Grace from a Tree Stump, Faith from a Vine

Transcription

1 Grace from a Tree Stump, Faith from a Vine By Rev. Elizabeth D. McLean, Prince of Peace Presbyterian Church Christ the King Sunday Based upon Isaiah 11:1-5; Jeremiah 23:1-15; John 15: 1-11 In the 1995 movie A Walk in the Clouds, actor Keanu Reeves plays Paul Sutton, an American soldier who becomes a door-to-door chocolate salesman after returning from serving in World War II. In the midst of his travels, he meets a young Mexican-American girl whose father is a wealthy vineyard owner in Napa Valley. As they spend time together at her family s vineyard, they fall in love. But her father disapproves of the relationship; and one night in a drunken rage, he takes a swing at Reeves character with a lantern, and ends up setting a vine on fire. The dry vine acts like a wick, and soon the entire vineyard is consumed with flames. The next morning the family appears stunned and devastated as they gaze at the charred remains of what had been their home, their livelihood and their family s dream-come-true. The vineyard appears utterly destroyed. But then Sutton remembers that the rootstock from which the vineyard was originally grown was planted on a different part of the property and surrounded by a protective fence. Although the root also appears charred on the outside, Sutton digs it up and brings it to the vineyard owner, who discovers that underneath the charcoal-covered exterior, the root remains green and alive. They can replant and rebuild. I had hoped to be able to show you the scene rather than describe it, but copyright restrictions and technology issues got in the way this time. That s a shame because it is a beautiful movie. But you do not need to have seen the movie to imagine how the characters must have felt when they moved from believing that all was lost to discovering that rebuilding was possible; and perhaps, because we are Christians, you can also imagine how an ash covered root which did not look like much could mean everything new life, new hope, a chance to recover from past mistakes and to make the future bright again? I hope you can imagine the latter because both the Gospel and our future rest upon the same kind of promise. The king we are celebrating today on Christ the King Sunday, is one whose coming was foretold not by trumpets but by a charred tree stump. He is one who offers us saving help in the form of a vine. Isaiah first prophesied about the stump thousands of years ago. After the Northern Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrian Empire, and the people themselves were felled like so many trees, Isaiah prophesied to the devastated few who remained that God already had a plan to save them. He told them that A shoot would come from the stump of Jesse, meaning that out of the ruins of the old kingdom would come new one, and with it new life thanks to a new king. The king would be a descendant of Jesse, just like the great King David had been. He would be righteous and just and save the people. Christians cannot hear this passage without thinking about Jesus as that shoot, which is OK because the New Testament writers did too. I m going to get to that interpretation in a few minutes. But before we rush ahead to Jesus, I want us to recognize first that just because a prophesy seemed to speak of Christ to the Christians, did not mean that it was originally delivered with that intent. Most of the time the prophets spoke, it was to their present circumstances; and Rev. Elizabeth D. McLean, ; all rights reserved. Page 1

