First Sunday of Advent (Ad
Te Levavi)
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s
Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South
Dakota
Branches, (and the
Branch)
Jeremiah
23:5-8, Matthew 21:1-9, Romans 13:8-14
Audio of the sermon is available HERE.
God Almighty, ineffable, uncreated, holy and eternal, is kind to us flesh and blood, material creatures. He knows who we are, and our limitations. He knows we live in a world of growing things, and of water, stone and soil, of objects moving in the sky above. So, He uses numerous things of the Creation we live in to communicate His will, and His love, for us, and for all people.
This material reality, along with our understanding and use of created things, these are common to all human cultures. All people are connected by light and dark, soil and water, gravity and decay, bounty and hunger, and a thousand other features of life in this Creation. When the Holy Spirit uses tangible, earthly metaphors in His Holy Word, we fallible creatures are better able to grasp the Lord’s intention. By such tangible teaching, we are also well prepared to share the Good News of God’s Word with other flesh and blood people.
Take branches, for one example. Trees and bushes and vines all have cylindrical offshoots, which teach about the connective nature of life. Everything in this world comes from something else, something before, something that gives life to its offspring. And the Source of everything is God! Including the trees and branches.
Mankind takes these woody life forms and makes all manner of useful things. Need some support as you scramble over a rocky trail? Look for a sturdy branch to use as a walking stick. Later, when you need protection from the wind or the sun or the rain, you can use branches to form a structure over which to lay smaller, leafier branches, forming a shelter for yourself and your loved ones. Just outside the opening, branches burn and crackle, providing warmth and light. If you find yourself stuck in the wilderness for a long time, a straight, stiff branch might be your spear for fishing, or, if you dare, for hunting.
Back in civilization, trees provide the skeleton of our homes. Our understanding of branches facilitates the organization and connection that allows our standard of living to rise. A successful business puts out branches, extending the reach of their products and services, enriching the owners, the employees, and the communities that purchase their goods. Just as a tree shows life by extending new branches, so also with our human endeavors.
And of course, the flowering of human enterprises, from root to branch to extended networks, is in many ways a reflection and extension of the root and branch reality of human families. In fact, all the structures of human endeavor should be serving the family that God created. When we remember this truth, our life together goes better.
When we forget or deny that the family as ordained by God is the essential foundation of human existence, chaos reigns. Our 21st Century culture insists on making this defiant choice again and again, rejecting the Biblical family and promoting a radical individualism. All of us, but especially the children suffer. The result is insecurity, loneliness, and stress, which bring an increase of emotional, physical and mental illness, leading to decay, desperation and destruction.
As Christians then, we pursue, speak for and promote this root and branch Biblical understanding of family and culture. We are pro-family, even as we acknowledge that our efforts to fix the family, while worthwhile, will never completely fix our problem. Even the best Christian families face failure and disintegration. Even the best earthly fathers eventually leave their children, for death comes for us all. To find the true and eternal solution we all need, we turn to God’s Word, which very helpfully continues to use branches to reveal God’s solution to us.
Biblically, one of the first theologically helpful uses of branches is to make a shepherd’s staff. From Abraham through King David, from the Good Shepherd to the Apostle Peter, called three-times to tend God’s sheep, and continuing on through the Ephesian elders, right down to this day, the shepherd’s loving use of a sturdy branch to guide and protect the flock became both a staple of ancient agriculture, and a primary Christian metaphor.
Sadly, the misuse of branches is constantly encouraged by the Serpent who, in our collective imagination, hung from a tree branch in the Garden as He hissed lies to our first mother. We don’t know what Cain used when he rose up to kill his brother Abel; I tend to think he grabbed a rock. But a sturdy branch, maybe even the stolen shepherd’s staff of Abel, would have served the first murderer just as well. Whatever Cain used to kill Abel, whether a branch or a rock or just his own hands, death was inflicted by an object from the Creation, an object that God had originally made and given us for our good.
Stout branches turned into sturdy staffs quickly became a symbol and tool of leadership in ancient culture. But, following the example of Cain, the branch or staff, that should be used by a leader to protect and serve, can also be abused. Servant leaders of God’s people, ancient and modern, are called by God to use the staff of their office for the good of the people. The scepter of a king, whether of wood or iron, is the exaltation of the same symbolic object, intended by God to serve the whole nation.
Shepherd staffs should be used by leaders to help their followers. But every leader also faces the temptation to serve himself by turning his staff against the people, to beat and threaten the flock in order to stroke his own ego, or to feed his belly. The branch turned into a spear can defend against a bear or bring down a deer to feed the family. It can also be turned against human beings, including within the family or nation, evilly used to coerce, or even to kill.
