to get energy from the sun and so little nutrition to be had from the soil, how do these pine trees grow?

Very slowly. A bristlecone may add to its girth no more than an inch per century. That's perfectly acceptable, and it serves as an excellent survival strategy for many 21st -century congregations as well. We shouldn't feel insecure when our membership growth doesn't match that of some booming megachurches. A modest increase every year has served the Methuselah Tree very well for over 4,600 years.

Extensive roots. Trees also know that if they live in challenging environments, then very little competition exists for water and nutrients. They can put down extensive roots and expand their upper branches, maximizing intake of scant resources. Churches that minister in transitional neighborhoods can concentrate on putting down deep roots in their communities, so that they can make the most of the gifts God gives them. By being known as a place where Scripture is faithfully studied and proclaimed, they can take full advantage of God's promise that his Word will not return to him empty. This Word shall accomplish that which God intends, like the rain and the snow which come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth (vv. 10-11).

Disease resistance. A true marathon mentality also includes a strategy for resisting disease. The Methuselah Tree has a dense, highly resinous wood that is a formidable barrier to invasion by insects, bacteria and fungi -- and in similar manner the church is challenged to create barriers to crippling invaders. These can be as simple as financial controls to prevent the theft of church offerings, or as detailed as policies and programs to prevent child sexual abuse in the Christian Education program, or maintaining a strong sense of doctrinal and theological integrity in a culture where it seems to be cool to affirm the theology du jour however fanciful and banal it may be.

Small size. Finally, bristlecone pines teach us that small size is one of the greatest of survival strategies. It fact, it is an approach that has allowed certain individual trees to live longer than entire civilizations. When the green part of a tree dies from a lightning strike, for instance, the tree copes by letting an equally significant part of its tissue and bark die as well. This way, the remaining greenery has a smaller total organism to support. Some particularly ancient bristlecones have only a thin strip of living bark left, which sustains a single living branch bearing but a few living twigs and needles.

In a sense, these ancients have gone back to being seedlings. The bristlecone allows most of itself to die, so that a small part of it can live.

What's the lesson for the church? To allow old and outdated practices and patterns to die, so that new forms of church life can live. To encourage small groups within the church to constantly be in the business of creating additional small groups, so that growth continues and stagnation is averted. To see the success of the church as being measured over the course of millennia, not over days or months or years.

So of the megachurch and the small church, which has the best chance of being around in 100 years? There is evidence that megachurches are suddenly experiencing slower growth rates, due in part to their lack of personal connection and intimacy. Some of them are responding by looking for ways to become more intimate internally -- establishing subgroups, redesigning worship spaces to facilitate conversation and setting up offshoot churches. "As the church grows larger, the church must grow smaller," reflects Pierce Klemmt, rector of Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, a 3,000-member Episcopal congregation that averages 1,200 worshipers each Sunday. "Whatever you do," he says, "meet in small groups." Small size is one of the bristlecone's greatest secrets, and one of the church's greatest survival strategies.

In China, the church, though persecuted and oppressed, has survived. When foreign missionaries were expelled, many thought the church would die. But the church, going underground, spread its root system far and wide, went small and remained strong.
If we take these tips from the trees, we'll be an ark of safety in stormy seas and a place of new life in an unfriendly environment. With such a marathon mentality, we'll be able to draw deeply on the gifts of God and join the world of nature in clapping and growing and giving glory to our Creator.

With the same kind of endurance and strength as the bristlecone pine, we'll be able to go out in joy and be led back in peace.

Sources:
Bezos, Jeff. "What I've learned," Esquire, January 2002, 83)

Tyson, Peter. "A tree's secret to living long," NOVA Online, November 2001, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/methuselah/long.html)

Commentary

Today's Scripture lesson is the conclusion of the conclusion of the so-called "Book of Consolation" of Second Isaiah. A careful reading of the entire 66 chapters of Isaiah reveals significant shifts in attention, tone and style at various points, especially after chapters 39 and 55. Whereas chapters 1-39 are focused on identifying and condemning the sins of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and on pointing to their imminent punishment, chapters 40-55 are directed at people who seem to be already in exile, already in punishment, and for whom further condemnation and punishment would serve no purpose. The contents of that section of Isaiah, therefore, have seemed to scholars for over 200 years to come from a different time and place from the first portion of the book, giving rise to the identification and designation of Second Isaiah's "Book of Consolation." (The third and final section of Isaiah, chapters 56-66, seems to be set back in Jerusalem and is focused on the work of restoration, suggesting yet another hand in the composition of Isaiah, so-called Third Isaiah.)

