The Triune God is pruning us in order that Christ, our root, might bring forth new life from us.

Vicar Emily Beckering; Second Sunday of Advent, year A; texts: Matthew 3:1-12; Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

My home congregation had a tradition of performing a play every year that told the story of Jesus’ ministry and crucifixion. One of the most memorable scenes featured John the Baptist: he marched down the aisle of the nave in a wild wig and a hairy costume, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Prepare the way of the Lord, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” I must confess to you that one of my childhood dreams was to play the part of John the Baptist. Little did I know that that was too lofty a dream for a child, and the part would not be given to a girl. So I never got to see the view from the aisle, but I know well what it felt like to be part of the crowd. And really, that was the proper place for me, for all of us: we are part of the crowd, for we need to hear John the Baptist each year calling us to change how we have been living.

So here we are again, along the banks of the river, listening along with the Pharisees and the Sadducees to John the Baptist’s call to us. “Repent” he tells us, “The kingdom of heaven is near!” In other words, “there is no time to waste! No more excuses to make.” As we heard last week, the time is nearer than we think and this is our wake-up call. It is time to wake up, time to repent, time to turn around and turn away from the harmful ways that we have been living and time to turn back towards God and God’s purposes.

Through John’s warning, we like the people of Judea, are told to stop putting our trust in presidential pledges and party platforms, and instead to turn around and to trust God and God’s promises.

We, like those who journeyed from Jerusalem, are told to put an end to meeting our own needs at the expense of those who live in our home, in our city, across the ocean.

We are called to stop strolling along through Advent, content to busy ourselves with baking and buying and all of our responsibilities without a thought for those who struggle to keep their families fed and warm.

John the Baptist calls us back from the dark path of belittling ourselves when we feel that we lack what is needed, and ridiculing others when we feel threatened by them.

Along with the Sadducees and the Pharisees, we are called away from any sense of entitlement or security based on who we think we are or what we have done.

We are to stop staring at ourselves. We are to look up at Jesus and look out into the world where he leads us.

God loves us, and God also loves those whom we have hurt. We cannot continue to live in these ways: too many people have been hurt, too many relationships broken, too many needs have been ignored, too many times have we trampled on others to get our way, too many times have we hidden our God-given light or snuffed others’ out, too many opportunities to listen or to witness have been avoided, and too many times have we placed our trust in people, in things other than in the Triune God. We are trees who have not borne as much fruit as we could have. And this cannot continue. And there is no time to waste. We must be stopped. We must be changed.

This change requires more than an external makeover because the problem goes deep within us; this change, we are told, requires fire and an ax. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees to cut out and to chop off all of the harmful beliefs and patterns, all of the pieces of us that cause us to hurt ourselves and those around us.

This is what we need to understand about John the Baptist’s words: we are already the tree stump, and these words today are good news for a tree cut down.

The Triune God has already been at work in us since our Baptism, cutting out our old sinful selves, and God continues to do that day after day. Even the news of being cut down is good news because we actually need God to remove the diseased branches so that we might heal, to rip away the vines that choke the life out of us, to prune off the branches that take so much of our energy but bear no good fruit. We cannot be Christ if we are turned inward, and so though it is at times painful, the thorns and the thistles and yes maybe even the parts of ourselves that we would name as our trunk—our ego and the value that we place on our accomplishments and our reputation and how loved we are by others—even these things need to be cut away, down to the very tree stump.

But an amazing thing happens to tree stumps in the wild. On the surface—the part of the stump that we can see—the tree may look dead, lifeless, even decaying. But that is not the whole story. There is life yet within the tree: a whole root system beneath it, which anchors it deep and gives the stump what it needs to grow again. Without these roots, the stump would surely die. But it does not, for from the roots shoot new sprouts which will grow into a new tree, a tree without the disease of the old trunk, a healed tree, a healthy tree.

We, too, have secure roots. We are told today both by Paul and the prophet Isaiah, that the root of Jesse is Jesus: the one promised to Israel, the hope for the Gentiles—the hope for us. We are rooted to Christ: at our very core, we belong to the Lord. It is not us who live, but Christ within us: Christ the root, the anchor who keeps us from being torn up by the storms that may rage through our lives, the one who holds us secure in all seasons of the year, and when the winter passes and the flooding around us ceases, and all of our harmful ways of living have been cut away, Christ, our root, will bring forth new life from us.

