Author: John Drymon

+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 42^nd 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.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I’m sure I’d heard this morning’s reading from Isaiah before, but the first time it really sunk in for me was twenty four years ago. It was the first Sunday of Advent 2001. The terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania had happened three months previously, and our country had invaded Afghanistan just a month-and-a-half earlier. And a callow, seventeen-year-old version of myself heard this at church that morning:

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

It might have been the first time it occurred to me just who else was hearing this reading. Politicians at church in Washington that morning heard it. Congregations at small Christian churches in majority Muslim countries like Iraq and Pakistan heard it that morning. Soldiers fortunate enough to attend chapel services in Afghanistan heard it that morning. And how very far from reality those words from Isaiah seemed.

How far from reality those words still seem. I sometimes joke about how out-of-date my pop culture references might seem to today’s young people. More shocking, though, is how people just a few years younger than me can’t really claim to remember a time without some major armed conflict.

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

How does this become a reality? I’ve said plenty of times from this pulpit that saving the world is God’s job not ours, but on the other hand we don’t have the luxury of saying that we can just wait until God comes and fixes everything so we have no moral obligation at all.

We heard that strange reading from Matthew’s Gospel a few minutes ago, in which some are taken and some are left. Some Christians, those of the fundamentalist variety, believe that Jesus was speaking of something called “the rapture”, wherein the righteous are spared the calamities of the end-times and the wicked are left behind. This belief was invented by folks doing some very bad biblical interpretation during in the nineteenth century. Suffice it to say, that in this morning’s Gospel reading, the one’s taken away are Christians who would be persecuted under the Roman Empire and other anti-Christian powers (as they still are in some parts of the world), rather than being whisked away to heaven to avoid the final judgment. The idea of a “rapture” as the fundamentalists would call it (like you might read about in the Left Behind books or hear televangelists talk about) is, as far as I’m concerned and insofar as I agree with the vast majority of serious biblical scholars, way off the mark.

So, with regard to the difficulties which beset our nation and our world, we’re not off the hook. We don’t get to just wait until Jesus comes back and raptures us up and lets the sinners hash it out. We are called to be a people of peace here and now. We’re called point to the reality of the Kingdom so beautifully envisioned by Isaiah—not to bring it about (again, that’s what God will do) but to try to model our own individual lives and our common life in such a way that it gets closer to that ideal.

Now, I’ve got a pretty bully pulpit here, but I’ve not got the ears of those who make the big decisions regarding these issues. None of you is a senator or an ambassador or a cabinet secretary. What I can say to you is that peacemaking begins at home. There are plenty of swords and spears which need to be re-purposed in our homes and in our community for the sake of the kingdom. None of us has much he or she can do with regard to international affairs beyond the ballot box and making a few charitable contributions. Nonetheless, we’ve got plenty we can do here. We can redirect the energy we spend hating those with whom we disagree to loving them in tangible ways. We can beat the sword of malicious gossip into the plowshare of community peacemaking. We can beat the spear of domestic strife into the pruning hook of self-sacrificing, unconditional filial love. We can take the money we spend for creature comforts and spend it on supporting those who don’t have enough for a meal or a winter coat.

Where can you redirect your own bellicose energies to serve as a peacemaker? I can only speak for myself, and so I shall, I hope not uncomfortably confessionally. I spend too much energy being angry with people I think are petulant and meddlesome when I could be using that energy to love them. I spend time and energy grousing and being depressed about things I don’t like about Findlay that I could use to make it more like the kind of place I’d like to live. I discount people I too quickly put into categories that I can easily dismiss, when I could try to actually approach each individual with whom I come into contact as a unique child of God and find some common ground with him or her. Those are my misplaced priorities. Those are my sins. But I think each of us has some place in our lives where we can allow God to transform war-making into peacemaking. All of us have swords and spears in our souls which can be beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks if only we let God work in us.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I was listening to the radio in the car the other day, and the presenter was introducing Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the Eroica. I had known that “hero” to which the composer dedicated the symphony was Napoleon Bonaparte, but what I didn’t know was that shortly afterward Beethoven had revoked the dedication. Lest you think “getting canceled” is a recent phenomenon, this was 1804. While as first consul, Bonaparte was reckoned by Beethoven to be the embodiment of revolutionary and democratic ideals, declaring himself emperor ruined it entirely.