All of chapter 55 forms the conclusion of the Book of Consolation, with virtually every major theme of chapters 40-54 appearing. The chapter forms an inclusio with chapter 40, repeating important key themes and ideas found in that chapter (e.g., new exodus, 40:1-11 and 55:12-13; heaven and earth, 40:12 and 55:8-11; forgiveness, 40:2 and 55:6-7; etc. See further Carroll Stuhlmueller, C.P., "Deutero-Isaiah and Trito-Isaiah," The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. R.E. Brown, et al., [Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1990], 343). The final four verses of the chapter are a concluding oracle of salvation (vv. 10-11) in the form of a repetition of the omnipresent theme of the new exodus (vv. 12-13).

The organic relationship between verses 10-13 and the preceding chapter is signaled by the first word of the passage, "For" (v. 10). Verses 10-13 form the confirming conclusion of the entire pledge of refreshment for "everyone who thirsts" and those "that have no money" (v. 1). Verse 10 continues a series of "For" clauses that begins in verse 8 and extends through verse 12. The force in each case, as the Hebrew particle ki often indicates, is "Because . . ." (on which see further B.K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990], 640).

A number of literary features, especially in the elements of poetic parallelism used, are unique to this passage. The parallelism of rain and snow (v. 10), although not unknown in the Hebrew Bible (Job 37:6; Proverbs 26:1; Wisdom of Solomon 16:22), is not common, and the order is usually the reverse. The natural phenomenon of snow was not an image with widespread currency in most of Israel's climate (the exception being, of course, the northern mountains, in which context it is perhaps not accidental that a fifth of all the references to snow in the Hebrew Bible are found in the book of Job, which some scholars have suggested has a northern provenance), but the property of snow most commonly referenced in the Hebrew Bible was not its coldness but its whiteness, either in a negative comparison (e.g., denoting leprosy, Exodus 4:6; Numbers 12:10; 2 Kings 5:27), or in a positive comparison (e.g., having had one's sins purged away, leaving the individual as white as snow, Psalm 51:7 and, significantly, Isaiah 1:18). Here, interestingly, the property of snow that is valued is neither its temperature nor its color but its humidity: The melting snow, like the rain, is a source of refreshment to the earth that does not evaporate ("do not return there [i.e., heaven]") until it has accomplished the life-giving purpose for which it was sent by a benevolent Yahweh, who is master of natural as well as historical forces.

The parallel expression for fructifying the earth, "making it bring forth and sprout" (v. 10), is unique to this passage. Far more common is the expression "to be fruitful and multiply," which can be used not only of animals that reproduce but also of plants. Giving "seed to the sower" (v. 10) is an image, surprisingly (given Israel's agricultural society), that occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible; the image is actually more common in the New Testament (e.g., Luke 8:5; 2 Corinthians 9:10). Its poetic parallel, "bread to the eater," is an example of an extending or intensifying "And what's more . . . " poetic parallelism, of which the Hebrew Bible abounds. (See James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981.)
The expression to denote Yahweh's command or, more broadly, purpose, "my word" (v. 11), is found only infrequently in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Numbers 11:23; 27:14; Job 29:22; Isaiah 66:2; and especially in Jeremiah, 1:12; 23:28; 23:29), overshadowed by the much more frequent impersonal form, "word of the LORD." The appearance of the form in Job, coincidentally, also includes reference to liquid refreshment ("and my word dropped upon them like dew"). The expression is also used of human commands or purposes (e.g., Genesis 27:8, 13).

Concretization of imagery reaches one of its high-water marks in the Hebrew Bible with the image of Yahweh's word not returning to his mouth empty (v. 11), an image that occurs only here. The image may be borrowed from military imagery, where arrows and swords were sometimes described as not returning empty to their wielders (e.g., 2 Samuel 1:22; Jeremiah 50:9). The emphasis in the current context is on the efficacy of Yahweh's word, which not only announces Israel's imminent restoration but also has the power to bring that restoration to pass.
Hebrew poetic parallelism is exemplified with almost crystalline clarity in the first stich of verse 12: "For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace" (a/a', b/b', c/c'). The imagery signifies movement in only one direction (not out and back), and describes Israel's imminent release from captivity.

The response of nature to Israel's restoration (vv. 12-13) continues an important theme found elsewhere in Isaiah, namely, the close interrelationship between the historical and the natural (e.g., 41:18-19; 51:3). Although the imagery is metaphoric -- "and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands" -- the underlying reality is quite literal: Israel's historical fortunes are directly related to its environmental fortunes, and vice versa. While such an idea would seem obvious to any who had experienced the environmental degradation of warfare and other human-instigated catastrophes, in the present context the point is theological: The same God who controls nature controls Israel's past, present and future, and the reality to which that God calls Israel is a unified whole.Few passages in the Hebrew Bible make the point as eloquently as this one.

Animating Illustrations

In the White Mountains of California, the world's oldest-known living organism, a bristlecone pine, celebrates its 4,644th birthday ...

This tree, recognized by Edmund Schulman in 1957 for its great antiquity, clings to rocky ground at 11,000 feet in one of the driest places on Earth. "Methuselah" took root when the Great Pyramids were going up in Egypt and has lasted through the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Machine Age and now into the Nuclear Age.

