The Promise Comes Again
December 09, 2007
December 9, 2007
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Isaiah 11:1-10
[Children’s message] One of the crops that is grown in the Middle East is olives. They grow on trees. The trees can grow as tall as this church, but they produce more fruit if the farmer keeps the tree smaller. So the wise olive farmer cuts the tree back to a stump, and then a new branch grows, which eventually begins to bear fruit again. The farmer doesn’t get rid of the old tree and plant a new one, he just uses his knowledge of the tree to bring new growth. In fact, I looked up olive trees and how to grow them, and cutting them back is an important part of growing them.
Do any of you remember hearing about King David? King David was probably the greatest king of Israel. His father’s name was Jesse. David was a good king – he loved God, he cared for the people of Israel, he was fair and kind. He wasn’t a perfect man – he made some serious mistakes, but when he realized his mistakes, he asked forgiveness and began doing the right thing again. The passage that Mrs. LeBow read described what a good king is like. As the years went by, many of the kings were not good leaders. They were not kind, they were not fair, and they did not care about what God wanted. They forgot that God trusted them to take care of God’s people. So about 250 years after King David died, God sent a man named Isaiah to remind the kings what a king is supposed to do. Listen to what Isaiah wrote:
[New International Reader’s Version, Isaiah 11:1-10] Jesse's family is like a tree that has been cut down. A new little tree will grow from its stump. From its roots a Branch will grow and produce fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on that Branch. He will help him to be wise and understanding. He will help him make wise plans and carry them out. He will help him know the Lord and have respect for him. The Branch will take delight in respecting the Lord. He will always do what is right when he judges those who are in need. He'll be completely fair when he makes decisions about poor people. When he commands that people be punished, it will happen. When he orders that evil people be put to death, it will take place. He will put godliness on as if it were his belt. He'll wear faithfulness around his waist. Wolves will live with lambs. Leopards will lie down with goats. Calves and lions will eat together. And little children will lead them around. Cows will eat with bears. Their little ones will lie down together. And lions will eat straw like oxen. A baby will play near a hole where cobras live. A young child will put his hand into a nest where poisonous snakes live. None of those animals will harm or destroy anything or anyone on my holy mountain of Zion. The oceans are full of water. In the same way, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. At that time the man who is called the Root from Jesse's family line will be like a banner that brings nations together. They will come to him. And the place where he rules will be glorious.
Christian people believe that Isaiah was describing Jesus in this passage, because Jesus was part of the family of King David, and Jesus was fair, Jesus was kind, and Jesus taught that people should not hurt each other.
Because of this story from the Bible, some churches during the time before Christmas we call Advent, have something called a Jesse Tree. We use a bare tree, and on it, we put ornaments to remind us of stories from the part of the Bible we call the Old Testament, the part that tells about how God cared for people in the time before Jesus came. The Jesse Tree helps us to remember that Jesus is connected to the Old Testament, that the story of Jesus is part of the whole history of how God has loved people. Some people think that God didn’t care about the Jewish people anymore once Jesus came, but that’s not true. Jesus was Jewish, and so the stories of the Old Testament are the stories of his faith. When he was a little boy, he learned about Noah and the Ark, Joseph and the many-colored coat, Moses leading the people out of Egypt, and he heard about his ancestor, King David, too. Some of the stories we learn about in Sunday School are the same stories that helped boys and girls in the time of Jesus to learn about how God cares for people.
Let’s look at the ornaments that the 1st and 2nd graders made last week – there are frogs, because before the king of Egypt, the Pharoah, would let the slaves leave, God sent many signs to him to let him know that God wanted the slaves to be free. One of the signs God sent was millions of frogs hopping all over Egypt – frogs outside and inside, frogs in the bedrooms, frogs in the kitchens. Frogs can be cute, but too many frogs was not nice. So these frogs can help us to remember that God worked through Moses to free the slaves from Egypt. And here is a rainbow – the rainbow reminds us of the promise that God made to himself, after Noah saved the animals on the ark. God made a rainbow to remind God’s own self that God would never ever again destroy the world.
