ISAIAH 35:1-10

PSALM 146:4-9

JAMES 5:7-10

MATTHEW 11:2-11

Sermon – 12/16/01

The Trees Are Not Dead

One of the members of our Parish family tells the following story about herself as an illustration of the confusion that can result when moving from one culture – and climate – to a different culture – and climate. She grew up in Jamaica, West Indies, and moved to New York City. In December. Looking around her new neighborhood, she was perplexed by what she took to be a peculiar habit of Americans, saying to herself, “Why do they leave all these dead trees standing around instead of cutting them down?”

She had never seen deciduous trees like those which grow at this latitude, so she didn’t know that what she took to be dead trees were simply trees which had shed their leaves and were dormant for the winter, awaiting their revival in the Spring. She also didn’t look closely enough at the trees to see their buds, or feel the limbs to sense their springy resiliency (unlike the more brittle limbs of truly dead trees), reasoning “What’s the point of looking closely at dead trees?”

Eventually, a friend explained the local trees to her and they both had a good laugh, followed by renewed delight in the next Spring as visible life and growth returned to the trees. A funny mistake, and a natural one under the circumstances, and I dare say plenty of people traveling in the opposite direction have made errors which sound just as silly. But my point for mentioning this story is this: in certain conditions, and in a place which was unfamiliar, it was not easy for someone to see the signs of life without looking closely. And if someone only looked at the trees from a distance and then gave up, they would never know the life within them that, in time, would blossom.

Three months after September 11^th, many Americans are, in a sense, as disoriented and discouraged as that Jamaican immigrant was. We, just as she was, are in a place we have never been before – an America devastated and troubled

from abroad as we have not been since the British Redcoats left New York in 1783. We, like she, have left our homeland, only our homeland was a place called September 10^th. We like she, are in greater New York in December, where the “emotional landscape” here is as different from September 10^th as the floral landscape here in December is different from that of Jamaica. We, like she, may be tempted to assume that "all the trees are dead" and may never go looking for buds on their twigs or test them for strength and resiliency.

As different as the “landscape” looks from three plus months ago, “all the trees are not dead.” We need to know that, know that for sure, so that we do not have greater-than-usual post-holiday blues next month when the evergreen decorations are taken down and all we’re left with is trees that look dead.

December is tough for some people every year. If there has been a death of a close family member or friend in the last year, or if the anniversary of such a death is in December, the holidays are guaranteed to be tough. Divorce, serious illness, disability, job loss are each and all tough at any time of the year, but each bites a little deeper in December when the hopes we have for happiness are higher. Recovery from addiction is always challenging, but perhaps the temptation to try to blot out other pain with the deeper pain of substance abuse is greater in December.

This December is tough in some way for everybody who has any degree of sensitivity at all – and when added to the recession, and to the usual pressures and pains of the holidays, the burden is even larger.

Now it’s time for us to “get it”: THIS IS WHY GOD CAME. This is what we will celebrate in eight days time: not that the holidays are somehow automatically “jolly”, or that happiness can be bought if we max out enough credit cards or that the consumption of your favorite vice (sugar, or whatever) has made you “merry”, what we will celebrate is that God loves us, and that God’s love is indestructible.

And as signs of that love and its indestructibility even when “the trees look dead” there are tokens of life. But you have to look for them. Sometimes you have to believe in order to see. And it does take faith to assert that the buds will one day blossom into such a Spring that will banish Death itself forever: and that is just what the Christian faith asserts.

The people of faith have been through many catastrophes before – yes, including ones much worse than this one. Let me take you back to one which still echoes 2,587 years later: the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire.

The prophet Jeremiah, among others, had repeatedly warned the Hebrew people “repent or else”. They stubbornly refused to listen and instead rebelled both against the Word of the Lord spoken through his servants the prophets and against the nearest great power, Babylon, which occupied both the territory and the tender-hearted approach to humanity of modern day Iraq.

Jerusalem endured a gruesome siege, starvation and conquest. The entire leadership of the country was taken off into exile in chains hundreds of miles away to Babylon, and the temple of King Solomon and the rest of the city was burned to the ground.

Plenty of other cultures and countries likewise were “pancaked” by the Babylonians, their predecessors, the Assyrians, their successors, the Persians, Greeks and Romans. The faiths of even the greatest of these live now, however, only in museums: no one worships Jupiter, or Zeus, or Osiris or any of the Babylonian gods, never mind the divinities of the nations that once were speed bumps for the armies of those empires.