The harsh conditions bristlecones endure, such as alkaline soil, scant moisture, desiccating winds, constant freezing and six-week growing seasons, allow little chance for insects, fungus and rot to survive. Bristlecone pines have also survived gold rushes, silver strikes, nuclear testing and the surreal transformation of the desert.

Schulman's goal was to use the annual growth rings of bristlecones as precise dating instruments and recorders of climate. By overlapping rings from living trees and older, dead trees, scientists have established an unbroken chronology of nearly 9,000 years, providing an important tool for investigating long-term climate change and the effects of the recent rise in greenhouse gases.

--"Nova examines the oldest living thing on earth, the 'Methuselah Tree,'"
KET Web site, ket.org/pressroom/ 2001/49/NOVA__002817.html.

Jim, a young Christian in Atlanta, made this bold claim: "Church is one of the most hopeful public experiences of life. Watching people come in and realizing that these people are well-educated and powerful. They've got all kinds of things they could be doing with their time -- but they are here. This is where our hope is, individually and collectively."

--Gary W. Charles, The Bold Alternative: Staying in Church in the 21st Century (Louisville: Geneva Press, 2001), 2.

A great study of the healthy church was undertaken by Christian A. Schwarz in his Natural Church Development published in 1996. He identified eight characteristics of a healthy church as follows:

1. Empowering Leadership -- Is our mission to gather helpers for one leader's ministry or to release the ministry potential that is in the "helpers"?

2. Gift-Oriented Ministry -- Does the spiritual gifting of each individual fit the ministry task he or she performs?

3. Passionate Spirituality -- How much do we inspire passion and enthusiasm for Christ and his cause?

4. Functional Structures -- Do our internal structures foster growth and multiplication or hinder it?

5. Inspiring Worship -- How much do our worship services help people get inspiration from the Lord?

6. Holistic Small Groups -- How much do our small group ministries meet the spiritual, mental and physical needs of individual believers?

7. Need-Oriented Evangelism -- How much do we direct the gospel to the felt needs of the people we are ministering to?

8. Loving Relationships -- How much does our church demonstrate love in action and deed?

--"Eight characteristics of a healthy church," Healthy Churches, Chattanooga Resource Foundation, May 21, 2001.

We must care for our bodies as though they were going to live forever, but we must care for our souls as if we are going to die tomorrow.

--Augustine, quoted in Money Matters, August 2001, 3.

Do you have any idea what it would cost you to be in worship today if the church charged you an admission price instead of passing the plate? If the ushers sold you a ticket at the door, you'd pay an estimated $15 to $22 to attend a mainline Protestant service. You'd pay less, about $6, to attend a Catholic mass, because these congregations are an average of about eight times the size of Protestant congregations. A rough rule of thumb is that a well-run 150-member church -- the typical size -- requires about $100,000 a year.

--Melynda Dovel Wilcox, "On a shoestring and a prayer," Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, May 1999, 99.

It has long been thought that regular attendance at religious services provides a spiritual background of support that aids good health. Studies have shown that people who attend services frequently have less anxiety, depression and substance abuse, lower blood pressure, fewer strokes and fewer suicides than those who are not so regular. It's not surprising, therefore, that a recent large study of people over 65 from the Bible Belt in the USA showed prolonged survival in those who were frequent attendees at church.

The survey was done in subjects selected by Duke University researchers as part of a project supported by the National Institute of Aging... .

Over the 6-year follow-up period, frequent attendees were 46% less likely to die than infrequent attendees. Even taking into account all the possible confusing factors that might affect the results (e.g., poor health or disability preventing attendance at church), there was still a 28% improved survival in frequent attendees.

--"Frequent churchgoers live longer," Novartis Foundation for Gerontology, HealthandAge.com. Retrieved January 14, 2002.

Children's Sermon

Show the children a potted plant, and ask them what the plant needs in order to grow. They might suggest sunshine, and water, and nutrition from the soil. Have them explain to you what happens when rain falls on a plant like this, how the water soaks into the ground and then is absorbed by the roots and taken into the plant. Ask them if the water always does its job and helps the plant to grow. Yes! Tell them that the prophet Isaiah knew this about water, which is why he said that the rain and snow never fail to water the earth, "making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater" (Isaiah 55:10). Point out that water is always successful at getting its job done. Then ask them if the same is true for the Word of God -- does it also accomplish its job? Explain that God's Word does not help plants to grow, but it does help us to grow as people, and become strong and healthy. Ask them: How do you feel when you hear that God loves you? When you hear that God forgives you? When you feel that God wants you to be happy? Emphasize that all these feelings come from the wonderful Word of God, a word that always does its job and helps us to feel joyful and peaceful (v. 12). Encourage the children to share God's words of love and forgiveness and happiness with people around them, so that they can grow and become strong and healthy, too.

Worship Resources