Without Christ, we, like the tree stump without its roots, would simply die and decay. If left to our own devices, we would continue to trample over others to get our way, we would continue to cling to our money, to choose the easiest path rather than the path that God calls us down, to try to make people into who we would have them be instead of celebrate who God has made them, and we would continue to turn our back on God. But God has found a way to bring lasting change by choosing to forever be bound—to be rooted—to us through Christ. In this binding, we have been set free. The change within us comes from God, and the One who has claimed us and began a good work in us will bring it to completion. Christ will continue to work in us until we are no longer hurting others or destroying or turning our backs on God.

All of this is to say that when we look in the mirror and we see all of our shortcomings, how far we are from who we want to be, or when we look at each other and only see disappointment, or when we look at a world where sexism, racism, classism, slavery, abuse and poverty still hold power, and all that we can see is an ugly, hopeless, dead tree stump, we are told that God isn’t finished with us yet. God refuses to leave us there as the tree stump. “Wait,” God says, “Just you wait, a shoot shall come out from you and a branch shall grow out of your roots.”

This word of God is our life-giving sap because it gives us hope: real, true, hope that the kingdom has come near, and that we are not to give up on ourselves or one another because Christ is still at work in us. When we look at ourselves honestly and we realize that we can’t live how we have been living, the Triune God is cutting away our dead branches. And when we are reminded what is really important in this life, love of God and of one another, and that all the rest can be left behind, the Triune God is pruning us. And when we find ourselves listening in order to understand the concerns and values of others rather than immediately reacting out of fear or anger, the Triune God makes a new shoot burst forth. And when we give our money out of joy rather than cling to it, the Triune God is at work and a sprout springs up. When we take a second look at one another, and we see each other’s roots—each other’s worth—the Triune God is at work and a new bud flowers. And when we entrust ourselves—not just the parts that we are proudest of or the parts that we think maybe we can do without—but our whole selves to God, a branch grows tall and strong.

We might not always feel it, and this change that Christ is bringing about in us may not immediately be evident. So how do we know that we are being made new? How do we know that we are still rooted to God? We know because Christ has promised it: that he will never leave us or forsake us: that he will be with us always until the end of the age. Until he comes again. Until the very end of our sin, and our hurting, and all suffering. This is the promise and the hope for us, for the Church, the whole world, and for anyone who feels like a tree cut down. It won’t be long now; even now a shoot springs forth.

We live as people of the day, children of light, even if the time looks like it’s still night; so Paul invites us to act as if it is day right now, live as if it is Isaiah’s “days to come” right now.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, First Sunday of Advent, year A; texts: Romans 13:11-14; Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

The middle of the night is a mysterious time, but far stranger are the wee hours of the morning, those hours before the sun rises, the time that isn’t quite night but isn’t quite day, either.  I’m blessed to be able to sleep well most nights, but every once in awhile I’ll wake up a bit early, in those strange hours.

If it’s a big day ahead, with lots to do or many things to attend, I find myself dreading the possibility, as I turn my alarm clock around to see the time, that it actually might be time to wake up.  To see that it’s 3:15 a.m. and I can sleep some more is a gift of grace.  I don’t have to get up yet; I don’t have to start a day that will be full of whatever it’s full of.  To be able to close my eyes and sleep some more, this is a good thing.  But if I look, and it’s only 15 minutes to the time I need to wake up, there’s really no point in going back to sleep.  It’s day already, for all intents and purposes, even if it’s dark.  Best to get up and get at what needs doing.

That time when it’s not quite night and not yet day, that is the time of our lives in this world as disciples of Christ Jesus.  Images of light and darkness, night and day pervade God’s word.  They thread throughout the words of witness believers have spoken and written for 2,000 years, that we live as people of the day in a world threatened by night, that we follow a risen Christ in a world where death seems to have immense power.

Yet a preeminent witness among those witnesses, the apostle Paul, suggests that things might be closer to dawn than we tend to imagine.  “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers;” he says, “the night is far gone, the day is near.”  Paul tells us that it’s more like 15 minutes to wake-up time, rather than three hours.  Which suggests that our response needs to be accordingly different.