We see that the reality and the metaphor of branches, and the staffs and structures we make from them, can reveal much about this life we live together, both the good and the bad, the godly and the cruel. So, it is no surprise that the Holy Spirit also uses branches, poles and staffs to teach us about our salvation, about our Savior. For the promised Messiah, the Son of David who would come to rescue God’s people once and for all, is the Righteous Branch, the offshoot of Jesse’s stump, who will execute justice and righteousness in the land.
The fact that God uses physical objects from our daily lives to identify and reveal His Chosen Messiah flows from an even deeper truth, the unexpected but necessary fact that the Savior is the ineffable God Himself. The Christ is the eternal Son, who comes to His people to rescue them. This is what the season of Advent is all about. Advent means “the coming,” so during Advent we are reminded how the Savior comes to us, to redeem us from sin, death and the Devil.
During Advent we will also reflect on Jesus’ Final Coming, on the Last Day, the Good Shepherd Judge who will once and forever use His staff to separate the righteous sheep and the wicked goats. We will also see His coming foretold in the Old Testament through earthly metaphors, particularly in our midweek Advent services.
We will of course celebrate and rejoice in Jesus coming to us daily, through His chosen means, the instruments of His Word, His Washing and His Meal. All this in preparation to celebrate with exceedingly great joy His coming in the flesh, the Incarnation, Jesus’ miraculous conception and birth from the Virgin Mary. At Christmas, God took humanity into Himself, in order to fulfill His calling to be our Brother and Savior.
As we once again decorate the branches of our Christmas trees, we will be reminded of the sobering yet merciful truth that another tree, shorn of its branches and transformed into a tool of cruelty, became the ultimate earthly instrument of God’s plan of salvation. The horror and shame of that tree is transformed into the revelation of new life, for as death once flowed from the fruit of the forbidden tree in the Garden, so also life has arisen from the tree of the Cross.
We who by faith have been grafted into God’s Righteous Branch now have the sap of eternal life flowing through us. Jesus is the true Vine, and we are His branches, not dead, fruitless branches to be cut out and thrown into the fire, but living branches who bear good fruit, acts of love, voices of praise, and proclamations of Good News. These are the Spirit’s work, in and through us.
Our calling to be fruitful branches is for us comfort and wisdom, the freedom of knowing that all we are to do as Christians flows from the mercy and power of Christ, who works in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure. At the same time, because the decay of sin still rots within our core, there is also a warning. We are warned not to fall into the dry death of unbelief, outwardly appearing to be grafted into the Vine, but in reality, living like every other dry branch in this fallen world.
Ever aware of our need, Jesus our Vine, our Righteous Branch, does not leave us to wonder how we stay planted in Him. In John, chapter 15, He is very clear about how we came to faith, and how we remain faithful: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. [2] Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes clean, that it may bear more fruit. [3] Already you are pruned clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. [4] Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. …
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. [8] By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. John 15:1-4, 7-8
Faith comes, and abides, by the Word. So, today is a good day, a righteous day, for God the Righteous One has gathered you here, to listen to His voice. Today, and every day in which you hear, read, recite and pray the Bible, you are walking wisely, casting off the darkness and putting on the armor of light. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, by letting His Word dwell in you richly. This is how you dwell in Christ, and how He dwells in you.
So then, we can see that the Israelites who waved palm branches and sang the praises of Jesus as He rode the donkey into Jerusalem were well steeped in God’s Word. They sang from memory the ancient Psalms that prophesied the Messiah. They would be surprised later that week, to see that Jesus’ Way of Salvation ran through a Roman cross. But the Holy Spirit by His Word would sustain all the faithful palm wavers, until they could see and rejoice in the Resurrection.
What the Spirit did for them He continues to do for us. Teaching us through things we know, like branches and vines and seed for sowing and bread for eating, through Water, Wheat and Wine, through stones and buildings and the members of the body, the Spirit continues to make us wise unto salvation through earthly things. Through this earthy Word, we are kept grounded in the faith, trusting in the God who entered His own Creation to save it.
Just in case we don’t grasp it, the Lord gives us one last use of branches to teach us the Truth of Salvation. In Revelation chapter seven the Apostle John, caught up into heaven, looks and sees “a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; 10 and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb… These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
And
so we, who like them trust in Jesus Christ, wave our palm branches in praise of
our Coming King, and with the saints in heaven we sing out: “Amen, blessing
and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and
might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
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