Twenty-four years ago, I preached a sermon on Christmas Eve and it was the last time that I would read the familiar Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke and see it in the same old way. You see, my life changed irrevocably two weeks after that Christmas Eve when my first child was born two weeks early. I became a father.
I couldn’t even begin to describe all of the ways that things changed for me but one of the big ones is that I learned so much. One of the very first lessons I learned was how to swaddle my child. I’m pretty sure that the nurses in the hospital taught me how to do that first. I guess it is one of those few things in those first days, that a father can do. So, I like to think that I became quite good at it – an expert in infant origami if you like.
The reason why new parents in North America are encouraged to swaddle their newborns is apparently because it is very comforting. After all, your child has just spent months confined in a very small space and she has now emerged into this strange place where nothing restrains her when she spreads out her arms and her legs. It is alien and strange. It is symbolic of this poor helpless being now thrust into this cold dark world full of dangers and evils. And so, if you can simulate the warmth and the confinement of the womb, at least some of the time, it can be a great comfort and so you learn to wrap her up tight in a blanket.
It is a bit of parental wisdom that has been passed down since times of great antiquity. How old is it? It is so old that it was already well-known when Mary had her child. New Testament Greek did not have a word for swaddling like English does. What the text literally says is that when Mary’s child was born, she wrapped him in strips of cloth. But the meaning of that is clear enough. So, the old King James Version was quite correct when it translated that as “she wrapped him in swaddling clothes.”
But, since she did not have a nice, perfectly sized baby blanket that she had ordered from amazon.ca while preparing for the arrival, Mary had to resort to using several strips of cloth instead. Instead of one, let’s say that she used three.
But I was thinking. Mary’s child was no ordinary infant, was he? He was, we are told the Son of God. And how, exactly, do you comfort the Master of the universe who suddenly finds himself thrown into this dark and often disturbing world? With what, then, did Mary swaddle her extraordinary child?
I believe that one of the strips of cloth she used was the devoted love of a mother. Her own body had protected him throughout his gestation, even through some very difficult episodes and probably the most harrowing journey that Mary had ever taken she when traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. As she had shielded him with her own body, she would continue to do so with all her love. She wrapped him tight in her love.
The second strip of cloth that Mary took to swaddle her child, was the deep and rich tradition of her people. Jesus would know who he was by learning all the stories of the people of Israel. And the final piece of cloth was the law of those people. These time-tested rules for living would provide for the growing child the boundaries and the limits of his behaviour.
These three swaddling cloths are things that we all need. If we are fortunate, if we are blessed, we all received these things as children, and they helped to make us the people we are today. Because we knew that we were loved, because our traditions and practices told us who we were and because we had wise and reasonable rules to guide us, we were given that strong foundation that allowed us to go out into the world and make our way. These things are invaluable.
But there is one thought I would add to that. Swaddling is good and comforting for a newborn, but it is hardly healthy to keep a child confined that way. As they grow, they need to stretch out their limbs and start to define themselves. This too is an essential part of life.
And wow, did Jesus stretch out his limbs! He took that love that he had received from his mother and turned it into a love that was able to encompass the whole world. In the ultimate display of such love, he stretched his arms and his legs wide on the wood of a cross.
And Jesus took the noble teachings of his people, and he stretched them to extend to many others. He took that special relationship and covenant blessing that his people enjoyed and showed the whole world how they could experience that as well. He taught us all of a loving heavenly father who pours out blessing on all the people of the world.
And as for the law of his people, he never lost his reverence for that, but he taught that it was never meant to be cruel or vindictive like some people applied it. He certainly taught that it was never meant to exclude people who didn’t fit in but rather designed to draw people in close. He also showed in word and deed how the grace and mercy of God can overcome even our worst transgressions against the law.
But it all started with a newborn babe, swaddled in strips of cloth and lying in a manger. It is such a fitting beginning of the hope of the world.
ne day Dave was just sitting around and shooting the breeze with his good buddy Nate. Dave, you see, had done pretty well for himself. He had built his own personal kingdom, had beat out many enemies and he was feeling pretty comfortable in his life. He had even recently built his own very nice house.
Dave had done so well not only because of his own initiative and strength, but also because he had had the support of a very powerful God named Yahweh. Yahweh was the God who had formed a very special relationship with the people of Israel but who had particularly chosen Dave as his special buddy. Thanks to God’s support, Dave had been able to do so much and, if he now had rest from his enemies, it was all thanks to Yahweh.