With one exception.

One divinity out of all the shifting galaxies of once glorified names is still worshiped. The real one. The One who was only known for nearly two thousand years by a country which was barely a divot on the golf course of the King of Babylon, a country which ceased to be a country, ceased to have its own King, ceased even to have a capital city, ceased to have even a temple in which to worship in

its accustomed way and which nevertheless endured when all the mighty empires had turned to dust.

And that one divinity sent word to his chosen people, in exile hundreds of miles from home for nearly 50 years, still under the thumb of a brutal pagan dictator, that history was about to change – for the better. And that the change which was coming soon was but one blossom as a token of the ultimate Spring yet to come.

We don’t even know the name of the prophet who spoke the words of dazzling, unexpected, almost unbelievable good news to the Jewish exiles in Babylon; his words form the later chapters of the Book of Isaiah (where Isaiah’s name is never mentioned) because they had to be included somewhere. But his name is unimportant; it is his words which are important.

Picture yourself in exile from your home, having lost your freedom and your way of life long years ago, separated from even the ruins of your home by hundreds of miles of trackless desert. Picture yourself coming to synagogue, that new religious invention born of necessity, coming again on the Sabbath even though your calendar and the calendar of everyone you know had been stuck on the 6^th Century B.C.’s version of September 11^th for 47 years. Picture yourself sitting glumly, and then hearing someone stand up and say:

THUS SAYS THE LORD, “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing... Say to those who are of a fearful heart. ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God... He will come and save you.’ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy... And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

And behold, the Babylonian Empire collapsed after one battle like a house of cards, and the Persian conqueror released the exiles and said they could go home – and rebuild the temple, including with all the loot which had been taken from it by the Babylonians – and later, with the help of a contribution from the Imperial Treasury.

Do you think those people believed in miracles after that?

But, the later prophets kept assuring them after they returned to Jerusalem, the best is yet to come. And the last of the prophets, John the Baptist, preached repentance to prepare the way for the Savior – but apparently expecting Judgement Day first and grace later. Jesus had to explain to him that grace comes first, then Judgment, then limitless grace.

Grace: the love God has for us which is not and cannot be earned. Love far beyond anything we can deserve. And life – it seemed almost as though crocuses would spring up wherever Jesus walked.

Jesus answered the Messengers from John, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” It’s been said that if you took a copy of the New Testament and a pair of scissors and cut out all the healing stories, what you had left would look like paper dolls. Healing was a crucial part of who Jesus was and what he did. Life and wellness in every respect poured out of him – and still does. Healing is not just something from “the good old days” with Jesus which will be revived in the better new days to come; healing still happens, though only on a small scale compared to what is to come. You can find it just by looking, like looking for buds in winter.

But the greatest healing was the least obvious at the time: when Jesus was nailed to the cross, taking all the sins of the world on his own shoulders while continuing to love, and so vanquishing what the baptismal service calls “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.”

On Good Friday afternoon, it really looked like all the trees were truly dead. For Christ was really and truly dead. Not dormant, not in a coma, not waiting for a comeback. Dead.

And on the third day he rose again. Far beyond any hope any of his disciples had. And he is unconquerable.

“The evil powers of this world” are still around. Don’t we know it. But we know the end of the story. Christ is risen. Our God reigns. Death is defeated. Even the trees that really are dead can be raised up to life – and to inexhaustible life. Evil will, in the end, be obliterated.

At Christmas, we celebrate the invasion of the world by God in person. Christmas was “God’s D-Day”, only it was an invasion of love, not an army, an invasion of one who by being totally vulnerable conquered all.

Every Sunday is “a little Easter”. So this, very tough holiday season, we have to look deeper for joy than perhaps we’re used to doing, far deeper than the tinsel and the trimmings, deeper even that Christmas itself. Unwrap Christmas fully and we get Easter, and Easter is the ultimate source of the four great gifts of Advent: peace, hope, love and today’s gift, joy.

Don’t believe that the trees are dead. They are not. Look closely at the buds; show them to someone who’s having an even tougher December than you are. And then remember that the tree on which Christ was crucified looked as dead as he became that grim afternoon, but the cross, we now know, is the Tree of Life. In all places and all times and all situations. Especially when we need to know this the most.

Thanks be to God.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church