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Title: Chainsaws and Advent
Date: December 10, 2007
Texts: Psalm72:1-7, 18-19; Isaiah 11:1-10; Rom 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12

Let me read that first line from Isaiah again: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots” (Isa 11:1).

Now, when Katie and I moved into our house I slowly began to make some changes to the front yard. I became obsessed. I started to tear out all the stuff the previous owners had planted, or let overgrow. First I took out all the ivy—it was everywhere, even breaking its way into the crawl space below the house. It had to go. When I started, I had no idea how hard it was to make it all go away—ivy sends roots everywhere.

But once I had taken it all out, I looked at the front yard, and I still wasn’t satisfied. There were these three holly bushes that the previous owners had turned into trees. And they were ugly trees. I hated them. Katie didn’t mind them so much. But I hated them. And after much persistence, she let me cut them down.

I borrowed Bradley’s chainsaw. I woke up in the morning, took the chain saw out front, and got to work on those holly trees. I found out that this was a funny thing to do. I guess it’s not usual to walk your dog down the street and see some crazed neighbor walking around the front yard with a chainsaw. But the worried looks from dog walkers didn’t stop me.

With only stumps left from the holly trees, I got a load of compost and a load of mulch from the dump and filled in all the area where the holly trees used to be. The space was now reclaimed for my own gardening. The stumps were buried underneath the new earth. I had won. The holly was gone.

Or so I thought… The two smaller trees were done for; they couldn’t survive the chainsaw trauma. But the other one wasn’t so small. The tree was gone, but it left decent stump and an extensive root system. And in late spring, I discovered some strange shoots poking out between my flowers. What were they? It took me a week or so to figure it out. And sure enough, they were shoots from the submerged holly stump and roots. They started coming up everywhere. Almost everyday I found a new one. Even after such devastation, something survived. Under all that earth, life started to fight back.

This is also the story of Israel, God’s chosen people. It’s the story the prophet Isaiah knows very well. It’s the story of God’s people who suffer destruction at the hands of foreign armies. Babylon moves into the neighborhood, with many armies, and levels the remaining Southern Kingdom of Israel, also called Judah. Like I took a chainsaw to that large holly tree, so did Babylon cut down the people of Judah. Nothing remained; only a stump, humiliated remains, a people laid low to the ground.

But Isaiah says that Israel is like my holly stump. Even though it’s cut down, buried, there will be a shoot, a sliver of hope. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” When every reason for hope seems lost, Isaiah tells us to wait and watch and hope—something is coming, something is stirring in the darkness.

When John the Baptist comes on the scene, all of Israel has been waiting for a long time for this shoot of Jesse, another David, another king to restore Israel to it’s splendor among the nations.

John appears in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt 3:10), and the crowds flock to him. The people of Jerusalem leave the courts of the temple and go out into the wildernesses to be baptized. John is a threat to the Jerusalem religious establishment. He’s a figure on the margins, gathering the Jerusalem crowds, challenging the authority of the elite—the Pharisees and Sadducees. As one scholar puts it, John is a “counter-clerical prophet.”

(short pause)

Here’s the thing about John the Baptist that really gets me. He’s fascinating—I’m draw to him, and frighten by him. For John, the Advent of the Messiah means destruction, collapse, devastation. Advent means things get crushed, demolished, cut down. For John, Advent looks like me, running around my front yard with a chainsaw, chopping down trees.

He says in Matthew, “Even now the ax 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.” Then he goes on to talk about what the Messiah will do when he comes: “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.”

Advent is a time for new beginnings—but the new life shoots out from the piles of debris; the cleansing comes first. Advent is a time for cleansing, for repentance, for lament. As Jay said last week, Advent is a season of hospitality—we learn how to receive the Messiah. And John tells us that our hospitality, our preparation, is repentance.

(pause)

A few weeks ago, Katie and I went to a talk by this couple, Chris and Phileena. They lead this organization called Word Made Flesh. They have teams throughout the world who locate themselves among the poorest of the poor—they live among the crushed and abused, and make friends. And through their friendships they learn what it means to serve Jesus in that place.

They told lots of stories, stories about their friends—about the Aids-infected children who live in their orphanages, about little boys and girls who’ve been sold into prostitution, and about mothers and fathers who have absolutely no way to make bread or rice fill their tables, and fill their family’s stomachs.