Dave’s Idea
But there was one thing that was bothering him, and so he spoke to his best friend about it. “See now,” he said to Nate, “I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent. What I mean is that my God has been a great support to me but he’s kind of wild and unpredictable. I mean, he lives in a tent, so he doesn’t have to settle down anywhere. That means that he can change his mind and may even decide to pick a new favourite.”
“Say no more!” Nate interrupted him. “I know exactly what you are thinking. You’re looking for some way to persuade God to settle down and formalize his choice of you and your descendants.
“And, in fact, I understand how you mean to do it as well. You want to build a house for God to live in. You want to domesticate Yahweh and even establish an institution and priesthood to tell God what he can and cannot do. You know, I think you should go, do all that you have in mind, after all, is not Yahweh with you, and don’t you want to make sure that things stay that way?”
Underlying Considerations
The Bible records that exchange between King David and the Prophet Nathan so briefly that you could be forgiven for just skimming over it. The surface meaning seems clear. David is apparently just concerned with making sure that God has a temple that does him all due honour. But there are always some underlying considerations to such plans. You only have to read between the lines to realize that David might have some other motivations in his proposal.
And, in fact, that is just what Nathan realized as well. In the heat of the moment, when David first threw out the idea, Nathan just agreed that it would be a great thing to do. But it didn’t take long. That very night, as Nathan reflected on David’s idea, he came to see that it was more than a little bit problematic. And, what’s more, Nathan realized that his sober second thinking wasn’t just something that was happening in his own brain. It was a word from Yahweh.
God’s Misgivings
God’s misgivings about David’s plans are expressed like this: “I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’”
The message is clear. Does God need a temple? Does God need some sort of religious institution and structure in order to be in a right relationship with God’s people? Certainly not! God seems to prefer the life of living in a tent and being free to move around. But it is not just about God being a camper at heart. As with most things having to do with religion, this is all about control.
Human Institutions
Human beings love to create religious institutions. They build temples and churches and mosques. They write their books of theology and even their holy books with one goal in mind. They want to control God. They want to say who God can be and what God can do. I mean, look at so much of our religious thought and practice, it is often reduced to statements of what God “has to” do. “If I make this sacrifice, God has to make it rain.” “If I confess, God has to forgive me.” “If God inspires scriptures, they have to be literally true.” “If I pray this particular prayer, God has to let me into heaven when I die.”
I understand the impulse, of course. Who wants to live with the concept of a God who is completely capricious and wild and does totally unpredictable things? But God resists being limited or controlled by us. And that is why, after some sober second thought, Nathan goes back to David with God’s answer and that answer is no, you can’t build a temple. But interestingly, at the same time, the answer is not no forever.
God Recognizes Our Need
God may not need temples and religious institutions in order to prove God’s greatness and glory but also seems to recognize our need for these things. And so, as an act of mercy and kindness, Nathan does inform David that his son, who will be somewhat less compromised by David’s history of using violence and trickery to get his way, will be allowed to establish a temple in Jerusalem.
This is actually an indication of God’s kindness and grace. As a concession to our weakness and limitations, God allows us to have a mediated relationship through a religious institution. You might even call it a sacrifice God makes on our behalf, sacrificing God’s own freedom and choosing to relate to us within the bounds of a religion.
But surely this is a temporary comprise. God is still seeking a more fitting way to be present here on earth. But this is not the time to implement that alternative plan. And so, God puts something in place that will set up that better way. “Moreover, Yahweh declares to you, David, that Yahweh will make you a house… Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.”
The Strange Visitor
“How can this be?” the young woman wanted to know. After all, what the strange visitor had told her seemed like crazy talk. He had told her that she would have a son, which was impossible enough. But then he had gone on to say, “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
The connection between that incident in the Gospel of Luke and Nathan’s answer to David is clear. Here, in this small house in the village of Nazareth, the conversation that started between David and Nathan so many centuries before was continuing. This wasn’t just about the impossibility of Mary, a virgin, having a child. This wasn’t just about the fulfillment of the promise of a house to King David. This was about God being present in this world outside of the limits of religious institutions.