And discomfort with monarchy is far from a modern development. It was a huge concern in antiquity. Modern democratic movements were not creating something entirely new, but trying to recapture an ancient model which had been largely replaced in the middle ages. Of course there were kings in ancient times, but that polity frequently met with suspicion. Remember, the Israelites demanded a king; neither God nor his prophet, Samuel, thought this was a good idea; they relented and “gave the baby his bottle” as it were; and this led to disaster more frequently than to success. Or consider Ancient Rome (if you’re a young man, apparently you already do this on a daily basis, at least according to the internet). While counter-intuitive to us because of how language has evolved, the reason Augustus and those who followed were called “emperors” is because “Imperator” was considered a less lofty and more democratic title than the word “rex” or “king.” An emperor must at least theoretically rely on the Senate for legitimacy. Even “dictator” was a more congenial to the Romans than “king.” A Roman dictator, whenever it was deemed necessary to have one, had a six month term in response to an emergency and was frequently prosecuted afterward if he misbehaved too flagrantly.

A king, though, has ultimate power. He is the unquestioned military commander, a one-man supreme court, and chief priest of his nation’s religious cult all rolled into one. When the crowd gathered before Pilate at Jesus’ trial shout “we have no king but Caesar”, they are saying something more shockingly retrograde than any level-headed Roman citizen or imperial official who wanted to keep his job (Pilate included) would have dared say out loud. What’s more, this is blasphemy. It’s one thing to say that the most powerful imperial force has some right to police a territory; I’m not approving of that, by the way, but that was the nature of ancient geopolitics, the Jews had previously consented to such arrangements, and you can’t really apply the principles of posse comitatus retroactively by two millenia. It’s another thing entirely to say that Roman law is superior to the Law God gave by Moses and the imperial cult is superior to the worship of God in Jerusalem. And this is precisely what “we have no king but Caesar” means.

Now do not hear me as letting Pontius Pilate off the hook here. He was a bad egg to say the least, and frequently when you hear Pilate apologists they are not very well disguised antisemites. Even the wickedest of people can sometimes be forced to do something right, though. When the temple leaders tried to get him to amend the sign on the Cross—“he said he is the king of the Jews”—Pilate was not only keeping the sign accurate, but (whether intentionally or not) commenting on the temple leadership’s egregious blasphemy.

The world may have many emperors and dictators and lords and princes and presidents. But the world only has one king in the ancient, tripartite sense—only one who can perfectly combine the roles of captain and judge and priest and in each role he subverts our expectations. Instead of a diadem, he wears a crown of thorns. Instead of holding a scepter, he is pierced by the soldier’s lance. Instead of sitting on a throne he reigns from a tree.

At his second coming, the royal trappings may be more standard issue. I guess that depends on how much the imagery we see in Revelation is meant to be literal or metaphorical, but that’s a rabbit hole into which we need not delve this morning. In either event, we are called today to consider the historical type rather than the eschatological antitype, and recognize that they are ultimately the same.

So how does Christ see the royal will accomplished? He calls the nations to worship him upon the altar of his own sacrifice. He acts as merciful judge to the thief who repents. He leads a silent army, a surprise attack against the hosts of hell, breaking down its gates and leading the most successful rescue mission of all time.

So, we have two images—Christ as kingly king and Christ as crucified king. To this, let me add one more. It is the image on your bulletin covers. This is the oldest of a genre of icon known as Pantocrator, literally “ruler of all.” It is housed at St. Catherine’s (Greek Orthodox) Monastery, the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery, which sits at the foot of Mount Sinai. I love this image, because it makes one wonder why this is how Christ’s rule, his kingship, is meant to be thus depicted. Christ surrounded in the accouterments of royalty in eternity makes intuitive sense, and I’ve just the bulk of this sermon trying to show how the crucifixion can be viewed as an image of kingship, but this image seems less clear at first blush.

I think, and this is just my own hunch, that while the other two images require what I’ll call our proleptic imaginations (inviting the historical endpoint and the historical hinge-point into our present), this is an image which requires no such “timey wimey stuff.” This is Jesus as he is our king today. First, look at his hands. He gives us his word, symbolized by the Gospel book he holds in his left hand, and he gives us the sacramental ministrations of the church, symbolized in his right hand’s blessing. Thus his majestic Grace is mediated in this in-between time. But there is also the immediate (by which I mean, unmediated) Grace. Look up from the hands now, and consider the face of Jesus. He appraises us with the piercing eye of his divinity and the gentle eye of his humanity. And being both God and man, we may look back at him and behold the perfection which the nature of impassable deity precluded our seeing until he came to dwell with us. And what I see in those eyes is a statement which nobody but God could give: I see you fully, clearly, perfectly and I love you completely. Will you love me with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul?

This is the king who reigns even now, whatever the world, the flesh, and the devil may do to try to convince us otherwise. We have a living king who not only invites us into his court, but desires us to relate to him as a friend and a brother. And when he comes again in all his kingly grace, perhaps he won’t literally be wearing an ermine robe and jeweled crown, carrying an orb and a scepter. Maybe he’ll come to us looking more like the Pantocrator of Sinai, and more than behold us and we him through the medium of wood and wax and pigment, we may embrace as he welcomes us into his eternal kingdom.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.