2 this prophecy is no exception. God wanted the people to have hope for their immediate future, not just hope that everything would work out in the end of time. Although we take comfort now from this being a messianic text, the people in Isaiah s day would not have felt terribly comforted by a prophecy that said, I know your lives stink right now but don t worry because in 500 years I will send a messiah. Accordingly, historians believe that Isaiah was talking about a king who would help them in his time, most likely a king named Hezekiah, who was a good king whose faithfulness saved Judah and Jerusalem for a time. It was only later, after the resurrection, that Christians interpreted this as a messianic prophecy. Why does this matter? It tells us two things: first, that Scripture, like the stump itself, is a living word that we can interpret and reinterpret in each of our times. It isn t a text that speaks to only the ancient past or the distant future, it speaks to now. Second, when we recognize this, we can better see that God is with us in our now, offering us comfort for our present and hope for our future just as God has always done. In every age, God has proclaimed through faithful servants the message: Do not despair or lose hope. Even when life feels pretty apocalyptic, know that I, the Lord, have the ability and the desire to help. You cannot stop my plan to build the kingdom of God on earth no matter what you do because it is my plan. Jeremiah delivered a similar message to the people of Judah, one hundred and fifty or so years after Isaiah did, when it was their turn to fear that the end was near. That time the threat wasn t Assyria, it was Babylon. That time the metaphor was a branch instead of a stump. But otherwise the message was very similar. The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. (Jer. 23:5). Once again this is a prophecy which speaks to different times. Jeremiah may have been alluding to a man named Zerubbabel, who became governor during the restoration period and enabled the foundations of the Temple to be laid. But Jeremiah s words have also been interpreted as a messianic prophecy alluding to Jesus. In either case and in both, Jeremiah wanted people to trust that righteousness would win, not evil. Even in the darkness, the groundwork was already laid for God s kingdom. Look for the branch God will extend you. There will be a branch, I promise. By the time that it was Jesus turn to proclaim a message of hope, there were no more Jewish kingdoms left to crumble. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah were long past. The Promised Land was now Roman territory. But the disciples were about to have their world fall apart when the one they thought had come to save them was crucified. Jesus knew this. He knew that they needed to hear a stump speech again (in the biblical sense, not the political one) so they would not despair. So in his parting words to his disciples, he gave them words of hope and help to which they could cling. But this time instead of saying I am the shoot or I am the branch you were waiting for, he said I am the vine because the kingdom of God in the Old Testament is often depicted as a vineyard. The vine is still a symbol of hope for Christians today. Like the heirloom rootstock in the movie, Jesus is the vine which could not be destroyed by the carelessness or callousness of humankind. This means that all is not lost, even if it seems like it is. The disciples didn t know Rev. Elizabeth D. McLean, ; all rights reserved. Page 2

3 this until after the resurrection, of course. After the crucifixion they had their moment like that of the family in the movie believing that all was lost. But when Jesus rose, they realized that the vine that God had given them in Christ could survive anything. And that meant that replanting and rebuilding was always possible. It meant that there was every reason to hope. We need to keep this in mind ourselves whenever we are feeling a little apocalyptic about life, whether because of things that are going on in our own lives or because of things going on in the world. However grim life may seem, God s love is indestructible, therefore we can have faith. However scary things may seem in our own lives or in our nation, God s grace is indestructible, therefore we can have courage. However uncertain the future appears, God s plan is indestructible therefore we can have hope. God is with us, right here and right now, just as God was with the people in Isaiah s day and Jeremiah s and so many other days. Vineyard fires happen; human beings are often cruel and careless. But even our fires leave only stumps behind, for Christians, stumps are not a sign of the end of the world; they are a reminder of the power of our God. Pastor/author Eugene Peterson used to say that Christians worship the God of the holy stump. 1 It s an unlikely, counterintuitive image. What kind of power does a stump have? And how can it possibly be associated with the divine? But I think it is a much more encouraging metaphor than associating God with something like a mighty redwood or noble cedar. Let s face it, human beings are far too good at chopping down trees these days for those symbols to inspire much lasting hope. But knowing that our God can always bring grace from a tree stump, and has ensured that we will always have an indestructible vine from which a new vineyard can be grown makes the humble stump an incredible image of God s power. In different ways, both the stump and vine proclaim that we can trust that even in calamity, our God has a better future in store for us. Speaking of calamities, the other day I was reading an article about Mt. St. Helens. 2 Do you remember when it erupted in 1980? I do. The explosion was so massive that it not only blew the top off the mountain, it scorched 42 square miles around it. The lava flow reached temperatures of 1200 degrees Fahrenheit and the pumice it produced reached up to 131 feet think. So there were not even stumps left. The forest that had been on the mountainside was utterly destroyed. But now 30 years later the area is a thriving ecosystem. The first shoots to grow were not from trees, but flowers. Lupines have the ability to get the nitrogen they need from the air when they can t get it from the soil. So they grew first. Then insects parachuted in on the wind from other areas while birds helped distribute seeds. So soon grass joined the flowers, then small shrubs, then trees. Now the area that once appeared deader than dead is teeming with new life. If God s creation can be reborn from even less than stumps, then imagine how much more we can be reborn with the help of God s saving grace! God can work good out of our worst evil; God can heal our deepest of wounds. Christ our righteous king, Christ our heirloom vine has 1 See Peterson, Eugene H., Subversive Spirituality (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), See e.g. Thompson, Andrea, Mt. St. Helens Still Recovering 30 Years Later, LIVESCIENCE.COM, May 17, 2010, retrieved Nov. 12, 2016 from Rev. Elizabeth D. McLean, ; all rights reserved. Page 3