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,” the visitor continued, “and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”
Holy cow, do you realize what this is saying? God, in some way that I’m not going to pretend to completely understand, is finding the ultimate way to enter into this world. Somehow, in Mary’s child, God is planning to enter into the human sphere. But God will do this in a way that sidesteps things like human-built temples, religious institutions and dogma. God is entering into our world in a way that does not require a priesthood or architecture or theologians to manage and control. By coming to us in a person, in Christ, God is maintaining the freedom to, well, to be God. And yet, because Christ comes as someone fully human, we are still able to relate to him as humans ourselves.
God’s Better Plan
You see, David came up with the plan all those centuries ago. It was a plan to try and limit God and tell God what to do. God said no, but did graciously continue to relate to the people of Israel through the religious institutions they eventually set up.
But in Jesus, God decided to do so much more. In Jesus, God decided to relate to human beings in a way that was not constrained by the walls of church or temple, by the judgments of a priesthood. God came to live among us as one of us.
And what do we see of God when he appears in Christ? When God is truly allowed to be God without human constraint here on earth? What we see is a God who reveals himself in love and compassion and mercy and ultimately in sacrifice, giving himself utterly in death upon the cross.
David was afraid to allow God to be God, and felt as if he had to keep God in a box. But in Mary’s child, God is set free to reveal a depth of love and grace that I suspect David could have only imagined. God is set free to reveal a love that is able to welcome all, no matter who they may be.
It kind of makes you wonder why David thought that he had to keep God under wraps. Kind of makes you wonder why we continue to think that we should try and tell God what God can do and be today as well.
If you are like most Bible readers, you might open the beginning of the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew or the end of the third chapter of Luke and balk. In both cases, you are presented with long lists of names, most of which mean absolutely nothing to you – the ancestors of Jesus. Who wants to read that?
The temptation, if you don’t give up reading altogether, is to just skip all of that and get to the good stuff – the stories and narratives about Jesus. But that might be a mistake. These lists do matter to the overall story – if you know how to read them, in fact, they are stories.
A Puzzle to be Solved?
Unfortunately, however, that is often not what people take away from them. In fact, most people who read them carefully usually come away with a problem that they think needs to be solved. You see, if you read the two genealogies of Jesus side by side, if you compare the names in them, they disagree in very significant ways.
They both identify Joseph as the father of Jesus, or at least the seeming father, but then they give different names for the father of Joseph. Matthew says that Joseph is the son of Jacob, while Luke says that he is the son of Heli.
They also both agree that Jesus is descended from King David, but they trace that descent through two completely different lines. In the Gospel of Matthew, that lineage is traced through the line of kings that succeeded David on the throne in Jerusalem, from his son Solomon through to the last king of Judah before the exile in Babylon. But in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is descended from David’s son Nathan, who nobody has ever heard of. Neither have they heard of any of the other people between Nathan and Joseph.
Something to Explain Away
And usually that’s where people stop. They notice that these two accounts of Jesus’ family tree are different. And for some, that becomes a problem that they need to explain away because, well, both genealogies cannot be correct, right? And if one is wrong then the Bible must contain errors and that is not acceptable to them.
Some try to explain it by saying that one of the Gospels is giving the family tree for Joseph while the other is giving it for Mary. Some of you may have heard that one before. But it is an explanation that quickly falls apart if you look at it. Ancient people never traced genealogies through women. They didn’t even think that women contributed anything to the genetics of a child, so the idea that a woman could contribute to someone’s lineage was simply unthinkable to them. I know that is a foolish way to think of it, but patriarchal thinking is ultimately a very foolish way of thinking about anything.
Living with the Contradiction
No, the contradiction is there, and you can’t just explain it away. So, if you are someone who believes (as I do) that the Bible is inspired by God, what you must conclude is that that contradiction is there for a reason – that it is there because there is a truth deeper than just a list of names that needs to be revealed. You are being invited to struggle with that contradiction in order to discover that deeper truth.
And so that is what I would like to do – live in that contradiction for a little while and tell a story about what I find there.
A Funeral
David, the king, was dead. And, as he was laid in the tomb, his many sons gathered around. But two of them stood out before the crowd.
The first, of course, was David’s son Solomon. And everyone knew why he mattered. He had already been anointed king and had even started to take over his father’s duties before he died. Solomon was dressed in sumptuous robes and surrounded by sycophantic courtiers.
But, as splendid as he looked, Solomon was still just a young man who felt almost entirely out of his depth. He had barely survived a succession crisis and wasn’t sure whether or not he would be able to hold on to the extraordinary power that had been passed onto him.
