I watched one afternoon in October to see my neighbor’s chainsaw whir and whine and whistle clean through the trunk of his tree, and I felt the wrongness of it, as he stood on a ladder to dismantle it limb-by-limb.
“I was putting off knowing it. All that day there had been a crashing in the wind, the sound of a chainsaw and that of a much heavier engine.” – Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
The tree looked brittle and dead, of course, because autumn had run off with its leaves. But I have lived here long enough to know it was a Bradford pear. Given another springtime, it would have come back wearing pearls of white.
When March opened its first flowers this year, I mourned the absence of that tree against the sky. I’d always looked to it as a sign of the times, like the fig tree Jesus pointed out to his disciples, whose unfurling leaves meant that summer was near. When Mr. Lowry’s Bradford pear bloomed, I knew spring was near, at the very gates. Its blooming would inaugurate a reign of daffodils and clover, redbuds and crocus, dandelions and branchfuls of cherry blossoms. The pear tree came through the gates of March like a King in his robes, tossing the streets with its petals.
But last week, someone told me these trees are invasive. Bradford pears reproduce quickly and shoot up on roadsides and in forests, pushing out other good, native species. Their cross-pollinated offspring can actually sprout thorns, and their dense foliage keeps out light for other plants to grow. Bradford pears are large and brittle and often splintered by wind and ice. Some states have even banned their planting or commissioned they be cut down. [ii]
To ban a tree seems unjust, just as cutting one down is something to grieve. In fact, the death of any living thing seems unnatural, because it is. I think this is why Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus—not because he could do nothing about death, but because the reality of death existed at all. Things did not die in God’s good garden. Chainsaw blows weren’t dealt. Trees did not fall.
Man had not yet fallen.
But nothing invasive choked the garden either. There weren’t unbidden plants with thorns or splinters, wrapping themselves around other good trees, strangling them. The only thing to invade Eden was the snake, and God promised that one day, he would choke that species to death (Gen. 3:15).
Here at the dawn of Holy Week, I see Jesus beginning that garden work.
He will start by clearing the temple of its invasive species so something better can grow — so true worshipers can come in. He’ll curse the barren fig tree so that it withers. He will prophesy destruction over God’s City, that when the fig tree greens, the King’s judgement will be near. But first, the King himself will hang on a tree, because in any garden, something must die before something else can live.
“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies” (1 Cor. 15:26).
Death may not have entangled God’s garden, but once man fell, death became the only way back to the garden.
My neighbors are good people, and I have to believe they did not kill their Bradford pear in vain. Maybe its shade kept more flowers from growing. Maybe its limbs threatened their home. Maybe, like the temple merchants, it kept out their children from playing beneath it (Matt 21:15). Maybe they knew that in all its beauty, the tree was choking out something truer and better and more alive.
Maybe the death of the Bradford pear was in the name of life.
On Holy Week of all weeks, that seems to be a resounding theme, and I have to ask myself:
What inside me must be cut down so I can really live?
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” ~ Galatians 2:20
[i] Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow. (Counterpoint: Berkeley, CA. 2000), 358
[ii] Tree information taken from: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/04/18/bradford-pear-trees-ban/7122246001/ https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/ornamental-pear/bradford-pear-trees-banned.htm
https://www.bhg.com/gardening/trees-shrubs-vines/trees/bradford-pear-tree/
bethanyjmelton.com 
This was beautiful, Bethany. I had chills the entire time I read. Thank you so much for sharing. 💕
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grace, thank you!
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