Isaiah 10:1-4, 18-19,
33-34
10 Ah,
you who make iniquitous decrees,
who
write oppressive statutes,
2 to turn aside the needy from justice
and
to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be your spoil,
and
that you may make the orphans your prey!
3 What will you do on the day of
punishment,
in
the calamity that will come from far away?
To whom will you flee for help,
and
where will you leave your wealth,
4 so as not to crouch among the
prisoners
or
fall among the slain?
For all this his anger has not turned away;
his
hand is stretched out still.
18 The glory of his forest and his fruitful land
the Lord will destroy, both soul and body,
and
it will be as when an invalid wastes away.
19 The remnant of the trees of his
forest will be so few
that
a child can write them down.
33 Look, 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.
34 He will hack down the thickets of
the forest with an axe,
and
Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.
*
* *
Matthew 3:1-12
3 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of
Judea, proclaiming, 2 “Repent, for the kingdom of
heaven has come near.” 3 This is the one of whom
the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The
voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make
his paths straight.’”
4 Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around
his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then
the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region
along the Jordan, 6 and they were baptized by him
in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism,
he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to
come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9 Do
not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell
you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even
now the axe 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.
11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more
powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He
will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His
winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will
gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable
fire.”
A
‘cutting’ of tree wisdom (Genny Tunbridge)
Wielding an axe
to chop down a tree feels like a very destructive act – the more so as we
increasingly wake up to the value of trees. We grieve at news of ancient trees
being felled in the path of HS2, and are sickened by the wholesale bulldozing
of rainforest to make way for plantations of oil palms.
I am a world, cutter, I am a maker of life -
… But my world takes years to grow and seconds to crash[1]
But not all axe
work is destructive. Wherever tree
growth is managed, in woodland, parks or streets, different kinds of pruning or
felling are required to maintain the environment in a beneficial way for all.
The canopies of mature woodland trees block the sunlight, preventing most
things from growing beneath. By careful felling of some, space is created for
light to penetrate to the ground, different species can flourish and younger
saplings can start to grow tall to replace the felled trees.
Many tree
species put out new shoots from their stump if cut down. Traditional woodland
management utilized this, with a regular rotation of cutting back called
coppicing. Species like hazel and ash were frequently coppiced: after a few
years of growth the young shoots were harvested for firewood, charcoal or
making things, and the cycle would begin again. Pollarding was a similar
process, carried out higher up the tree instead of ground level. These
processes are sustainable, and keep the tree young: a regularly coppiced tree
will never die of old age.
Introduction
to the theme (Al Barrett)
We’ve entered Advent – the beginning of a new year in the
Christian calendar. Who would have imagined, a year ago, that come Advent
Sunday 2020 we would have spent eight-and-a-half months keeping physical
distance from each other, resisting the longing to gather together, staying at
home where possible, wearing masks to meet with others, and grieving – locally
and globally – many lives lost to a global pandemic?
Advent, more than any other season in the Christian year, is
the time of hope. Hope is not the same as cheerfulness, or optimism.
It’s less of a feeling, and more of a choice; less like the air we breathe and
more like a thread that we hold onto, sometimes for dear life. It’s not
coincidental that, in the northern hemisphere of the world, Advent comes at the
time when the nights are longest. Hope is, as the writer Barbara Brown Taylor
puts it, ‘learning to walk in the dark’.
So we’re shifting from the ‘Kingdom season’, but only subtly.
Our focus is now less explicitly on remembering, looking back, and more
about looking forward, but there are at least two aspects of continuity
across these seasons.
The first is that we’re still rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures
of exile. We’re still with the Jewish people in Babylon, caught in that tension
between seeking shalom (wellbeing, peace, justice) where we are, and
longing to ‘come home’ to the city whose very name is peace (the ‘-salem’ of
Jerusalem is another way of saying shalom). Walter Brueggemann, an
eminent scholar of the Hebrew Bible, describes the Hebrew prophets as embodying
a three-fold prophetic task:
·
REALITY
– telling difficult truths, in the midst of a nation caught up in the ideology
of chosenness (‘we’re special’)
·
GRIEF
– giving voice to lament, in the face of a community in denial about its
failures
·
HOPE
– offering words of hope, to a people who are falling into despair
Perhaps you can recognise some of these brief descriptions,
as saying something truthful not just about the Jewish exiles in Babylon, but
also about the world, and the society, we live in today? And perhaps, then, we
can also hear in the words of both Isaiah and John the Baptist, both a
necessary judgment and the vital lifeline of hope. In the coming weeks
we will hear the promise of ‘the lowly lifted up’, but here, at the beginning
of Advent, we hear of the ‘lofty being brought low’: words of judgment –
Brueggemann’s ‘reality’ – against those ‘who make iniquitous decrees, who write
oppressive statutes’, those who ‘turn aside the needy from justice’ and ‘rob
the poor … of their rights’. This is what we call ‘speaking truth to power’.
The second aspect of continuity as we enter into Advent is
that we’re still looking for signs of God’s Kingdom – signs of its coming among
us, glimpsed in the ‘now’, but also ‘not yet’ here in all its fullness. But as
we enter these four weeks of preparation for the joy of Christmas, an extra
dimension of this looking, this watching and waiting, begins to move
centre-stage.