Over the next couple of weeks, the kids will make other ornaments for this Jesse tree, and during our time together, we will hang the ornaments on the tree, and remember that the stories of the Jewish people are important to Jesus, too. [Pray with children, and segue to adult sermon….]
The Jesse Tree tradition is important to us, because many Christians somehow believe that the Old Testament and the New Testament are totally separate. I’ve often heard people say, “I don’t like the Old Testament God who is so angry and fierce. I believe in the New Testament God, who is loving.” But God is God. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. The New Testament is the story of God coming among us as a human being named Jesus, so that we might realize God’s love for us more fully. When God came among us as Jesus, God didn’t have a personality change. Nor did God break the promises that God had made earlier. What HAS happened is that over time, people have grown to understand more about God. The Bible is the collection of many people’s experiences with God – some people experience God as an angry God. Some people experience God as loving. It’s a great reminder to us that our own individual understanding probably never will tell the whole story. That’s why, in the Presbyterian Church, our theology is that God reveals Godself to the community. As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann said when he addressed the Wisconsin Council of Churches here in September: “The kingdom of God has a lot of meetings.” We have meetings because we understand that the covenant God calls us into community. God’s covenant was with the Jewish people, not with just one or two important individuals. And we understand that God calls us into communities even now – and so our face-to-face meetings are important because they are how we gather in community, listen to one another, and try to discern how God is leading us. And sometimes, as we listen to one another, we change our understanding about something. More than once I have come to a meeting thinking one way about something, and in listening to what others have to say, and in listening to the sense of the meeting, I’ve grown to understand things differently.
So in our tradition, the election and ordination of officers is an important part of our church’s ministry. We will be gathering immediately after worship today very briefly to elect people to be elders and deacons. And these people will go to meetings, and they will come to worship, and they will serve as elders and deacons with energy, intelligence, imagination and love.
When I was in Tanzania in October, one of the Lutheran ministers we met was asking my mother and I to explain what the Presbyterian Church is about. And my mother, who is a Presbyterian elder, said “Presbyterians believe in the ministry of all believers – we believe that everyone is called to ministry, not just the pastor.” The Lutheran minister, Pastor Zakoya Malekwa, was very excited about the concept of the ministry of all believers, because in his area, people have to walk as far as 20 miles to get to church, and so he is training lay leaders to develop local churches. There aren’t enough pastors to do the entire ministry – and that’s true here as well.
Presbyterians have elders to share the ministry of leadership, and deacons to share in the ministry of compassion, but our understanding is that everyone is part of the ministry of the church. The way the Presbyterian constitution puts it is that we are called by God for service as well as salvation. Many folks get put off by the word salvation, but let’s not get stuck there – instead of saying we are ‘called by God for service as well as salvation,’ I would say (paraphrasing JFK) that we are not only called to ask what God can do for us, but to ask what we can do for God. Being part of a relationship with God involves both what God does (transforming us, loving us, leading us to a fuller, more vibrant life) and what we do (drawing near to God, working for the transformation of the world, and sharing God’s love with others).
The Old and New Testaments are consistent in that understanding. They tell the story of a God who established a covenant with the people of Israel, promised to care for them, and called them to a way of life that was different than many other nations – they were called to welcome the stranger, to care for widows and orphans, to take one day each week to cease from work and celebrate relationships with God and each other; they were called to forgive debts every seven years. They were called to justice instead of revenge – if someone hurts you, they should be punished proportionally, not destroyed – the teaching of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was originally a limiting teaching – it was progressive in its time. And they were called to remember that God had cared for them in the past and would care for them in the future, so they were called to care for one another as well.
And none of that changes in the New Testament, except that Jesus taught that God would continue to push people in a progressive direction “You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also….” God didn’t end the covenant. But just as God reached out to Noah with a promise, and later reached out to Abraham with another promise, and later still reached out to the people of Israel with promises at Mt. Sinai through Moses, and made new promises to David, so too, in Jesus, God’s promise comes again. But God doesn’t break earlier promises.
