December 4, 2016: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
I love this time of year – Advent. I love it for the simplicity in a time of busyness; for the expectancy that it brings; for the joyful gatherings of friends and family…and I admit… for all the Christmas movies too (a heresy, in Advent, I know). Well, actually, some of these are hard to watch for priests, because in the romantic versions, usually found on channels like Hallmark or ABCFamily (isn’t that now called something else?) – anyway they often end up showing wedding scenes. Now, nothing wrong with a wedding, but dang, they need to get a liturgical consultant. No – priests do NOT match their stoles to the bride’s color scheme. I mean, the other day, a priest was shown wearing a purple stole for a wedding. NO!!!!! Anyway, I digress, as I always do.
But of the non-let’s meet and get married all in one televised event variety, there are the absolute classics, and at the top of the list of those is, of course, “A Christmas Carol.” This is the all too familiar story of the miserly Scrooge who is redeemed through the visitations of the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come. It is not only a tradition for many, but it seems most people have their favorites. You might look forward to the George C. Scott version, or the musical one with Albert Finney, or perhaps you prefer the classic version starring that fine actor of stage and screen…Mr. Magoo. Mine is a toss up between two that stick close to the book, and include scenes none of the others do – the older one with Alister Sims from 1951 and the one with Patrick Stewart made in 1999. I like these versions because while Hollywood may not always be enamored with what lies in the pages of an actual book, they likely should be, and these two respected the original literary work well.
In the book by Charles Dickens, the opening paragraph makes one thing absolutely clear. It reads, “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”
So, apparently, Marley, old Scrooge’s business partner, was very much dead. We do not need to ask in our best Monty Python way “Is he dead yet?” Marley is very, very, much dead. And as we continue in the story, we realize why it was so important that we understand that, because if we weren’t quite sure, than perhaps we might not fully appreciate the miracle of new life that is to come from it. And it is this new life that is an important part of our Advent journey. The life that grows out of death…now you might be thinking, isn’t that Easter, not Advent? Well, it is both.
Now, as I have mentiond the past few weeks, beginning the Sunday after All Saints, you might have noticed that our lectionary readings take on a different tone. We begin to hear about the end times. The days when all things will be brought down. We begin to hear about the return of Christ as we begin to prepare for his birth. Why do those readings start after All Saints and go into Advent? Because, as we have been doing this year at Christ Church, Advent was originally 7 weeks long. But, whether we hear it as part of Advent, or some later add on to the season of Pentecost, why do we need to repeatedly hear about the destruction of all things? Maybe, like readers of A Christmas Carol, we need just a bit of emphasis for us to really get the message. Maybe we need to understand just how dead as a door nail the world can be, or perhaps is, before we get to the next chapter – before we can really understand the miracle that is about to happen.
The miracle that we hear about today in our reading from Isaiah. “A shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse.”
This stump that we hear about in Isaiah is like all stumps – the leftover remains of a very dead tree. A tree that, as Dickins would likely say, is as dead as a door nail. And I can really relate to this imagery of a dead tree.
Now, I have dreams of being a gardener. Seriously, I do. Though, as anyone can attest who has been at my house, I am more of what I like to think of as a “magical” gardener. I think I have mentioned to you before that I have the uncanny ability to grow stuff that shouldn’t be growing, and to kill stuff that should be growing. It’s a gift, I know. Every year I buy all sorts of flowering plants. Every year I try my very best to get my yard to actually have this green stuff called grass. And every year my garden is filled – with weeds. My lawn lush – with dandelions. It’s magic, I tell ya!
But that’s not all – I somehow have grass and plants that will grow in the oddest of places. I mean, I can’t get plants to grow in my garden, but a vine will make its way through my basement window into the house. I can’t get grass to grow on my front yard, but dang if it doesn’t sprout up out of the paved driveway! I mean…seriously? So, needless to say, there are plenty of dead stump like things to be found in my yard and garden, and plants growing in unexpected (if even unwelcome) places, so this metaphor from Isaiah works for a failed gardener like me.
And out of that very dead stump, Isaiah tells us that new life emerges. And the new life is one we all hope for – what we call the peaceable kingdom…where “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid…”
Of course, this image has been depicted in religious art, and is the stuff of poets. Even Woody Allen once gave his own interpretation of this vision: He said, “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb. But the lamb won’t get much sleep!” In some ways, I think many of us greet the idea of the peaceable kingdom like Woody Allen’s lamb – with a wary eye.
In this world we live we can so often be used to the very unpeaceable kingdom – war, violence, human trafficking, hate crimes, cyberbullying – and it can all seem too big to imagine a time of peace and love for all. In the past year alone we have witnessed terrorist attacks around the world, violence in our streets, and hate crimes on the way up post-election – not to mention the wars that engulf the world, and the destruction of our planet. Not a very peaceable kingdom at all. That stump is indeed as dead as a door nail.
And sadly, we need not always look to the world at large, but the world of our hearts, to find death. The stump in our lives may be the residue of loved ones lost, of homelessness, of relationships ended, of exclusion and marginalization…and we can be so very weary from these stump moments, these times of death in our lives, that all we can seem to do is sit down on the stump – married to it in a way – and try to rest. Our faith withered so much that we keep a watchful eye, as the lamb in Woody Allen’s version, for what might next prey upon us, and not for miracles of new life.
And yet we hear today “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”
In Advent, God is calling us to look around – both eyes open, not to see what will next knock us down, but to see the miracle growing in our midst. The Holy Spirit is moving us to stand up from the stump and look at the little shoot of green emerging from it. To be in awe of grass and flowers that seem to break the hard surfaces to emerge where no one would ever imagine. To see this all, and to know that out of death comes new life. Out of darkness come new light.
This miracle of life out of death is there for us to witness, but we must first be looking – and we aren’t always good at seeing – really seeing what may be right in front of us. I am reminded of an ancient story:
A disciple once asked of his master “Where shall I look for enlightenment?”
“Here,” the wise one said.
“When will it happen?” the disciple asked.
“It is happening right now,” the wise one answered.
“Then why don’t I experience it?”
“Because you don’t look.”
“What should I look for?”
“Nothing. Just look.”
“Look at what?”
“At anything your eyes light on.”
“But must I look in a special way?”
“No, the ordinary way will do.”
“But don’t I always look the ordinary way?”
“No, you don’t.”
“But why ever not?”
“Because to look, you must be here. And you are mostly somewhere else.”
We are often somewhere else – living in another moment, perhaps of the future, perhaps of the past. Our distractions growing every day. But, God is calling us, most especially in Advent, to be present….mindful…still – to look and really see the wonder of what God is doing here, now – to see the green shoots springing from dead stumps in our midst.
I have seen these new shoots of life growing out of spiritual, emotional, and even physical death, and maybe you have too. I have seen it…
…in the smile of a vet, who having lost all four limbs in Iraq, spoke of knocking down all challenges ahead with his new prosthetic limbs.
…in a friend, who after a nasty divorce, thought he could never risk loving again, but finds himself able to overcome his fear and pain and open himself up in a new relationship.
…in the laughter of a cancer patient, who after not being able to even crack a smile for weeks, wept with joy at the visit of a therapy dog in her hospital room.
…in the gay student at Montclair State, who, after trying to end his life twice in high school, came to understand that God loves him, and walks through church doors now fully open to him – the same church doors that, in the past, were closed to him and aided in his feelings of worthlessness.
…in the new shoot of life that was given to the people of South Africa through the heart of Nelson Mandela. We lost his presence with us a few years ago, but his legacy remains. His prophetic voice was one that rang out to the world. He believed that there was more to life than the spiritual death of apartheid. Despite the years of imprisonment he suffered, he could see the green shoot of new life for his people in a court of truth and reconciliation – and because of that, we saw many freed from the prisons of hate, bigotry, and violence.
And I have seen this new shoot of life in the response of millions across this country to the hate that has erupted in the wake of the election – people standing up for marginalized and targeted groups, offering the arms of welcome and safety to those in fear, and being willing to stand up and be counted in the fight against hate.
Love does indeed win. God’s love most of all.
In these Advent days of darkness and of unexpected light, these days of endings and of unexpected beginnings, these days of death and unexpected life, the love of God beckons us. And the sign of this love often begins small…a shoot out of a stump, a branch out of the roots, a step forward, a smile, a safety pin, a rainbow flag. Small perhaps to be just the right size for us to embrace it. Small…but enough. “Because every now and then, peace breaks out in a place where we never would have believed it possible. Every once in a while, the deepest, oldest wound one can imagine actually heals. Every now and then, a hatchet gets buried so thoroughly that it is never dug up again. [Every now and then, a prophet is released from prison and then releases the rest of us.] It is Isaiah’s vision–the light, the peace, the healing, the calm, and we have no way of accounting for any of it except to say that it must come from God.”[1]
The peaceable kingdom is not a pipe dream, but the miracle that we await, the miracle that comes in another small way…as a baby, born in Bethlehem. This little child is the light that is stronger than all darkness. This tiny newborn is the life that cannot be overcome by death.
And so we begin Advent with death, the temple being destroyed (which we heard about in previous weeks), John the Baptist today warning of being cut down, and with a stump of a tree, and we are asked to not look away from the darkness in our lives, because that would give it power. We are to look squarely into it – right at the stubble of the temple, the stump of the tree, the wars in the world, the violence in the streets and in our hearts, the pain of the world and the pain of our lives. We are called to confront the hardness of our faith, the disbelief that can sometimes creep into our souls. We look and we know…that out of all it, a green root of peace and love is growing. And into all of that, the light of Christ is to be born anew in our lives and our hearts. And we come to know, that even a soul as dead as Dickin’s Mr. Scrooge may be given new life through the very, dead as a door nail, Marley – and that miracle of redemptive grace is for everyone – a healing balm for a hurting world.
It is with expectancy that we journey through Advent. A season that reminds us that hope is always there for us – even in our darkest moments – if we look for it. Or, as Professor Dumbledore of Harry Potter fame once said, “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
So in this Advent time, we can ask ourselves…
Are our minds open to new possibilities?
Are our eyes open to the small miracles around us?
Are our hearts open to experience the peaceable kingdom growing in our midst?
May Advent be a time for each of us to prepare the way for what is to come – to open ourselves fully to the miracle that was, and is, and that will be – to the life ready to grow out of the stumps of the world and in our lives. So that we may truly say… “O Come O Come Emmanuel – we are ready for your light!” Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click here:
[1] The Rev. Dr. Stephen Montgomery. DayOne.org.
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
December 4, 2016
Advent 4 – Year A
1st Reading – Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
2nd Reading – Romans 15:4-13
Gospel – Matthew 3:1-12