And I’m sitting there, in a big old church fancy church in Durham, listening to these stories, and looking around at all the rest of us sitting attentively. The worlds didn’t connect—the world of their stories and the world where I live. And I was stuck in the tension, between them, tied up in knots. And I thought to myself: how can anyone, how can this couple, see and feel so much and not go crazy? I kept on expecting them to overturn tables like Jesus, or knock down pillars like Samson did. How can they sit there and tolerate me and my half-hearted world? But that’s a different sermon—maybe more of a confession.

The part that’s important for my sermon came at the end of the question and answer time. I could feel the tension and discomfort of the crowd. I felt it myself. It’s hard to hear about all this stuff and sit there, and not do anything—just to get up and go home, to return to life as normal, now knowing that the world is not really like the small corner I call home. And worse, far worse, is returning to life as normal, now knowing names and stories, real people, cut to the ground—I know they will haunt me. So, finally, a woman asked a question, and I hoped for some resolution, some closure. She said, desperately: What would you like us to tell our churches to do, what can we do, how can we reach out and make a difference?

I thought to myself—yes, that’s exactly what I want to know, it’s what I have to know; I can’t go on with all these stories in my head without knowing that I’m doing something positive; I need someone to tell me my penance so I can get rid of my sense of guilt. Where can I buy some indulgences?

Phileena was about to say something in response, and I got to the edge of my seat. But instead of words, she gave us tears and sobs. She cried for about 30-45 seconds, but it felt like an eternity. She just cried, and we all sat there in silence, fidgeting in our seats, uncomfortably watching her, or finding a spot on the ground.

Finally, between tears and sobs, she said two words, and that was it: “repentance and lament.” Repentance and Lament.

It caught me off guard. I was baffled. I guess I’m used to those television commercials, and World Vision advertising, where we are bombarded with pictures of devastation and suffering so when the phone number or website flashes at the bottom of the screen we are ready to pay our penance, to buy indulgences. The goal is to get us to give them money and make a difference.

But Phileena refused those tactics. That’s not what she gave us—and I’m almost mad at her for it. She gave us something much more difficult. Her cries and the silence chopped down our prideful thoughts of quick and easy solutions—like a donation to ease our conscience. Nobody passed a plate so we could empty our pockets and empty our heads from all those stories.

And in the debris of my dismantled ego, and messianic solutions, she gave us the words that lead to life, that lead to humility, that lead us to John the Baptist in the wilderness: Phileena said, “Repent and lament.” It’s not a solution that I want, and it doesn’t really map out a direction for me to travel. It’s more like a roadblock, a dead end. Repentance and lament.

That call marks only the beginning; it shakes things up; it provokes all sorts of questions, not answers. More problems, not solutions. Here are some of my questions: For what must I repent? and to whom? What loss, whose death, should I lament? How does my life, how does my lament and my repentance, really connect me with strangers across an ocean and across the street?

These are the questions of Advent. These are the questions of hospitality. These are the questions that prepare us for the coming of the Lord. John the Baptist says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” And Matthew adds, “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.’”

What exactly are we preparing for? What are we awaiting? Why does Phileena tell me to prepare for hope through repentance and lament? Why leave our lives behind and go out into the wilderness and repent and wash ourselves in the Jordan?

I’ll tell you why. Because we’ve heard the promises of a coming kingdom, a coming Messiah, and we want to be part of that humble people of God who are laid waste, chopped down, cut to the ground, so we can wait for the shoot of Jesse to break through the darkness, break through our lives, and make us a people fit for the Messiah.

That’s Advent hospitality. Repentance and lament is how we make way for the coming of the Lord.

And when the Messiah comes, what will he bring? Isaiah tells us. And I’ll close with what he says. Isaiah turns our eyes to a glorious vision that gives us a new imagination. His vision exposes the shadows of our world, and invites us to receive a different one, the world of the Messiah, the kingdom of heaven come to earth:

He will judge the needy with righteousness, and decide for the meek of the earth with equity. He will strike the land with the rod of his mouth, and slay the wicked with the breath of his lips… The wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid…and a little child will lead them.

And a little child will lead us.