There are so many people who find this confusing that the Presbyterian Church put out a paper in 1987 to explain how we understand the relationship between Christians and Jews. It’s a 10-page paper, and I’m happy to give any of you a copy of it. But I’d like to mention a couple of the highlights. The paper says: We affirm that the living God whom Christians worship is the same God who is worshiped and served by Jews. We bear witness that the God revealed in Jesus, a Jew, to be the Triune Lord of all, is the same one disclosed in the life and worship of Israel.
As I said, God is God. Another statement from the paper is: We affirm that the church, elected in Jesus Christ, has been engrafted into the people of God established by the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, Christians have not replaced Jews. Interesting, by the way, to see that here we have another example of language related to the care of trees and plants – just as an agronomist creates a hybrid by grafting one plant onto another, so too do we understand that the covenant community is made from more than one branch. Just as my brother and I have had different experiences of our parents because we are different people, but both very loved by our parents, and both equally part of the family – so too do we understand that Christians and Jews have had different experiences of God, but both are loved by God and both are God’s people. And we might expect that there are other people who have had yet other experiences of God. We should be respectful of the differences among faiths, and affirm that our own unique experiences do not deny the experiences of others. I have special memories of going to chamber music concerts with my Dad. My brother learned from him how to tie flies for fishing. My experiences don’t exclude my brother’s experiences. As adults, my Dad has helped my brother build the barn on my brother’s ranch while Dad and I discuss Biblical scholarship. We continue to have different experiences, and to be connected to each other as well.
This week, Jewish households are celebrating Chanukah – it is a minor holiday in the Jewish year; the major holidays are Yom Kippur and Passover. But Chanukah celebrates the restoration of Judaism in Jerusalem, even while it was under the control of the Greeks. It celebrates the freedom for Jews to worship God according to Jewish understanding of the Word of God in the Old Testament, without accepting traditions from the cultures that invaded Israel. Chanukah celebrates a miracle of a small amount of oil lasting long enough to burn for eight days during the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem. So in that way, it is a celebration of light prevailing over the darkness. It is indeed a holiday of hope.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, reminds us that Chanukah and Christmas are really not the same holiday – although both of them are pointing toward God’s hope of social transformation, and both of them are susceptible to degenerating into a human-based festival of consumerism that can lead to increased debt and depression, as well as simply missing the faith-based point of the celebration.
Chanukah is not really a parallel to Christmas, although Christmas too is a holiday of hope – we hope that some day the conditions that Isaiah described will be the way we all live – that those who are enemies now will live peacefully together, that children will be safe, that government shall rule with righteousness and fairness, that the dreams of God will come true. And our understanding, as Christians, is that if we all truly lived as Jesus taught, that day would come sooner. And that when God came among us as one of us, beginning life as a baby born on Christmas, God came desiring that we should know God’s love, and that we would all live in peace and goodwill. And so Christmas too is a holiday of light shining in the darkness.
A long time ago, streetlights were not electric. They were gaslights. And one job was that of the lamplighter, who walked the streets in town lighting the lamps each night. One night, a grandfather was out with his little grandson, taking a walk at dusk. And the lamplighter came by, lighting the lamps. And it may have been the first time the little boy had ever been out late enough to see the lamplighter, and he watched, delighted. And his grandfather noticed his fascination, and asked the child if he knew what the lamplighter was doing. And the boy replied “Sure, Grampa -- he’s punching holes in the darkness!”
As children of God, people of the light, we are all called to punch holes in the darkness. This Advent, as the candles are lit one by one, let us be honest with ourselves and see if we are letting more and more light shine into our lives, so that we can bring the light to each other, and to everyone we meet. And let us trust that others, too, are bearers of light into our world. We can affirm our own faith without denying the experiences of others, and we can be open to the possibility that we may be called to new understanding as we listen to each other, and listen for God. Amen.
