Sermon Notes from Pastor Christine...
Poor Maddie... She's learning at a young age that her mom is sorta like Taylor Swift. I'm not nearly as young, pretty or rich as the golden-haired teenage icon, but if you have any type of relationship with me, chances are high that you'll eventually end up in a sermon, poem, or blog post. Much to their dismay, my boys, husband, and best friend learned this a long time ago. From what I understand Taylor Swift, gets all her best songs from her real life romances and heartbreaks.
I don't know if I get my best stuff from real life, but... it is true, especially on the weeks I'm preaching, that most things I do and most conversations I have get filtered through a Biblical lens.
...Which is how Maddie and I ended up at the Woodend Nature Sanctuary. I wasn't just looking for fresh air; I had ulterior motives. I wanted a fresh perspective on Isaiah's prophesy in relation to the root of the Jesse Tree. This timeless, gorgeous, rich metaphor has been reduced to one singular interpretation: the baby Jesus is the tender shoot which springs forth from the dead stump.
There's nothing wrong with that understanding. It's true and right and faithful to Jesus. However, since this is such a familiar reading to those of us who regularly come to church it feels a little like 'so what.' We already know Jesus is coming.
And, if regular church participation is not part of your background, then that glossed over simple interpretation leaves you thinking, "On what basis? On what basis do you say that Jesus is the branch that shoots forth? And, so what?"
Basically, no matter your background, I think we end up at "so what," if we do any real thinking about the metaphor.
Isaiah's vision of a stump is a good place to begin to answer the question of 'so what?' Which is why I went to learn from the trees and it's how Maddie ended up on her first nature hike.
The fields have eyes, and the woods have ears, and the trees... well, those have voices that whisper on the wind, if we listen. I was pretty sure they'd have a lot to say about Isaiah's prophesy in relation to the Jesse Tree.
And they did.
Now, first I should say, the Jesse Tree is not a specific type of tree like an oak or poplar. The Jesse Tree is an image for the familial lineage of King David. Historically speaking, Jesse was David's father, the same David who slew Goliath and became the first great Israeli king. That great dynasty still existed when Isaiah foretold the shoot sprouting forth from the stump of Jesse.
If David's still reigning then Isaiah has just proclaimed an incredibly cynical view about the Davidic dynasty. They aren't thinking about Jesus or a Messiah. They are either thinking: David's the shoot - look how great things are. Or, they are thinking, Isaiah's another fanatical prophet gone awry.
But, as I suggested earlier, this image is a loaded one and luckily a docent at the nature sanctuary named Helen was able to help Maddie and me out by translating the language of the trees for us.
Helen first showed us the 'notable trees': the Blue Atlas Cedar, Black Walnut, Japanese Maple, and large Oak. She also pointed out the 'remarkable trees' on the property. As you can imagine these trees are old, majestic, and distinctive. Some of them have trunk circumferences of 13 feet. Very impressive.
Initially, I was trying to be a bit clandestine and not say I was a pastor doing research for a sermon, because well, you can imagine that might confuse or silence my field guide a bit, but eventually I told her...
Because the notable trees weren't really what I was looking for, I mean, Isaiah is prophesying about a dead tree. Not a remarkable tree.
I needed to understand the trees, and their lives, and their relationship to the earth.
And so I told her I was a pastor doing some research on the Jesse Tree, to which she replied, "A what?!"
Yeah.... Exactly why I didn't want to go down this route. I started to explain and she said, "Maybe you can google it...".
Sigh. Big sigh.
Nope. I was sure she could help me and I told her so.
By some stroke of genius I asked her how she came to study trees and that, my friends, is when she became the Prophet named Helen, and not only the docent.
Helen told us that she came to love trees because they are one of the few things left in the world that people cannot make. And she said, "Many of them were designed about three hundred million years ago."
Wow.
Just think about that statement for a moment.
Designed.
Three hundred million YEARS ago.
Now here's the thing, I am not a horticulturist, an arborist, or even a gardener, but the underlying notion that trees are designed by someone other than a human helped me know that I could dig deeper with her beyond the rehearsed tour about the grounds.
She knew I wanted to examine the connection between people and trees and she obliged by sharing her observations, thoughts, and answering my questions. Maybe I could recount our whole conversation but I didn't write all down, so I'm going to share some highlights and hopefully make some theological and spiritual connections of my own to the Jesse Tree, to Jesus, and to your own life. To get into the imagery of today, I'll be talking a bit in metaphor, so you'll do best with this sermon if you think broadly about the statements and what the images can symbolize, especially in your own life.
