How Romantic Is a Jesse Stump?

2 Advent         December 4, 2016
Is. 11:1-10         Ps.72        
Rom. 15:4-13    Matt. 3:1-12

Lectionary Link

            The Study of trees is called dendrology.  The biblical writers loved trees; they loved them so much that they used them as metaphors.  In the Garden of Eden story, there are two trees, the Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  After the resurrection, the cross is perhaps poetically referred to by some New Testament writers as a tree.  And in the futuristic vision of John the Divine in the book of Revelation, there is a tree of life which bear twelve fruits and is on the river of the water of life in Jerusalem.

             In today's reading, we have some different reflections upon trees.  In Christian tradition Advent is the season of the Jesse tree.  The Jesse tree traces the genealogy of the events in the history of salvation.  Jesse was the father of King David and his tree become famous because of King David who according to prophets established the messianic lineage.

           The Jesse tree derives from the prophet Isaiah but in fact it would be more correct from Isaiah's perspective to call the Jesse tree, the Jesse stump.  That is quite a switch in images.

          A stump is quite different than a tree.  If we make a tree into a stump, it means that we want it to go away, unless we are in the orchard business.  In the orchard business, trees are made stumps for the purpose of grafting new branches into them.  The life in the roots can bring about new life to the branches which are grafted in.  For those of us who have tried to remove trees where we don't want them, we also find that branches can grow out of the stump of the tree and those branches can become a new tree.

        The tree/stump analogy is important in the reflections of Isaiah and the words of John the Baptist regarding the phases of life of a community.  The tree and stump comparison represents different states in community and institutional life.  When the community is flourishing like a tree it manifests all the full beauty that we associate with a tree.  The stump is quite a different phase of the tree.  A tree may become a stump because someone needs lumber for building or firewood.  A tree may become a stump because the tree has become diseased and so the tree is cut down.

            When Isaiah wrote about the stump of Jesse; he was referring to the state of his country during his lifetime.  Israel had been split into two kingdoms and the both kingdoms had suffered from incompetent monarchs even those who were supposed to be in the blessed Davidic lineage.  Both kingdoms were about to come to an end.  The once glorious Israel had gone from being a glorious tree to but a stump.  A stump represents some rather severe pruning.  "The variety of this tree is no longer wanted or sustainable."  The prophet Isaiah recognized the demise of his country and he was aware that all of God's promises to  David, the messiah and his offspring seem to be unfulfilled.  If the lineage of David were failing what did this mean for Israel?  The line of David was seen to be but a stump.

           But Isaiah said, "Wait just a minute now.  A stump is not dead because of the deep root life of the stump.  At any time, a new branch could appear."  So, even though Isaiah observed that the Davidic line seemed to be a completely pruned stump, he still believed in a future for what could come out of the stump of Jesse.  He believed the roots were still full of life which could engender new growth and could produce a new hero even greater than David.  And so the Jesse stump is the Jesse tree of Advent.

           John the Baptist came with a message about some major pruning.   He is quoted as saying, "Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."  John the Baptist came during a time when he believed that the religious institutions of Jerusalem had arrived at the level of their incompetence and they were no longer doing what they were supposed to do.  They were maintaining institutional life for its sake alone and had become divorced from the needs of actual people.  John the Baptist might even be called the axe of the tree himself because his voice and message involved some serious pruning in the religious scene of his time.  John knew that he could be a serious pruner with an axe but he promised that Jesus would be different than he was.  Jesus would be one who would graft new branches of life into the old tradition; Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the deep life of God in the very invisible root of life itself.  John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus to help reconnect people with the deep root, the Holy Spirit at the heart of life itself.

          Not surprisingly, the church has used the words of the prophet Isaiah to illuminate the gifts of baptism.  Isaiah wrote about what would happen when the Spirit of the Lord rested upon a promised one from God.  The Spirit of the Lord would bring wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and a deep sense of awe about God.  These are the traditional sevenfold gifts of the Spirit which we pray to descend upon every newly baptized person.

            You and I know that the stump phase of life may not be a very attractive or comfortable phase of personal life, family life, parish life, church life and our country life.  It not fun to be "pruned" or prevented from flourishing like a beautiful tree.  There is something ugly about the pruned phase of a tree because one compares this phase with the season of flourishing.

           In many ways, we may be experiencing stump phases today.  In our country, our elected leaders often forget about the meaning of governance which involves vigorous debate and compromising and voting for the common good.   Our country is in a stump phase when more than 90 million eligible voters did not vote.  This indicates that people are out of touch with the meaning of our roots as American citizens.  We, as a society, are not firing on all cylinders.

             The Episcopal Church and our parish are showing the gradual decline in growth and participation.  We can seem to be in stump phase of our institutional and community existence.  We seem to be increasingly irrelevant to the lives of more people even to the point of having to shut down because of lack of participation.  It could be that past success has led to stagnation; our traditions have allowed us to be successful enough to exist as individual independent financial islands and we can conduct our lives in such a way that we don't need each other and we don't want the responsibility of others needing us.  We forget that communal participation is when the strong participate in order to help those who are not yet as strong.  Just as parents are stronger and more competent to give more to the family than children; the strong in the church and society are called to bring up the quality of life for those who are not as strong and who are not as able to give as much.  We can arrive at the stump phase of church and national life because those who have benefited from American, Christian and Episcopal values have birthed generations who are on the "proverbial" third base and they think they have hit a triple.  Too many people are the heirs of values which they no longer see need to practice.  Through non-participation and apathy, the institutions of those values have come to be in their pruning phase, the stump phase.

            We may need the jolt of serious consequences of our lack of participation in our institutions to shock us to seek out the roots of American democratic life.  We may need the decline of our church and parish to realize how important it is to keep faith and reason in rigorous and active dialogue.  It is very easy to under-appreciate the graceful form of Catholicism that the Episcopal Church is, because in a profound way, we honor the freedom of people to choose without guilt or coercion.  We honor the freedom of people to make us irrelevant.

           I would leave us with this message during Advent.  Let us keep the stump alive, because there will come a time when a new generation of lost people will need what we have to offer them in continuity with the values of our wonderful tradition.

   Isaiah and John the Baptist came into orchards full of stumps.  And they were hopeful about the future.  God's Spirit is the invisible root of life and who can be accessed by those who are made aware of the divine presence.  John the Baptist contrasted his baptism with the Baptism of Jesus.  He baptized with water; Jesus baptized with the Holy Spirit.

 The Holy Spirit lives in the roots of the institutions and the communities even if members are out of touch with the Spirit of God.  During this Advent season, we mourn our appearance in the stump phases of our lives, but we keep ourselves hopeful as we remind ourselves of the Holy Spirit as the root of the life of the stump and who can bring forth new growth, new life and new ministry and new fruitful living.

  Let us be vigilant, even now, to maintain and water the stumps that have had their flourishing past appearances severed.  In the Epistle of Romans, St. Paul wrote that the entire Gentile Christian church was a branch which was grafted into the stump of Jesse, and Gentile Christianity has shape the world probably more than any movement in the history of humanity.  Let us have hope that out of the stump phase of life new life will grow because at the root of all life is the life of God's Holy Spirit who is the Renewal Source of all.  Amen.