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Isaiah 11:1-10
[Children’s message] One of the crops that is grown in the Middle East is olives. They grow on trees. The trees can grow as tall as this church, but they produce more fruit if the farmer keeps the tree smaller. So the wise olive farmer cuts the tree back to a stump, and then a new branch grows, which eventually begins to bear fruit again. The farmer doesn’t get rid of the old tree and plant a new one, he just uses his knowledge of the tree to bring new growth. In fact, I looked up olive trees and how to grow them, and cutting them back is an important part of growing them.
Do any of you remember hearing about King David? King David was probably the greatest king of Israel. His father’s name was Jesse. David was a good king – he loved God, he cared for the people of Israel, he was fair and kind. He wasn’t a perfect man – he made some serious mistakes, but when he realized his mistakes, he asked forgiveness and began doing the right thing again. The passage that Mrs. LeBow read described what a good king is like. As the years went by, many of the kings were not good leaders. They were not kind, they were not fair, and they did not care about what God wanted. They forgot that God trusted them to take care of God’s people. So about 250 years after King David died, God sent a man named Isaiah to remind the kings what a king is supposed to do. Listen to what Isaiah wrote:
[New International Reader’s Version, Isaiah 11:1-10] Jesse's family is like a tree that has been cut down. A new little tree will grow from its stump. From its roots a Branch will grow and produce fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on that Branch. He will help him to be wise and understanding. He will help him make wise plans and carry them out. He will help him know the Lord and have respect for him. The Branch will take delight in respecting the Lord. He will always do what is right when he judges those who are in need. He'll be completely fair when he makes decisions about poor people. When he commands that people be punished, it will happen. When he orders that evil people be put to death, it will take place. He will put godliness on as if it were his belt. He'll wear faithfulness around his waist. Wolves will live with lambs. Leopards will lie down with goats. Calves and lions will eat together. And little children will lead them around. Cows will eat with bears. Their little ones will lie down together. And lions will eat straw like oxen. A baby will play near a hole where cobras live. A young child will put his hand into a nest where poisonous snakes live. None of those animals will harm or destroy anything or anyone on my holy mountain of Zion. The oceans are full of water. In the same way, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. At that time the man who is called the Root from Jesse's family line will be like a banner that brings nations together. They will come to him. And the place where he rules will be glorious.
Christian people believe that Isaiah was describing Jesus in this passage, because Jesus was part of the family of King David, and Jesus was fair, Jesus was kind, and Jesus taught that people should not hurt each other.
Because of this story from the Bible, some churches during the time before Christmas we call Advent, have something called a Jesse Tree. We use a bare tree, and on it, we put ornaments to remind us of stories from the part of the Bible we call the Old Testament, the part that tells about how God cared for people in the time before Jesus came. The Jesse Tree helps us to remember that Jesus is connected to the Old Testament, that the story of Jesus is part of the whole history of how God has loved people. Some people think that God didn’t care about the Jewish people anymore once Jesus came, but that’s not true. Jesus was Jewish, and so the stories of the Old Testament are the stories of his faith. When he was a little boy, he learned about Noah and the Ark, Joseph and the many-colored coat, Moses leading the people out of Egypt, and he heard about his ancestor, King David, too. Some of the stories we learn about in Sunday School are the same stories that helped boys and girls in the time of Jesus to learn about how God cares for people.
Let’s look at the ornaments that the 1st and 2nd graders made last week – there are frogs, because before the king of Egypt, the Pharoah, would let the slaves leave, God sent many signs to him to let him know that God wanted the slaves to be free. One of the signs God sent was millions of frogs hopping all over Egypt – frogs outside and inside, frogs in the bedrooms, frogs in the kitchens. Frogs can be cute, but too many frogs was not nice. So these frogs can help us to remember that God worked through Moses to free the slaves from Egypt. And here is a rainbow – the rainbow reminds us of the promise that God made to himself, after Noah saved the animals on the ark. God made a rainbow to remind God’s own self that God would never ever again destroy the world.