Nathan
The other key person who was present was a son named Nathan. No one really knew who Nathan was, but he mattered. He mattered because he was the man who was charged with the care of the tomb in which David was being laid.
David was being buried with his fathers, which meant that he was being placed in the tomb of Jesse and of his father Obed and of his father Boaz. It was also the resting place of an extraordinary woman named Ruth. Nathan was there because that tomb rested on a piece of land that now belonged to him.
You see, while Solomon would henceforth live in Jerusalem in a palace made of cedar, Nathan would remain and live on the land that had sustained the family for generations – ever since the days of Joshua who had given the land to the people.
God’s Promise
God had made a promise to David through his prophet. “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors,” God had said, “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”
And as they stood around the tomb and gazed upon the beauty and the wonder that was the young man Solomon, the people present, Nathan included, had no doubt who would inherit that promise. If anyone could establish a kingdom that would last forever, it would be Solomon, the son of David and Bathsheba.
A Dynasty’s Failures
But you know what they say about power corrupting; that branch of the family went off the rails almost right away. Solomon quickly began to believe his own propaganda and to use his power to exploit the people through things like forced labour. The richer he became, the more he acted like any other tyrant, lording it over all the people; he became a new pharaoh. Is it any wonder, therefore, that after he died, his great kingdom split apart?
So, the kingdom was greatly diminished. Yet the ruling dynasty endured. And it was true that some of them tried to do their best as rulers. They sought to reform the nation and set up systems to protect the people. But for every good king in the line of David, it often seemed as if there was one or more who fell far short.
The kingdom limped along. It was almost destroyed by the Assyrians; it only survived their attacks by the grace of God. And then came the Babylonians. The House of David failed that challenge entirely, made the wrong choice again and again. The final rulers of the House of David were taken into exile. Their kingdom, which had been supposed to last forever, was no more.
Had the line of David failed?
The Other Line
And where was the other line of David – the descendants of Nathan – all that time? The most likely answer is that they remained on that same piece of land where they had been forever – the same piece of land where Ruth met Boaz while gleaning in his fields – the same piece of land where the boy David had returned with his flocks at the end of the day.
They farmed the land, grew lentils, grapes and barley. They never grew rich or lorded over others. They never made disastrous alliances with other nations either. They just subsisted.
It is even possible that, since they were not so important that invaders would care about them, they weren’t caught up in the deportations of the Babylonian Empire. Maybe they just maintained that connection to the land.
The Connection Remains
At least we know that that connection still remained generations upon generations later for Joseph the son of Heli, even though he no longer lived on that land. He was living in the small hamlet of Nazareth in the territory of Galilee. He didn’t have any land there. He was only managing to get by as a day labourer on construction sites – building with wood and stone. (That’s likely what the gospel writers mean when they call him a carpenter.) People often ended up living like that when their debts and poverty led to the loss of their ancestral farms.
So Joseph had lost the land, but I suspect that that had happened fairly recently – like within living memory of the family. I know that he hadn’t forgotten it because, when Joseph heard, in the days of Quirinius the Governor of Syria, that a census was being held in Judea, he apparently decided to return there. Maybe he was intending to use the registration of the census to lay a claim on his ancestral farm, reclaiming it according to the ancient biblical law of the Jubilee. In any case, it seems that he was serious enough to take along with him the young woman, Mary, to whom he was betrothed and who was expecting a child. He must have had a very good reason if he was going to take her on such a journey.
Missing the Point
I think you are missing out on a great deal if you look at the Gospel of Luke’s genealogy of Jesus and all you see is a list of mostly unpronounceable names and a historical puzzle. Many people don’t seem to get past the pretty obvious historical questions of how you reconcile these two irreconcilable genealogies or how Luke could have even known who these ancestors were, given the very low literacy rates in Galilee at that time. But these are the wrong questions. They miss the point.
I believe that God inspired both of these authors. Sometimes people seem to think that the obvious conclusion you have to take from that is that whatever the authors wrote therefore has to be completely accurate information. But accurate information is only one way to communicate important truths. And God is entirely free to inspire people to communicate truth in various ways.
Ancient Genealogies
Genealogies in the ancient world did not work like what happens today when people do their family trees or order an ancestry service from 23 and Me. Those modern activities are data driven, but ancient genealogies were more story driven. It was about telling the story of the past and thus the future of a family.