One of the challenges we have living in the 21st century is that it is the 21st century, nearly 2,000 years since the resurrection of Christ Jesus and the birth of the Church.  Paul’s sense that the time of fulfillment was near at hand has been muted by two millennia of waiting.  We’ve become so accustomed to waiting we’ve developed a centuries-long practice of having a special season, Advent, devoted to teaching us the art of waiting, the practice of patience.  We have come to live our lives with the spiritual expectation that it’s always still a few hours from dawn, not a few minutes.

That’s something I think Paul would have us correct, even now, twenty centuries removed from his writing these words to the Roman church.  To a God in whom, as Peter writes, a thousand years is like a day, time is relative, and 2,000 years is nothing.  Paul, I think, understands this, and his words, still read in our worship, still carried in our Bibles these many years later, still speak to us as a truth we need to hear.  An alarm we do not want to shut off.
 
When we see what Isaiah says the morning, the day of the LORD will bring, our hearts sing with hope.

The prophet tells us a promise of what the LORD will do in the new creation.  It’s a beautiful vision.

It’s a vision of hope, of all peoples coming to God.  “In those days, says the LORD, all peoples will gather together at the mountain of the LORD.”  They will gather in peace, to learn from God.  To learn God’s ways, that we might walk in God’s paths, that’s why all will gather.

It’s a vision of peace, of God’s people laying aside hatreds and weapons.  But it’s a vision of peace that is one of peace with justice.  Where all our weapons are transformed into tools that feed, nourish and sustain God’s people.

There are moments, sometimes painfully brief, where it seems that might be the way the world is moving.  Many swords have been destroyed.  Peace has been made in places where it was long absent.

And there are far more times when we realize bitterly, “not yet.”  Many swords continue to be made and sold, while millions of children starve for lack of plows to till soil and raise food.  We still look to our ways to solve our problems, not learning God’s ways and living them.

This promise of God’s is still just that: a promise.  We still wait for the LORD to come and restore the world.

So when we consider what Paul says, that this restoration is near, at hand, it makes little sense to what our perception of reality tells us.

We know we must hear what he says, because that’s exactly what our Lord tells us as well.  It’s not yet dawn, Paul says, but we’re past the darkest hours.  Today Jesus tells us it could happen at any time.  The hope of all Christians is that Jesus will return soon, to restore all things, and today we’re told he will.

But it’s been a long time, and we’re still waiting.  What are we supposed to do with that?  If waiting for Jesus’ return is like waiting for morning, well, it’s sure a long night.  Wars, famines, plagues, hatreds, all these things still torment our world.

And sometimes if the wait for something is too long, we stop waiting, stop believing anything will come.  And that leads us to inaction, for a couple reasons.

We begin to live as if we’ve got hours to sleep, and that lulls us into inaction.  What’s the rush to act, when it will be far ahead in the future that all this will happen, if ever?

Or we live as if night could never be stopped by day, as if it is all-powerful, and that cows us into inaction.  What can we do, just a few flashes of light in a dark world?

Regardless of what our reality seems to be, we can’t escape one simple thing: our Lord Jesus Christ tells us, and Paul affirms for us, that we are to live our lives at the ready.  Always.  Thinking we know when the time will be is foolish, but Jesus doesn’t tell us to do that.  Acting as if it will never come is also foolish.

So Jesus says again and again, “just live lives at the ready, at all times.”  “The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”  That’s why Paul’s urgency is simple: it’s time, he says, to start waking up.  Start being ready.

And since we do seem to struggle with long waits, it’s a good thing that Paul gives us an answer to how we might stay awake, how we might be ready for our Lord’s return.

Live honorably as if it were already day, he says.  Live honorably as if it were already day!

If it truly is just before dawn, Paul says, then get up, get out of bed, get dressed.  Even if it looks like night.  There’s not enough time to go back to sleep.  We need to take off the works of darkness, he says – put them aside – and start removing from our lives that which is a sign of the darkness.

Put aside our swords and spears: that is, our hatred, our indifference, our pride, our love of violence.  Put aside our self-centeredness and our ignorance of the pain of others.  Put aside our sin and wrongdoing, actions which Paul frequently compares to things of the darkness.

Get rid of them, he says.  You know what time it is: time to put those things away.

And then get dressed with “the armor of light,” he says, start living as if it were already God’s day.  Using plows and pruning hooks, to borrow Isaiah’s words, that is, caring for the world God made so that all may live.  Living honorably.