4 shown us this. So the best thing we can do when we find ourselves feeling as though everything is falling apart is to do what the cat in this poster, a copy of which was in my basement when I was a child, is doing: (Slide of famous Victor Baldwin poster Hang in There Baby, Dec. 1971, of a cat hanging from a branch by its front paws was shown.) We must cling to the righteous branch God has given us as if our lives depend on it; because they do. Apart from me you can do nothing, Jesus said. But if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. (John 15:7). Do you do that? When darkness starts to swirl in your life or in the world do you hold on even tighter to Christ, or do you tend to let go? It takes work to hold on because fear can make our hands sweat so much that our grip loosens, or can persuade us that we are better off filling our hands with the stuff we do not want to lose rather than with a root that doesn t look like much. You almost need to tie yourself to the vine sometimes to defeat your own worst instincts. But if you do, the message of the Bible is that you have every reason to hope. No matter what is going on in our lives or our world, we will find the hope and help we need. But once we are rooted in the vine, then it soon becomes clear that the kind of lasting help god offers us is help born of community. We are all interconnected, all tangled up together. Maybe that s why Jesus switched the metaphor when he spoke to his disciples. If he had said, Hey guys, no worries, I am the shoot from the stump that Isaiah talked about; I am the branch from David s tree that Jeremiah foretold, then we might have thought we could sit back, relax and watch the tree grow. Thank goodness we have a savior! we would have said. Bring on that good kingdom of yours. But even while he fulfilled the stump and branch prophecies, Jesus chose a different Old Testament image, that of the vineyard, to describe his ministry because he did not want us to sit back and watch him work. He wanted us to work too. I am the vine, he said, and you are the branches... My Father is glorified in this, that you bear much fruit. (Italics mine). We are grounded in Christ but tangled with one another. So our hope for the future rests in nurturing our connections, not destroying them. We all need the sustenance the root provides in order to produce the fruit of peace because if any part of us is dried up, we all are at risk in a fire. If you think in terms of the Old Testament metaphor of the branch again for a minute, this means the righteous branch has called us to be righteous branches ourselves, which is exactly what Jeremiah also prophesied would happen. In Chapter 23, as we heard, he said that the kind would be called, The Lord is our righteousness. But ten chapters later in 33, he says that after the restoration, Jerusalem and its inhabitants will be called The Lord is Our Righteousness. So whether you think of Christ as the fulfillment of these Old Testament prophecies, or as God s vine, or both, the result is still the same. The hope we receive from our King is supposed to make us instruments of hope for others. The life we receive is supposed to generate new life for us all. Do you see God s grace in tree stumps? Are you rooted solidly in the vine? If not, then today is the day to begin working on that. And if so, then today is the day to think about how you can proclaim to others the real kind of hope that only Christ our King can give, the kind that can see the new life that is coming even in the midst of calamity and chaos. As Madeleine L Engle said her poem called Epiphany: Rev. Elizabeth D. McLean, ; all rights reserved. Page 4

5 Unclench your fists Hold out your hands. Take mine. Let us hold each other. Thus is His glory Manifest. 3 3 L Engle, Madeleine, Epiphany in The Irrational Season (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1977), 39. Rev. Elizabeth D. McLean, ; all rights reserved. Page 5