December 5, 2010
(Second Sunday of Advent)

(From The Lectionary Page)

Chainsaw Lain to the Roots

Photo of the Rev. Canon Sue Sommer by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

The second of our two Bradford pear trees has bitten the dust. The first one was a casualty of an ice storm 3 years ago. The second died this fall from, oddly enough, drought. Near as we can figure, the adjacent stone patio apparently shielded the majority of its roots from the abundant rainfall we got this summer. Deader now than a doornail, it needs to come down, and we await the day when the tree company that we have hired will lay to its roots the two-stroke-engine equivalent of an axe and make short work of it. And then they will grind the stump into a little heap of sawdust. And then if this Bradford Pear is anything like the one that they took down 3 years ago, we’ll see green shoots emerging this spring.  Despite clear evidence of death, old trees have a wonderful way of sending up signs of life. It is as hopeful an image as can be – and it is an image that lies at the heart of Biblical prophecy.

Oh I know, it's hard to see that sometimes. Especially out of the mouth of John the Baptist, whom we always hear from on the second Sunday of Advent. Especially the way Matthew tells it, with the Pharisees and Sadducees being denounced as a brood of vipers, to say nothing of axes being laid to the root of trees, and chaff being burned with unquenchable fire.

To see that hope, we need to understand something about Biblical prophecy. In a nutshell, God raises up prophets to preach a message not their own to people who don’t want to hear it. Prophecy began to develop in Israel at about the same time that the monarchy began to flourish. The better and more able the monarch, the quieter the prophets were. The more dissolute and useless the monarch, the greater the need for prophecy. Isaiah, whom we heard today in our first lesson, prophesied to the southern kingdom of Judah and its ruler, the wicked King Ahaz. The northern kingdom of Israel and the Arameans of Damascus wanted Ahaz to join in their rebellion against Assyria, who was then the superpower of the ancient near east. Hoping to consolidate his own power and curry favor with Assyria, Ahaz ratted them out. Assyria responded by destroying Samaria, conquering the northern kingdom of Israel, and thereby laying the groundwork for the eventual destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon. But at that moment, late in the 8th century BCE, Isaiah was a voice crying in the wilderness. See, life in Judah was pretty good, at least for the rich and powerful. They put their trust in Ahaz; God wanted the people to put their trust in God, as evidenced by lives lived in righteousness. That stump of Jesse that we heard about refers to David, Jesse's son, the king whom God had anointed. From David's son Solomon on, kings anointed their own heirs, with less than terrific results. (Ahaz would be Exhibit A). So enough! God says through Isaiah. I will raise up a new king from the line of David and this king's priorities will be in line with the Covenant. Righteousness and faithfulness will be his tools and peace – Shalom – wholeness – shall be the outcome of his reign. In other words, the way that the earthly rulers of Judah were headed was toward death. God's desire for God's people is always, always life.

And it was in this manner that John the Baptist burst onto the scene centuries later. Bu this time, the prophetic object was no longer the monarchy. Herod was a puppet king of the Roman Empire and scorned as a half-breed nitwit. Now the objects of prophecy were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These of course were the competing religious groups who by this time had laid claim to power and authority within Israel. The Pharisees “owned” the Torah and the Sadducees “owned” the sacrificial system of the Temple. They were the narrowly-defined arbiters of what was very much a closed system.  Huge numbers of people were simply cut off from pathways to God.  The Pharisees and Sadducees may have been coming to be baptized by John, but probably were coming to put an end to it. To the religious elite, John was meddling in things way above his pay grade. To John, the religious elite were leading the people to death.  

You don’t have to read too much further in Matthew to see that John the Baptist will suffer the same fate that most prophets undergo – imprisonment and death at the hands of those in power. It’s a recurring pattern in Scripture, to the point that you have to wonder why God bothers to raise up prophets at all. I mean, come on. When something is dead, why not just walk away from it? That's what we do, right? Cut our losses and move on? Mercifully, thankfully, that is not God's way. God's bias is always, always for new life. It's true in the plant world, and it's true in our lives as well. That is the blessed hope that is at the root of all of us who set our hearts upon God. When we take a closer look at all those things in our lives that we think are dead – relationships gone awry, a marriage falling apart, a soul-sucking job or perhaps even worse, no job at all, our tendency to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, a child far gone down the road to destruction, whatever the place of death may be – we find newness springing forth invariably from that very place of death. It takes the eyes of faith to see it, sometimes. Often, it takes a faithful someone else in our lives to point it out to us.

Sometimes it takes John the Baptist.

John preached new birth, there by the banks of the Jordan. His language is violent, but hope is at its root. Another John, the one who wrote the 4th gospel, will tell us that Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. The catch? For that new abundant life to happen, death has to happen first. The new birth that God desires for his people is rooted in death, ritual drowning and new life emerging in baptism. Cut down a dead tree and new and vibrant shoots WILL spring up. Winnow the wheat from the straw, burn the chaff and scatter the ashes on the ground to enrich the soil for next year's crops that will spring up better for it. Hang the Son of God upon a cross and resurrection will follow.  God always has newness in store. And though the deaths of self we face may be terrifying to contemplate much less endure, they are never, ever the end of the story.

Of that, we may be sure.