+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
I heard on a podcast this week that Advent wreathes are “so twentienth century” and the new hotness is something called a “Jesse tree.” My only association with that term had been from medieval art—Jesus’ lineage depicted as a tree growing from the root of Jesse being a common subject found in illuminated manuscripts of that era. The image that came to mind (which was, I found from a Google search of “modern Jesse tree”, completely wrong) was influenced by John the Baptist’s preaching of the axe laid to the root of the trees in this morning’s Gospel: a tree stump with with a single shoot of green coming out. I guess that would not be a very festive decoration for your house, but perhaps a more appropriate item for this season of quiet and penitential expectation. (As a counterpoint to my pretentious bluster, read my column in this month’s newsletter—out today—in which I confess to be prematurely celebrating Christmas in flagrant fashion!)
This morning’s lesson from Isaiah tells us that salvation comes from the stem or stump of Jesse. The Hebrew here, גזע, comes from a root word (pun intended) meaning to chop down. To all outward appearances the tree which is the house of Israel seems dead. But a single green shoot appears.
You’ve heard me say before that scripture contains a surplus of meaning, which is to say that the inspired word of God can say more than one true thing at once. The identity of the rod which grows from the stem of Jesse is a perfect example of this, when mentioned in Isaiah and in Paul’s use of the reference in the Epistle to the Romans and in what we see in this morning’s Gospel and the verses which immediately follow (presumably left out so we can read them on the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord next month, since our revised lectionary seems scared of repetition). That branch growing from what was wrongly reckoned dead is Israel, God’s chosen people and it is Christ himself and it is the Body of Christ, his Church. The Holy Spirit can walk and chew gum at the same time, so we don’t have to be dispensationalists (that’s a theological deep cut, which I can go on about at length sometime if you’re interested).
I want to make two points about this. I hope you’ll forgive me that; I try to keep my sermons to one point, but I’ll be brief. First, immediately after our Gospel lesson this morning, in which John the Baptist has God felling unfruitful trees, Jesus appears on the scene, he is baptized, and we hear the Father proclaim “this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Here God is, we might say, quoting himself. In Psalm 2 we read “I will rehearse the decree; the Lord hath said unto me, ‘Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.’” And in the 42nd chapter of Isaiah, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth.” The Psalmist and the Prophet no doubt had the entirety of the people in mind when committing these words to writing, and surely God did too, but he also planted the seed (arboreal pun yet again, very much intended) for recognizing here too a foretelling of the Messiah, the Christ, who was revealed to be Jesus of Nazareth that day in the Jordan river.
So the people and their Messiah are in some fundamental spiritual way one. The takeaway from this is more than just “so you shouldn’t be an anti-Semite” though sadly this has to be repeated from time to time, and increasingly recently. The larger point is that God doesn’t renegue on his promises, and in the Christ he has, as that hymn we’ll sing again two weeks from today “ransom captive Israel” once more and for ever. Nor does he take back that abundant life which he has promised us, no matter how often we act as if we don’t want that gift, so long as we return with penitent and obedient hearts.
The second point is found in our Epistle. Unlike his other letters, which focus on a particular issue in the community to which he’s writing, Paul has a lot going on in the Epistle to the Romans. The occasion for his writing is likely a planned journey and a desire to raise funds for the saints in Jerusalem, but he takes that opportunity to write a more fulsome, almost systematic theology than is found in his other writings. That said, he’s not unconcerned with providing some specific correction, and we can postulate from the lesson we heard a few minutes ago that the church in Rome suffered from the same conflict (if not as acutely) as those in Corinth and Galatia—namely, the difficulty of integrating Jewish Christians and Gentile converts.
Paul’s quotes from the Psalms, Deuteronomy, and (of course) Isaiah are meant, I think, both to remind the gentiles in his audience that they need to show some regard for their Jewish sisters and brothers who preceded them in the faith and to remind the Jews in his audience that these converts had a right to be there and for their opinions to be respected, too. We’re all connected, through Christ, to the root of Jesse, but the precise shape of the new growth may be surprising both to those in the old branch and to those grafted on. Letting it grow naturally with the divine vine-dresser’s care is not something either can control.
It might be tempting to approach this reality to comment upon national or global issues—international armed conflict, political polarization, and so forth—and this is no doubt relevant. But as you might have heard me say before, preachers who spend all their time focusing on that are usually grinding an axe that has little relevance to how his or her congregation actually live and move and have their being. It’s a convenient way to sidestep giving people insight into their own lives at which they might bristle far more than just realizing that the preacher has different politics than theirs.
So I simply want to leave you with something to ponder during this ponderous season. In what area of your life—family, work (both professional and voluntary), church, social groups—are you like the Roman Jewish Christian who insists that everything must be done as it ever was and where are you like the Roman Gentile Christian who insists that everything must be changed even though you’ve only been around about five minutes. Neither of these two extremes is particularly helpful, which I hope is evident.
If you want to test this, I don’t know, replace the chestnuts with jicama in your brussels sprouts this year and note who at the table thinks you’ve thereby ruined Christmas dinner and who thinks next year’s menu should be a wholesale experiment in Victorian-Latin-American fusion cuisine. Maybe neither extreme reaction is advisable, since you all presumably want to get through dinner together without a big fight.
I think calm, considered tolerance is not only preferable to being a radical or a reactionary if you want to have a merry Christmas. I believe it’s what we’re called as Christians to strive to do in our lives as a whole. Temperance is a Christian virtue, after all, and we might just need it now (in our culture, in our communities, in our hearts) more than ever.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.