Over the next couple of weeks, the kids will make other ornaments for this Jesse tree, and during our time together, we will hang the ornaments on the tree, and remember that the stories of the Jewish people are important to Jesus, too. [Pray with children, and segue to adult sermon….]
The Jesse Tree tradition is important to us, because many Christians somehow believe that the Old Testament and the New Testament are totally separate. I’ve often heard people say, “I don’t like the Old Testament God who is so angry and fierce. I believe in the New Testament God, who is loving.” But God is God. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. The New Testament is the story of God coming among us as a human being named Jesus, so that we might realize God’s love for us more fully. When God came among us as Jesus, God didn’t have a personality change. Nor did God break the promises that God had made earlier. What HAS happened is that over time, people have grown to understand more about God. The Bible is the collection of many people’s experiences with God – some people experience God as an angry God. Some people experience God as loving. It’s a great reminder to us that our own individual understanding probably never will tell the whole story. That’s why, in the Presbyterian Church, our theology is that God reveals Godself to the community. As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann said when he addressed the Wisconsin Council of Churches here in September: “The kingdom of God has a lot of meetings.” We have meetings because we understand that the covenant God calls us into community. God’s covenant was with the Jewish people, not with just one or two important individuals. And we understand that God calls us into communities even now – and so our face-to-face meetings are important because they are how we gather in community, listen to one another, and try to discern how God is leading us. And sometimes, as we listen to one another, we change our understanding about something. More than once I have come to a meeting thinking one way about something, and in listening to what others have to say, and in listening to the sense of the meeting, I’ve grown to understand things differently.
So in our tradition, the election and ordination of officers is an important part of our church’s ministry. We will be gathering immediately after worship today very briefly to elect people to be elders and deacons. And these people will go to meetings, and they will come to worship, and they will serve as elders and deacons with energy, intelligence, imagination and love.
When I was in Tanzania in October, one of the Lutheran ministers we met was asking my mother and I to explain what the Presbyterian Church is about. And my mother, who is a Presbyterian elder, said “Presbyterians believe in the ministry of all believers – we believe that everyone is called to ministry, not just the pastor.” The Lutheran minister, Pastor Zakoya Malekwa, was very excited about the concept of the ministry of all believers, because in his area, people have to walk as far as 20 miles to get to church, and so he is training lay leaders to develop local churches. There aren’t enough pastors to do the entire ministry – and that’s true here as well.
Presbyterians have elders to share the ministry of leadership, and deacons to share in the ministry of compassion, but our understanding is that everyone is part of the ministry of the church. The way the Presbyterian constitution puts it is that we are called by God for service as well as salvation. Many folks get put off by the word salvation, but let’s not get stuck there – instead of saying we are ‘called by God for service as well as salvation,’ I would say (paraphrasing JFK) that we are not only called to ask what God can do for us, but to ask what we can do for God. Being part of a relationship with God involves both what God does (transforming us, loving us, leading us to a fuller, more vibrant life) and what we do (drawing near to God, working for the transformation of the world, and sharing God’s love with others).
The Old and New Testaments are consistent in that understanding. They tell the story of a God who established a covenant with the people of Israel, promised to care for them, and called them to a way of life that was different than many other nations – they were called to welcome the stranger, to care for widows and orphans, to take one day each week to cease from work and celebrate relationships with God and each other; they were called to forgive debts every seven years. They were called to justice instead of revenge – if someone hurts you, they should be punished proportionally, not destroyed – the teaching of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was originally a limiting teaching – it was progressive in its time. And they were called to remember that God had cared for them in the past and would care for them in the future, so they were called to care for one another as well.
And none of that changes in the New Testament, except that Jesus taught that God would continue to push people in a progressive direction “You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also….” God didn’t end the covenant. But just as God reached out to Noah with a promise, and later reached out to Abraham with another promise, and later still reached out to the people of Israel with promises at Mt. Sinai through Moses, and made new promises to David, so too, in Jesus, God’s promise comes again. But God doesn’t break earlier promises.
