Is there any way to remember into the future? Yes. Plant trees now. From Kenya to Kentucky, this is a holy human action that roots us in the present and branches out to a future only God can see.
Here is an Appleseed service that can be part of an entire worship event, or as a ritual on its own. Invite children to carry in baskets of apples at the beginning, and lead the group in singing the first verse known as the Appleseed Grace. Distribute the apples at the conclusion of the litany, or give apples after people receive communion.
Leader: A sower went out to sow.
Sing:
“Oh, the Lord is good to me,
and so I thank the Lord,
for giving me the things I need;
The sun and the rain and the apple seed.
The Lord is good to me.”
People: Keep us as the apple of your eye.
Hide us in the shadow of your wings.
Leader: You can count the seeds in an apple,
People: but who can count the apples in a seed?
Reader 1:
Apple Facts and Seed Stories
The Apple is a fruit of the tree, Pyrus Malus. It’s usually grown in temperate regions, and introduced to America from England in 1629. It’s become a classic image of excellence in education and A “is for apple” is posted in countless classrooms in this country for almost two centuries. An apple for a teacher was once a way for a student to say “Thank you” but apple-polishing is not advised by one’s peers, unless of course you’re talking about iphones or computers.
The connection between eyes and apples and pupils is also a traditional one. Hear the words of the psalmist: “Keep me as the apple of your eye…” In the nineteenth century “apple of your eye” also meant “pupil”. The pupil of one’s eye was named from the Latin word, “pupilla”. When Romans looked into someone’s eyes they saw a tiny reflection of themselves, like a child, so seeing one’s self was always a learning experience. To see eye to eye is to see as we are seen, the Apostle Paul writes. We are made in the image of God, and we are seen as the pupil, in the apple of God’s eye.
Sing:
“Oh, and every seed I sow,
Will grow into a tree.
And someday there’ll be apples there,
for everyone in the world to share.
Oh, the Lord is good to me. “
Apple Theology:
Traditionally scholars have translated the fruit of “the knowledge of good and evil” as an apple. Biblical botanists think the fruit was probably a pomegranate, an apricot or a fig. Who connected apples and snakes? Hard to tell, but in medieval days, red was the mythological color for sexuality.
I earned an A in Apple theology my second year in seminary, but the lesson was learned down on the farm. Reading week in institutions of higher education is still geared to a largely forgotten agricultural calendar, but it gave me the excuse to head for the hills of West Virginia. I arrived in time to help with picking, pealing, canning, freezing apples. The old apple tree beside the farmhouse had survived a fiery trial when the house was destroyed. Its apples weren’t large, but made good pies. It was the stuff of legend; claims to kinship with Johnny Appleseed were part of the mythmaking mischief of my Grandfather, A.E. Hoyt. The apple orchard by the barn had been planted in honor of my parents’ 25th anniversary, although the fruit fed more deer than humans. It’s also where we sowed my dad’s ashes when it came time for his planting.
I pulled up a chair beside Grandma’s rocker that was in the shade and we peeled and sliced through most of the morning. I regaled her with stories of my misfit days at a southern bastion of righteousness. She mainly listened. I seem to have gotten the talkative genes from my grandfather’s side. In the middle of a long pause, she suddenly said, “It wasn’t an apple.” It didn’t exactly make sense since we were surrounded with apples, but you can say whatever whenever it strikes your fancy if you’re past 90.
Since I’d been telling stories about my Old Testament class, perhaps what she’s doing is exegesis, scripture interpretation. “You mean, it wasn’t an apple in the Garden of Eden?” “Right. It wasn’t an apple.”
It wasn’t, at least according to scriptural sources, but I had to go to seminary to learn that it was probably a fig, or a pomegranate. How did she arrive at her conviction?
“Why wasn’t it an apple?” “Because you can trust an apple.” That’s certainly a bottom line. God, Mother, and apple pie suddenly has a context. My curiosity gets stronger than a sense of discretion. What did she think it was, since it couldn’t be an apple?
“A banana,” she said with a perfectly straight face. I managed to put my paring knife down before I collapsed in hysterical laughter. Visions of Mae West and the Marx Brothers cavorting in the orchard! I finally catch my breath when she bushwhacks me again. “How else do you explain the fall of Man?”