Jesus.
For the last few months – for most of our ‘Trees of Life’
journey so far – he has not been our central focus. We have, as much as
possible, been trying to read the Hebrew scriptures on their own terms, joining
with the Jewish exiles in their longings for shalom and for home. And we
must remember, that for our Jewish siblings that home-coming happened long
before Jesus was born: the exiles returned to Jerusalem, the city was restored,
the Temple was rebuilt. But for those of us who are Christians, we read those
ancient prophetic texts with a ‘yes, and…’ – they found their fulfilment for
the returning exiles, and yet they also find their fulfilment in Jesus of
Nazareth, who we Christians name as the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed
one.
Advent is about watching and waiting for his coming
among us, too – preparing once again to celebrate the birth of ‘the Word made
flesh’. And yet even with the coming of Jesus, there is yet more fulfilment to
long for. In Jesus is ‘the fullness of God’, but God’s Kingdom is still to come
in all its fullness, to ‘fill all things’, ‘as the waters cover the sea’. We
wait and watch, not just as we rehearse again the events of the first
Christmas, but in need of the reality, the grief, and the hope for the world
made new. And so for now, this Advent, we are still learning to see in the
dark, to walk in the dark, to give ourselves to the future (as author Rebecca
Solnit puts it) that is coming to birth in the dark womb of our world:
“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch,
feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope
should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to
steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's
treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give
yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the
present inhabitable.”
(Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the dark)
Reflection (Tim Evans)
I remember sitting in a church one Sunday, curious about what the
preacher was going to say. I confess that I am not always sitting so eagerly
awaiting the sermon slot but this week the gospel reading centred around one of
the judgment texts that the gospel writers report Jesus saying. You might think
it morbid for that to be an area of interest, but as I had been on a real
journey of thinking, reading and reflecting on what I made of the whole idea of
judgement and punishment and what that says about the character of God, I was genuinely
interested to see what someone else made of it. To my astonishment and I
confess annoyance they just ignored the text and talked about something else
instead. But on reflection I realised that in my Christian experience people
tended to either talk too much about it and sometimes it seemed even with
relish and to promote a fear based faith, or not want to talk about it at all,
and so I didn't blame someone for not wanting to talk about a subject, that I
suspect instinctively jarred with their experience of a loving, compassionate,
inclusive and forgiving God.
I want to acknowledge that many will have experiences of oppression and
injustice that I have not experienced. I am mindful of how liberation
theologians ask us to listen to the theological voices from those who find
themselves on the margins, indeed our texts are written as good news from the
perspective of those who experienced structural oppression whether from
religious authorities or the Roman state, and not such good news for those of us
who collude or perpetuate the demeaning of our fellow human and non-human
neighbours. The cry for someone to get their 'just desserts' for wrongs they
have committed against us, is in many ways a natural human reaction. We have
justice systems to dispense what we see as justice in our imperfect human
condition partly to make a judgement of how the punishment should fit the crime
but there are many cultural and structural understandings around the world of
what justice means and the goal of passing judgement.
My own journey is one that in my early Christian life understood the
meaning of God's judgement as needing to satisfy His need for justice - we had
all wronged God and deserved to be punished unless we trusted that God had
punished his only Son in our place. Someone had to get their 'just desserts.'
Over time this idea of an angry God needing to be placated as somehow being
just stopped making sense to me. Timothy Gorringe in his book 'God's Just
Vengeance' describes how this model of understanding the death of Jesus, how
punishment and justice went together, shaped criminal justice systems through a
retributive model including capital punishment, in particular in the United
States. I grew to think that Gorringe was right, that if we understood the death
of Jesus by religious and political authorities as an interrupter to the myth
of redemptive violence, our need (as René Girard says) to seek justice by
scapegoating others in a vain attempt to bring peace, but instead the life,
death and resurrection of Jesus as being about bringing reconciliation,
relationships restored in a new community, then that changed how I understood
the character and mission of God, what justice meant and the role that
judgement plays.
So in this time of Advent, is it possible to think of judgement in the
context of a time in the Christian calendar that is supposed to be about
us preparing to receive hope, love and Good News into the world and into our
lives? John the Baptist seemed to think that the coming of Jesus heralded a new
order of things and he urged repentance in preparation whilst baptising those
who were prepared to embrace it, whilst Mary’s Magnificat that says the mighty
will be brought down from their thrones and exalts the humble is not far
away.
I find these intertwined understandings helpful, and which find
resonances in our passages from both Isaiah and Matthew:
·
Judgement
as vindication
Here we find through judgement of oppressors the vindication of God for
those who cry out against unjust structures and those who suffer for
righteousness
·
Judgement
as role reversal
Here we find judgement that reverses the social order that puts the
powerful, connected, violent, rich at the top of the social strata, instead
calls them to collective repentance.
·
Judgement
as reconciliation
Judgement that sees justice as relational and therefore prioritises
restorative justice restoring right relationships including the lion and lamb
lying down together, swords beaten into ploughshares because there is no more
war etc.