In fact Paul then seems to say “let’s keep it simple”: just put on the Lord Jesus Christ, get dressed in Jesus.  Cover ourselves with his way of life, his love, his grace, by living our lives as he did, loving and caring for the world and being a sign of God’s love.  Being in our very bodies and lives a preview of the new creation yet to come.

And isn’t this exactly what Isaiah says? “Come, let us walk in the light of the LORD.”  Because when we do, we learn that God’s kingdom has already begun and the day is breaking: first in Jesus, and now in each of us.  Swords and spears do turn into plows and pruners as God transforms our hearts in love.

Second, we also learn what it is to live in the light, to live as light, even when we are surrounded by darkness.  This is the other reason for our inaction, that we fear the work of darkness is too strong, so we won’t be able to make any impact or dent in the night.

Paul addresses this more fully in the verses preceding our reading today.  This whole section of his letter to the Romans, from chapter 12 up to today’s reading, is Paul’s great “nevertheless”: nevertheless, he says, live that way anyway.

Let your love be genuine, rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, Paul says in chapter 12 (12:9, 12).  This is not life in full daylight, but it is light-filled life to be lived in a world where there is darkness and hate and pain, because the light of this love can make a difference.

And if people aren’t going to be responding in peace or love, so be it, he says.  “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all,” Paul says (12:9).  There may be many swords wielded, many weapons fired.  But Paul says, why does that mean you and I shouldn’t start making plowshares with ours?  That’s how the kingdom starts.  We go first.

And the same Jesus who tells us to be ready at all times also tells us parables of mustard seeds and yeast, tiny things that look to have no value but which grow and transform their environment.  Just because the night seems too powerful and evil too strong doesn’t mean we’re not a little seed of hope and light and grace, and that we can’t have any effect.  That’s the gift of the Master whom we serve, the one who is coming but who in the meantime needs us to be about our work. 

Friends, the time is now.  “It is now the moment for [us] to wake from sleep.”

It’s almost day.  It’s time to get up, get dressed, and start walking in the light of the Lord.  There are plenty of things that make us want to roll over and close our eyes, but the light of the Lord is already upon us.

So, . . . let’s wake up!  Let’s ask God to keep us ever watchful, ever ready and prepared with lives of love and service, lives that will transform this world in tiny but powerful ways.  When Christ returns there will be a reign of justice and joy and peace, that we know.  But in the meantime, we prepare for that return by living in justice and joy and peace in this broken world, by being a tiny fleck of light in a world of darkness, and so being a sign of the rising sun that is to come.

And that’s all Christ needs of us, that we live the light-filled life as a sign in the darkness to others and as a beginning of the dawn of God.  And since the day is almost upon us, let’s be at it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Christ, our true bread, meets our deepest needs and longing by bringing us true life: relationship with the Triune God. 

Vicar Emily Beckering; Day of Thanksgiving, year C; text: John 6:25-35

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Some followed him across the Sea of Galilee because they had heard of what he and done: of the people he had healed and fed. Others had actually seen him feed 5,000 people, and were eager to eat again. They were all attracted to Jesus because of his “signs,” but their faith went no deeper.

“Show us a sign!” they say, “Moses gave our ancestors manna in the wilderness. What can you do?”

They want signs, but they are not really interested in what the sign actually tells them about who Jesus is: the Messiah, the One whom they have been waiting for, the Son of God, who brings the very light and life of God.

All they know is that they are hungry. And so they follow the whispers and the stories about him. They follow Jesus perhaps in attempt to witness the next great miracle, to hear the next great speaker, to eat the magic bread that they have heard so much about.

But Jesus tells them that they are following him for the wrong reasons. They are looking for meaning and hope in the wrong places. The crowds are following him for entertainment, for a good story to share with the people back home, for a piece of bread.

But all of this is temporary. Their wandering in the wilderness will only bring short-term gain. They are hungry, but they are seeking experiences that will not satisfy their longing and food that will not fill them.

The crowd in this story reveals truths about ourselves: we too are hungry and too often, we like the crowds find ourselves wandering through our lives attempting to find happiness and fulfillment and meaning in ways—in so many ways—other than in God.

How often we seek life in our relationships, expecting—even demanding—our families and friends to meet all of our needs.

Or, we seek fulfillment in our work, in our hobbies, in our careers: convinced that if we just earn one more promotion or award of recognition or A on a term paper, then we will finally have arrived.

We try to fill our longing with things, with comforts, or experiences: certain that if we can just move to the bigger, better apartment, or finish the new edition on our home, or buy the newest model phone or car, or see the new opera, or visit that country that we have been waiting to see—then we will finally be happy.

We fill our days with events and projects to accomplish, our nights with parties or TV in order to fight off our loneliness, to distract us from the disappointment that we feel with ourselves or others, to escape reality.

We numb ourselves by ignoring and shoving our feelings down within us so that we don’t have to feel any pain, any hurt, any fear, but we are left feeling nothing at all.

And when these tactics don’t deliver—when we don’t find the happiness that we thought we would—we try again and make more to-do lists to mark down our accomplishments, keep purchasing the new models as advertised, and store up more things in search of something—anything—that will give us a purpose, meaning, life again.

But the truth is that none of this is ultimately satisfying. None of this is the answer to our problem. And none if it will ease the pain or the fear or the emptiness that we feel. Instead, we are left feeling lonely, dissatisfied with our relationships, disconnected from those who we want to care about, frustrated with ourselves, purposeless, and indifferent to the world. This kind of living leaves us exhausted and finally, empty.

In John’s gospel for today, we are told that this kind of life is no life at all: and it is certainly not the life that our God hopes for us. Jesus came so that we might have life and have it abundantly. Abundant life, true life, is life that only comes from God.

This is what Jesus is telling the crowds who have come to see his miracles: They came to hear a great speaker, someone to impress them with his words. They need true words. True words are those from God, words that Jesus the Son speaks.

They came to see signs, but they need true signs that will point them to God. True signs are given so that they might believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

They came seeking bread, what they need is true bread. True bread brings eternal life, and it is a life that only God can give. The true bread that Jesus is offering them is himself, for he alone can bring them this eternal life, he alone can fill their emptiness and satisfy their longing.

He alone is the bread of life, the living water, the light of the world.

Bread. Water. Light. These are all things that humans need to live, and yet, Jesus says that these things are not enough. All the bread and water and light in the world will not satisfy their deepest longings. What the people in the crowd really yearn for—what they have been created for—is true life, real life, abundant life and this can only come from God. And this is exactly what Jesus offers! God’s will according to the gospel of John is that no one may be lost, but everyone who sees Jesus will believe in him and have this eternal life.

Life after death, yes, but if we were to read ahead in to chapter 17 and listen in on Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, we would hear what eternal life really is: it is knowing God the Father and Jesus Christ whom he sent. God is concerned not only with life in the future but with true life now—abundant life is life lived in the joy of relationship with God.

This relationship is what the crowd hungers for and what they most need—this relationship is what we most need.

So when Jesus speaks to the crowds and tells them not to seek bread that perishes but the bread that gives life, he is speaking to us, calling us back from the empty ways that we have been living. Calling us to come back from our wilderness and our wandering, to come back from our restlessness and our loneliness and our longing. We don’t have to live those ways anymore because Jesus is giving us exactly what we need: himself.

Christ—our true bread—is the only one who can fill the emptiness that we carry, the only One who can bring lasting healing, the only One who can satisfy our deepest hunger. We have been hungering and searching for this relationship because it is for this that we have been created. And now, we need look no further, for thanks be to God on this day that this is precisely what we are given! Real life, true life: life filled with joy and abundance because it is life with our God.

And this life is eternal because God will never let us go, because Christ our bread will give himself to us bite by bite week after week. As God provided manna in the wilderness for the Israelites morning by morning, so too does God bring us life by drawing us into the very life of the Triune God here at this table week after week to remind us that what we need at our core—we already have—and we can stop searching for this relationship with God is given freely. In this lifelong relationship, we need not be hungry or thirsty because God will continually give us what we need: God’s own self.

But this relationship is not offered to us alone. We live in a hungry, tired world, a world that also hungers for this life, for this joy of living in relationship with God. And so our work does not end here at this table. From this table, from Christ our true bread, we are sent out to share how this God of love and light and life offers true life—his life—to all.

This is why we give thanks today because our God meets the needs of the whole world and calls us all back from our wandering and our loneliness to this table where no one leaves hungry or thirsty.