I trusted that Prophet Helen could help me hear something new, however where she and I kept stumbling was the 'living tree' piece. She kept showing me living trees, which makes total sense, but the Jesse Tree was a stump.
So, I asked her what they do when trees die in a nature sanctuary, she quickly backed me up and reminded me that trees are typically sick before they die and just because it looks dead, doesn't necessarily mean it is. Totally obvious once she said it, but I hadn't really thought about that. I only thought about trees in terms of living or dead; majestic or stumps.
But when she reminded me they get sick, I realized trees aren't just alive or dead; they have lives... similar to, although different, from yours and mine. The life of the tree, from beginning to end, was where the prophesy lay.
Which brings me to being cut-off. That's the state we find the Jesse Tree in. Its life is seemingly over, having been euthanized by a series of large and small attacks upon it, beetles, mold rot, any number of toxins that trees aren't equipped to do battle against. Most people would've declared it a hopeless, useless. But not a trained arborist. And most certainly not God.
We
often decide too soon where and when and how things can't grow. This seems in direct opposition to how God works.
Sometimes it's downright impossible to imagine anything growing out of our stumps of despair, those places where hope seems cut off and where loss and despair have deadened our hearts. I've been there; maybe you have been too.
God's Advent word tells us that the fragile places where faith breaks through the hardness and disbelief are signs of new beginnings. And that is what the trees whisper in the depths of the forest, because they know that tomorrow a swift ax could turn them into a stump. And they know it isn't the end. A shoot will spring forth.
Out of something that appears finished, lifeless, or left behind, comes a new life. How can the stump of Jesse not ask us, "Where do we feel cut off? What area of our lives most needs the promise of new life?"
Any
seed or sprout that you hold is how hope gets started. It emerges as a tiny tendril in an unexpected place.
One thing we all know about trees is that for every tree we see, there are at least a hundred more trees buried in the soil, alive and fervently waiting to be.
And that is true for hope. Each beginning in your life, no matter how small, no matter how hard it was to get to, is the end of waiting...
And the beginning of hope.
We can get lost looking up at the trees. They are taller than we could ever hope to be. I know this was true for Maddie and me... well, mostly me. Maddie was busy taking everything in; I was busy looking up. However, Helen encouraged us to look down to where the roots anchor themselves.
How fitting for us that it is a shoot which springs forth from the stump, and a branch from the roots. A root's first job is to anchor. The root grows down deep, hooking into that which will sustain it, while the shoot grows up bright and new and hoping upon hope to not get trampled upon.
Our hope is rooted deep in the flesh of Jesus.
And our life springs forth from the blood of Christ.
Roots and shoots, seeds and trees - these are all part of the life of the stump.
Part of our lives. People are like plants, they grow towards the light.
My husband has a running joke with me (and I'm totally not making this up) that his favorite interview question to ask people is, "If you could be any type of tree, what kind of tree would you be?" I mean, really?
Now, I don't know how you would answer that question, but... I suspect you'd pick a tree that has meaning for you. Some type of symbolism. And maybe that tree would be from your childhood. Maybe it grew outside your bedroom window, or you used its large branches as a jungle gym in your backyard, or you planted it in memory of a loved one. I don't know the story behind your favorite tree, but I do think that's why Drew thinks it's an awesome question. Because there's so much more undergirding the answer, "My favorite tree is a weeping willow," or "My favorite tree is a Palm tree."
I'm not sure if Jesus would answer, "My favorite tree is the Jesse Tree," or if He'd say, "My favorite tree is the Olive Tree," or, "My favorite tree is the tree of crucifixion."
The Jesse Tree - where He came from; where you, a child of God, came from too.
The Olive Tree - maybe one grew outside His home as He grew into a wild teenager, ignorant to what the future might hold.
The cross - when everything changed for Him. And for you too.
A tree. It says all of that. They told me so.
Sometimes it's easy to wonder if the tender shoot of Jesus' coming really changed anything. It's easy to wonder, 'so what? '
However, God's work often seems to begin among the stumps of human failure and rebellion. The story of humanity might have begun in the Garden of Eden, but it just as easily could've been told again at the Woodend Sanctuary the other day. I am glad Maddie got to hear that story for the first time. And I'm glad you did too.
God's not yet finished making all things new.
Just ask the trees.
Amen.