I find it helpful to place these understandings in the context of the
overall mission of God which is the renewal of all things. The Hebrew word for
judgment and justice is mishpat which means 'putting things right.'
Judgement is good news because it provides part of the hinge from the world
that is with all of its injustice, oppression, violence, into the world as it
should be.
Howard Zehr speaks of the dangers of us understanding judgement and
justice in taking the larger social, economic and political dimensions and
treating them as individual wrongs, something our wider individualised culture,
justice system and western theology encourages. He takes up the theology of
shalom to challenge a therapeutic (individualised) understanding of restorative
justice and moves it to a community understanding. For him it is where it is
communities that experience shalom - peace and wholeness, who are able to
extend forgiveness and inclusion albeit with the caveat that for some a process
of being outcast is required for the safety and shalom of the community and
even punishment may be required for the purpose of understanding the harm
caused, taking responsibility and making restitution. Then reconciliation and
inclusion are possible.
Finally, I want to turn to passages in our readings that use images of
horticulture or fire. Judgement not as retributive punishment from an angry,
punitive God, but a process of pruning or in other places in the Bible images
of refining as you would do to a tree to enable it to be fruitful or molten
metal to remove impurities. We cannot escape the painful process that this can
be, and it is challenging to think about being open to God, personally,
culturally and structurally in this way that addresses all that is ‘non-shalom’
– non-just, non-harmonious, non-peaceful, not whole, by seeking to prune or
refine that which stifles the growth of the Kingdom of God in us and in our
world. But, as both Isaiah and Revelation promise, the other side of that
eternal process is a renewed creation where the old order of things has
passed away.
Reflection (Jeannie Lynch)
It seems strange to
think that we are in Advent already!
Quite a lot of friends, family and work friends have already put their
Christmas trees up and most of the other decorations too! Christmas shopping has begun in earnest at
the start of October, and Amazon has been kept very busy as we are in another
lockdown. It does not feel like it is
the season of Advent yet despite the Christmas ads on the telly, stir up Sunday
last weekend, and twinkly lights in some people’s front room windows. Maybe because of all the restrictions in
place, the rise of the virus, that people have turned to Christmas early to
brighten their days. Christmas is a time of hope, of belonging, a time of being
together, a time of light in our dark and dreary world. Advent is all these
things and hope. Hope that it will soon
be ok, soon the dark days will start to brighten, hope that love will still be
there to balance out our despair.
Advent is also a time
when we are looking for the signs of Gods kingdom in our world. This year has been so full of many signs,
stand here, keep two metres apart, wear a mask, please queue in this line to go
in and this line to go out.
Unexpectedly, we have
not had all our usual signposts in our lives this year. Many of us have not had
many meals out, birthday get togethers, holidays, trips out, visits to the
seaside, friends round for meals, cinemas, theatre and concerts, church
services, fundraisers and parties and most of all, just being with our loved
ones.
While these things
help sign post our lives and lead us through the year, it is the people who
matter most to us that being separated from, that hurt the most. Those of us who have endured a time of
shielding or isolation, will have felt this most keenly. We have had small window of time in the
summer when we could meet up, but this seems now to have been a summer dream
that has vanished.
Again, we find that we
are now as a country preparing to come out of lockdown, and we as look,
hopefully, towards Christmas as a time to spend with our families and loved
ones, it will be our presence not our presents that will matter the most.
John the Baptist said,
‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’ This
means that every effort we take to make a positive impact on those around us,
seeking justice, creating peace, we are causing the will of God to be realized,
right now. John called the crowds to
prepare the way of the Lord- Jesus was not going to do all the work himself.
What we can do to prepare, as we enter into Advent, is to watch, pray, listen.
As we prepare for the
(possible) end of lockdown, and the coming of the Christ Child, may we prepare
to do it differently. To be able to
focus on what is most important, and to take and be the presence of God with us
wherever we go.
Questions for reflection / discussion
As I read / listened to the readings
and reflections for this week…
·
what
did I notice, or what particularly stood out for me?
·
what
did they make me wonder, or what questions am I pondering?
·
what
have they helped me realise?
·
is there anything I want to do or
change in the light of this week's topic?
A prayer for this week: Advent Credo, by
Revd Professor Allan Boesak
It is
not true that creation and the human family
are doomed to destruction and loss.
This
is true: For God so loved the world that
He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish
but have everlasting life.
It is
not true that we must accept inhumanity and
discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction.
This
is true: I have come that they may have
life, and that abundantly.
It is
not true that violence and hatred should have
the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever.
This
is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us
a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall
be called wonderful counsellor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of
peace.
It is
not true that we are simply victims of the
powers of evil who seek to rule the world.
This
is true: To me is given authority in
heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even until the end of the world.
It is
not true that we have to wait for those who
are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be
peacemakers.
This
is true: I will pour out my spirit on all
flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see
visions and your old men shall have dreams.
It is
not true that our hopes for liberation of
humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth
and for this history.
This
is true: The hour comes, and it is now,
that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.
So
let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love
and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with
courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world.
[From Walking on Thorns, by Allan Boesak, Eerdmans, 2004]
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