Branch
Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36
November 29, 2009
Charles Dickens opened his novel A Tale of Two Cities with one of the most fitting sentences in literature, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It is memorable because it almost is a universal description for all times and eras. He was describing the period of the 1790’s when the fury of the French Revolution was at its peak, but his characterization fits the early first century in Palestine just as well.
After all, it was and is the Holy Land, the blessed land where God’s people were privileged to reside and so some always have felt, God is present in a special way. Yet in the first century Palestine was a country occupied by the world’s greatest power Rome. The Romans were tolerant to a degree, but never sympathetic to Judaism. And the Romans defined what a false move would be on the part of the Jews. There were rebellions and executions and crucifixions and the hot spot for such sedition and religious vigilantisms was the back country of Galilee to the north of Jerusalem.
It has been said that Jesus could not have happened at any other time and place. A quieter age in an independent and strong nation would have been a fallow field for Jesus. There would have been little urgency to hear his call to the Gospel way of life and righteousness. Why do we need all of that? Seems a little harsh. Sure, we are not perfect, but if everyone works harder and does what they are supposed to do as Jews, we’ll be fine. Jesus would never have been crucified in a free Israel, albeit ignored, and the resurrection would have been a useless stunt. Without the worst of times, Christianity as we know it would never have come into being.
Is this the best of times or the worst of times as we enter this most peculiar of seasons, Advent, in which nothing happens and we develop the skills of waiting for something to happen? We know we are waiting for the coming of Jesus Christ on Christmas morn. It is an event we can’t wait for, so great is our joy and celebration, we want to sneak in those Christmas carols right away. We sang a few on Friday night, and Monday night quite a few will be gloriously sung at the Rotary Carol Festival - all before their time. Yet, just as we should be singing Easter hymns of Resurrection any time of the year, so singing carols of the Incarnation are never out of place.
Every year, the First Sunday of Advent’s Gospel reading is from the latter sections in which Jesus preaches the apocalypse, and for many it was “apocalypse now.” There is nothing nice about the apocalypse, only if you can escape it. It is the worst of times, and for us it sounds like right now - as it has for nearly every generation in Christianity. Woe to those generations who were so comfortable that they believed everything was OK and nothing needed to be or would be changed. “Watch” is the word. Be on the lookout at every moment for the coming of God. It’s really a corollary to treating every occasion as the last time, with the anticipation of the first time. You must be always alert and live every moment to the fullest, because you just might miss the most important thing.
There is another voice that needs to be heard in stereo with Jesus’ doomsday apocalyptic. The prophet usually considered the most inflammatory of all Israel’s prophets, Jeremiah, proclaims the most hopeful of all prophecies, a sort of counter-apocalyptic. “Behold, the days are coming” is his favourite opener. “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous branch to spring forth from David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” Jeremiah is not offering his own opinion, he is a prophet, a human being who speaks for God, so it is God who is speaking.
The words refer to the coming of the Messiah, the Son of David, and Christians unapologetically have taken that to mean Jesus Christ. It will all happen in That Day of unknown calculation, a day we have to alertly watch for and wait. The reference to the Branch of David is tied in with a bunch of ideas and images about the human roots of the Messiah, and in Isaiah 11:1, “A shoot will spring forth from the stump of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots,” has given rise in recent generations to the practice of the Jesse Tree - Jesse, David’s father. We don’t get it if we don’t recognize we too are a branch.
In that day, the world is about to end and about to begin again. Advent is a time of excited and tedious waiting, holding our breath and bursting with joy, fully human and might we hope for a twinkling of an eye, fully divine. Advent is a time of hope, but there is no hope if we do not sense real despair. We cannot worship keeping the world’s troubles isogeled out of our sanctuary. We wait amidst noise and smoke and cries for help for a tiny voice crying out for life out of the last place we should expect.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan