Behold, I Make All Things New!

Advent 2A; Isaiah 10:33 – 11:12; Matthew 3:1-12; St. Paul’s, 12/4/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Behold, I Make All Things New!”

I’m starting today’s sermon with a bit of show and tell.  What I have to show you is this piece of artwork by Michael Podesta.  It hangs on a wall in my office.  When you get close enough to get a good look, what’s the first thing you would see?  A stump.  A tree cut down close to the ground – its trunk fallen by the side.  But there’s more.  There’s a small leaf springing from the side of the stump.  There are words which you cannot read from your seats.  The words come from the Book of Revelation, but the quote is an echo from several places in Isaiah.  It reads, “Behold, I make all things new!”  It is the promise of today’s lessons.

But, to understand the powerful and poetic imagery of Isaiah 11 – and to make sense of Podesta’s wonderful artwork – we must first be devastated by the horrific language at the end of Isaiah’s chapter 10.  We cannot understand how radical a change there is in chapter 11 until we hear what the prophet says to Jerusalem; whose rulers and ruling class have written oppressive statutes, who have turned aside the needy from justice, who have robbed the poor of God’s people of their rights, and made the widows their spoil and the orphans their prey.  Israel has vacillated between military and political alliances with both Egypt and Assyria, looking to each in turn for a false sense of immunity against the other – and Israel’s about to get voted off the island – like a 6^th century BCE contestant on Survivor!  “Look,” cries the prophet, “the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the tallest trees will be cut down, and the lofty will be brought low.  God will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax, and Lebanon with majestic trees will fall” (Isa. 10:33-34).

Now, we have a couple of old stumps in our backyard.  They’ve been there for several years now.  They are old and dried up – just rotting away.  There is no sign of life in them save the insects that have made them their homes.  But like the promise in this art work, the prophet makes an unimaginable promise of newness that the Spirit of God – the Ruach of God – the breath of God – will cause to happen.  A shoot – a branch – of Jesse (that is, David’s father) will come out of that dried up stump of a tree.  What has been left for dead will become what Isaiah calls elsewhere “the holy seed” of God’s promise to do a new thing for Israel and for the whole of creation.

The prophet’s words focus on judgment against Israel for having turned her back on God and upon the weak, the poor, the marginalized and needy of the land.  The picture of God’s judgment in these pages is indeed horrific.  And yet neither the prophet nor God is ever able to pronounce total annihilation for God’s people.  The stump – the desolation of Israel – still holds within itself the “holy seed” of new hope and new life.  This is good news indeed.

Of course Isaiah’s poetic scenario of wolf and lamb, leopard and kid, lion and fatling calf with a little child leading them – what many have called a vision of the Peaceable Kingdom of God – is both unreal and impossible in our experience of the animal kingdom.  “However,” theologian Walter Brueggemann points out, “this poem [in Isaiah] is about the impossible possibility of the new creation!  The coming king,” writes Brueggemann, “will not only do what the world takes to be impossible, but will also do what the world has long since declared to be impossible…. The poem is about deep, radical, limitless transformation in which we – like lion, wolf and leopard – will have no hunger for injury, no need to devour, no yearning for brutal control, no passion for domination” (Isaiah 1-39, Westminster John Knox Press, 1998, p. 103)…. The transformation,” he claims, “is [both] vastly public and [yet] intimately personal.  It is [first] a gift and then a vocation [for each of us].  It is of course not possible – except that the sprout comes from the stump by the [work of God’s] spirit!” (ibid, 104)

Like the prophet Isaiah, John the Baptist sees in his time a vision of trees being taken down to the stump – the ax lying at the root of the trees (Matt 3:10).  Power in first century Israel is centered with those who make alliance with Rome – much like Israel's earlier dalliances with Egypt and Assyria.  Those who support the Roman occupation flourish, and those who support the empire by their silence avoid its wrath.  The nation is not especially sinful or abandoned by God, but like most places in most times, John’s people are indeed in need of reform.  They stand in need of a turning back to faithful living, and an adherence to their covenant with God (The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, notes, p. 1751).  Where do our alliances stand?  Where do we trust in our own wisdom and the strength of others rather than trust the wisdom, grace and loving presence of God in our lives?

Ax and flame call God’s people to repentance and new life.  John insists that the “people must change their lives and do good works or they will be like a barren tree that is cut down and burned” (Synthesis).   Yet John points to the coming of another who will baptize the people “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  Jesus will bring “empowerment” from the Holy Spirit of God.  The fire Jesus brings “will not be the fire of destruction,” John tells us; rather it will be the “fire of transformation!” (ibid)  The Holy Spirit gives us the power to sort out the chaff from our lives that we might open ourselves up to God’s reign in our lives.  This is Isaiah’s poetry re-imagined by John.  Ax and flame, winnowing fork and chaff – and yet as improbable as it may seem, transformation and new life.

Our hope as people of faith – the hope proclaimed by the season of Advent – is that in the midst of our messed up alliances with Empire, in the midst of our own silence before oppression, or our own apathy toward those who struggle to survive, God will not turn away from us completely.  Our hope as people of faith is that in the midst of our wild pursuit of money, or power, or just plain stuff (can you say “people trampled in the doorways of Wal-Mart at the start of Black Friday?”), God will never completely write us off.  Our hope as Advent people is that whenever we act like a tree that needs to be taken down to the stump – whenever we find ourselves feeling like dried up, rotting stumps, God never fully writes us off – there is always hope for transformation and new life. 

You see, there’s this shoot – this leafy branch – this little bit of promise – this little bit of life – that comes out of the stump: that promise of a descendant of Jesse who comes among us.  Perhaps in Isaiah’s day it was the rise of Josiah, a king who brought about great reform for a short while in Judea, calling God’s people back to their covenant with God. In John’s day it was Jesus of Nazareth, anointed by God to stand against empire and oppression and call God’s people back into covenant.

Perhaps in our day it is God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within us – calling each of us to stand up in the power of our baptismal promises and proclaim a transformed reality – to proclaim Isaiah’s poem – Isaiah’s dream – “about [the] deep, radical, limitless transformation in which [the people of this world] – like lion, wolf and leopard – will have no hunger for injury, no need to devour, no yearning for brutal control, no passion for domination” (Brueggemann).  Perhaps in our day it’s God’s Holy Spirit speaking through us, proclaiming with a loud voice: We have had enough of hate in this world – we are willing to risk love!

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, like the message of the prophets, is a deep and radical dream for humanity and the whole of creation.  The season of Advent is about our becoming awake to the working of God in our lives and in our world.  How important to each of us is Isaiah’s image of the peaceable kingdom?  How important to me – to you – is God’s dream for this world; a world of inclusion and grace, of compassion, mercy and love? 

How do we want to live our lives as the people of God known as St. Paul’s Episcopal Church?  With all the riskiness of such a choice – with all the vulnerability of risking what we hold most dear – do we, indeed, choose to live this way?  If God can cause a shoot to come forth from a dying stump, just think what God can do with the living, vibrant witness of St. Paul’s – just think what God could do with each of us and all of us working together!  “Behold,” our Lord proclaims, “I make all things new!” Amen.