My wife and I had occasion recently to visit the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens which sit on a peninsula jutting into Sarasota Bay in sunny Florida. The gardens are noted for their bromeliad and orchid collection (there are 2,500 different kinds of bromeliads in the world, they told us, and 25,000 different kinds of orchids, not including hybrids). It is a breathtaking display of “the wonderful works of God” (Acts 2:11). There is also a fernery with some of the 10,000 species of ferns that occur worldwide. A bamboo pavilion highlights the largest of the grass family, and there are banyan and palm groves, a wonderful hibiscus garden, and a large display of succulents (including a wide variety of North American cacti).
As we relished the tropical air, the riot of color, and the exotic aromas that wafted past us, we came to the furthest point of the walk at the end of the peninsula. There spreading its branches by the water’s edge was a bo tree, ficus religiosa, or so said the sign at its base.
Why the term religiosa? The sign explained:
Sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists, the bo tree is the most revered tree in the world. The Buddha meditated for six years under a bo tree and there received the enlightenment. Bo trees are planted near temples in India because of this association with the Buddha, and near homes to assure happiness and prosperity.
I appreciated receiving the information on the plaque, but I must beg to differ. The bo tree is definitely not the most revered tree in the world. There is another tree, dear to the hearts of untold millions, once planted on the brow of Golgotha. What fruit it has borne! The life from that tree has been grafted into a multitude of others, bringing eternal blessing. Of this tree Peter could write: “And though they found no cause of death in Him, yet desired they Pilate that He should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of Him, they took Him down from the tree, and laid Him in a sepulchre. But God raised Him from the dead” (Acts 13:28-30). What a tree!
It was this very point that Peter was driving home at Pentecost when he said: “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:30-31). Now technically, the Lord was hanged on a tree and slain, not the other way around. But Peter was reminding the people of their own well-known history. The book of Joshua, in recording the conquest of Canaan, recounts the execution of the Canaanite kings and their being hanged on trees (Josh. 8:29; 10:26). The Lord Jesus was the only “King of the Jews” who was slain and “hanged on a tree.”
The leaders of the Jews had wanted the Lord to die at the hands of the Romans because the Romans executed by crucifixion. The Sanhedrin wanted Him under the curse of God. But, by a happy circumstance, God wanted Him under the curse of God as well! Paul explained the necessity of the Lord dying on a tree: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:13-14).
Later in life, the one who had rebuked the Lord for even suggesting that He would die on a cross (Mt. 16:22) now understood the significance of the tree and the sweet fruit it would bear: “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness…” (1 Pet. 2:24). What did the Buddha ever do for our sins?
There is an eternity of difference between a man who “received the enlightenment” and the Man who is “the Light of the world.” Who but Heaven can measure the distance between a man under a tree and the Man on the tree? It is Calvary’s tree, when planted near the heart, that “assures happiness and prosperity.”