Leader: You can count the seeds in an apple,
People: but who can count the apples in a seed?
Reader 2:
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This folk wisdom contains some of the apple’s attributes as a healthy food. They lack fat, sodium and cholesterol. They’re packed with nutrients such as thiamine, riboflavin, and phosphorous. They are now known to be fortified with quercetin, a flavonoid that may help prevent cancers of the lungs, skin, and colon. Fiber. Iron. Natural sweeteners. Calcium. But in case you need a little sugar you can have: apple betty, apple butter, apple cider, apple cobbler, apple crisp, apple cake, apple compote, apple dumplings, apple fritters, apple juice, apple jack, apple pie, pudding, and preserves. You can medicate yourself with baked, bleached, cooked, crab, dried, fried, candied, caramel, stewed or plain fresh apples. Just what the doctor ordered.
Sing
Oh, the earth is good to me,
And so I thank the earth,
For giving me the things I need
The sun and the rain and the apple seed,
The earth is good to me.
Sowing Seeds
A sower went out to sow. Farming’s tough. Being land-based in a culture that commutes or “on-lines” for a living is hard to sustain. Staying rooted in a socially tornado time is tough. Farming is an industry that regularly suffers from “acts of God”: tornados, droughts, frost, floods. Add agrobusiness, unforgiving banks It is rough, and tough, and folks whose Apple plugs in will ever understand how addictive digging in the dirt can be.
So what’s the good news in this story about seeds? It’s all good seed. The trustworthiness of God is underlined in that one small fact: all the seed is good, capable for bringing a new creation to light and life. There are no bad seeds in this story.A sower went out to sow…
But folks who farm might ask a question about God’s intentions when they get to the rocky soil. He should have known better? You don’t normally sow wild oats, or hybrid corn in some stranger’s field. You sow what you know, your own ground. So why did the sower throw good seed on hard ground. Hope is easily sprouted, but hard to harvest. Why risk the very source of your survival? Why throw good seed on stone hard ground?
I once asked an old WV farmer who answered to the name “Grandpa Cabbagehead” why the sower threw perfectly good seed on stony soil. He asked me a question as a way of answering. “How long do you plan to be farming?” “That,” he said, “is the right question to ask.”
How long do you plan to be farming? A seed encounters a rock. Spouts roots, creeps into cracks, struggles for room, dies. What happens to the rock? One very small piece is cracked open. It’s the first step in a rock becoming soil. That sower was sowing for the future that may be a long time coming, but she’s making room for a harvest that someone will see.
Reader 3:
Apples don’t normally escape from orchards and grow in the wild. An unexpected presence can usually be explained by the bees, except of course, for the ones planted by humans like the real-life legend named John Chapman, best known as Johnny Appleseed.
There’s an old poem, one verse of which runs:
“And if they inquire whence came such trees,
Where not a bough once swayed in the breeze,
The reply still comes as they travel on,
“Those trees were planted by Appleseed John.”
Apples require several years to reach bearing age. Very fruitful trees are slower to come into fruit than trees that bear normally. Prepare the soil in fall for a spring planting. For fertilizing good news, see Luke 13: 6-9. Aged manure is advised. If you want to prune an apple tree you need to prune when you first plant it and then repeat yearly. Thin out weak and tangled branches to let sunlight into the center. You’ll need to go easy on the old-timers if they haven’t been tended to in some time. Don’t try to force an old tree into a new shape, but you can prune it along the lines it’s been growing into over the years.
Reader 4:
If you ever wonder if the Creator likes variety, make a list of apples: Akane, Ben Davis, Cortland, Dolgo Crab, Empire, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Gravenstein, Grimes Golden, Jonagold, Liberty, Limbertwig, Macoun, McIntosh, Newtown Pippin, Northern Spy, Red Delicious, Rome Beauty, Shockley, Spartan, Stayman, Winesap, and last, but not least, the Yellow Delicious, courtesy of West by God Virginia and Johnny Appleseed.
Sing:
“Oh, the Lord is good to me,
and so I thank the Lord,
for giving me the things I need;
The sun and the rain and the apple seed.
The Lord is good to me.”