There are so many people who find this confusing that the Presbyterian Church put out a paper in 1987 to explain how we understand the relationship between Christians and Jews. It’s a 10-page paper, and I’m happy to give any of you a copy of it. But I’d like to mention a couple of the highlights. The paper says: We affirm that the living God whom Christians worship is the same God who is worshiped and served by Jews. We bear witness that the God revealed in Jesus, a Jew, to be the Triune Lord of all, is the same one disclosed in the life and worship of Israel.
As I said, God is God. Another statement from the paper is: We affirm that the church, elected in Jesus Christ, has been engrafted into the people of God established by the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, Christians have not replaced Jews. Interesting, by the way, to see that here we have another example of language related to the care of trees and plants – just as an agronomist creates a hybrid by grafting one plant onto another, so too do we understand that the covenant community is made from more than one branch. Just as my brother and I have had different experiences of our parents because we are different people, but both very loved by our parents, and both equally part of the family – so too do we understand that Christians and Jews have had different experiences of God, but both are loved by God and both are God’s people. And we might expect that there are other people who have had yet other experiences of God. We should be respectful of the differences among faiths, and affirm that our own unique experiences do not deny the experiences of others. I have special memories of going to chamber music concerts with my Dad. My brother learned from him how to tie flies for fishing. My experiences don’t exclude my brother’s experiences. As adults, my Dad has helped my brother build the barn on my brother’s ranch while Dad and I discuss Biblical scholarship. We continue to have different experiences, and to be connected to each other as well.
This week, Jewish households are celebrating Chanukah – it is a minor holiday in the Jewish year; the major holidays are Yom Kippur and Passover. But Chanukah celebrates the restoration of Judaism in Jerusalem, even while it was under the control of the Greeks. It celebrates the freedom for Jews to worship God according to Jewish understanding of the Word of God in the Old Testament, without accepting traditions from the cultures that invaded Israel. Chanukah celebrates a miracle of a small amount of oil lasting long enough to burn for eight days during the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem. So in that way, it is a celebration of light prevailing over the darkness. It is indeed a holiday of hope.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, reminds us that Chanukah and Christmas are really not the same holiday – although both of them are pointing toward God’s hope of social transformation, and both of them are susceptible to degenerating into a human-based festival of consumerism that can lead to increased debt and depression, as well as simply missing the faith-based point of the celebration.
Chanukah is not really a parallel to Christmas, although Christmas too is a holiday of hope – we hope that some day the conditions that Isaiah described will be the way we all live – that those who are enemies now will live peacefully together, that children will be safe, that government shall rule with righteousness and fairness, that the dreams of God will come true. And our understanding, as Christians, is that if we all truly lived as Jesus taught, that day would come sooner. And that when God came among us as one of us, beginning life as a baby born on Christmas, God came desiring that we should know God’s love, and that we would all live in peace and goodwill. And so Christmas too is a holiday of light shining in the darkness.
A long time ago, streetlights were not electric. They were gaslights. And one job was that of the lamplighter, who walked the streets in town lighting the lamps each night. One night, a grandfather was out with his little grandson, taking a walk at dusk. And the lamplighter came by, lighting the lamps. And it may have been the first time the little boy had ever been out late enough to see the lamplighter, and he watched, delighted. And his grandfather noticed his fascination, and asked the child if he knew what the lamplighter was doing. And the boy replied “Sure, Grampa -- he’s punching holes in the darkness!”
As children of God, people of the light, we are all called to punch holes in the darkness. This Advent, as the candles are lit one by one, let us be honest with ourselves and see if we are letting more and more light shine into our lives, so that we can bring the light to each other, and to everyone we meet. And let us trust that others, too, are bearers of light into our world. We can affirm our own faith without denying the experiences of others, and we can be open to the possibility that we may be called to new understanding as we listen to each other, and listen for God. Amen.