We’ll never know where Luke got his list of names for Jesus’ ancestors (at least in the generations between Heli and David – obviously he got the part after that from the Old Testament. But it doesn’t really matter if they came from a written record, from family lore that had been handed down by word of mouth or if they came from his own inspired mind. What really matters is the story that he was telling. And he was telling a story about a very different kind of family than Matthew was telling in his gospel.
The Truth About the Messiah
He was telling a story of a family that was incredibly closely tied to their ancestral lands but who had then lost that connection. He was telling a story about jubilee which was an ancient biblical law that was all about reconnecting families to the lands that they had lost. He was telling a story, above all, that would end with Joseph returning to that ancestral home with his betrothed wife for the birth of a child who would be the fulfillment of the promise given to David but ultimately squandered by Solomon’s line.
I don’t necessarily believe that Luke told the story of this family in this way because he knew it was historically accurate. He told it this way because he knew that it was true. And he knew that it was true because he had been inspired by God. And that is how I have come to understand the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.
As I thought about what I would preach on for this Sunday – this Second Sunday of Advent which is called Peace Sunday – I happened to be in a place where a lot of people seem to find themselves at this time of the year. Yes, that’s right, I was in a shopping mall.
It was shortly after Black Friday and the place was packed. Everyone was desperate. They all seemed to have millions of things to find, things like decorations and all the other things they would need for the big events of the season. And of course, there were lots of people who were frantic as they walked around and looked at how high the prices were. They were wondering how they could ever afford the gifts that they wanted to buy.
Frazzled Parents
The parents were looking pretty frazzled too. Their kids were going crazy looking for things they wanted to have and getting excited about the decorations and seeing Santa Claus. Many of them were looking as if they were at the very limits of their patience, and here we were only at the beginning of the season!
So, it was all a scene of noise, frustration and hurry. And yet, over top of all of it, blasting through the sound system of the entire mall, were the sounds of the most beautiful music proclaiming peace on earth, people of goodwill, love and joy. And it made me wonder, where is that promise of peace?
Other Struggles
Of course, there are a lot of other reasons why people aren’t feeling that peace than just the extraordinary hustle and bustle of the season. I don’t know about you, but I am connected these days with too many people who are deeply troubled by personal crises – their own and those of the people they love.
There are medical challenges and the sometimes-impossible choices that go along with them. People are trying to recover from devastating accidents and deal with debilitating treatments and therapies. Others are dealing with grief so raw that they don’t think that they will ever feel whole. When they hear the soundtrack of the season promising peace on earth, how can they not ask where is the promise of peace?
Countries at War
And, of course, we haven’t even touched the really big issue when it comes to peace on earth. For the people of Ukraine, for the unwilling Russian conscripts, for the people of Gaza and the West Bank enduring unrelenting bombing and the people of Israel who, whether they approve of their government’s actions or not, can’t help but wonder if they’ll ever be able to feel safe in their country, the question, “Where is the promise of peace?” resounds.
Our Attempts to Create Peace
We try in all of these situations to create peace. We try to bring peace to our Christmas preparations by doing things like getting organized or by starting early. Parents try to get their kids to settle down by just giving them everything that they ask for. People seek to find relief from their fears and anxieties by ignoring them and hoping they’ll just go away on their own. Some think that the only solution to the war in Ukraine is to just give Putin what he wants. And people have been trying to create peace in the Levant for decades.
But most of these plans, at best, seem able to produce a peace that is short-lived. The best laid plans have a way of becoming overwhelmed. Children who become accustomed to getting whatever they want somehow never become less demanding or disruptive. Anxiety that is pushed down deep inside tends to slip back out in unexpected and ultimately destructive ways. You give Russia what it wants, and it will only want more. And, well, Israel and Palestine have defied the wisdom of the best peacemakers in the world for generations. We try and we try but where is the promise of peace?
God’s Speaks Peace
In response to that question, we have this morning our reading from the Book of Psalms: “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.” Yes, it says that, in those very moments when peace seems most elusive, it can be found because God will speak peace to his people.
That seems like a wonderful promise. But it does raise a few issues, doesn’t it? If God can speak and peace is created, why hasn’t God just done that? What is God waiting for?
2nd Peter’s Thinking
I actually think that our reading this morning from the Second Letter of Peter might help us to answer that question. The writer is not speaking directly about the promise of peace. He is speaking about the apparent delay in the return of Christ that the people are complaining about. But I think that his explanation applies to both promises: “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.”
This is saying that God does not experience time like we do and so can be infinitely patient in ways that we cannot even fathom. It is also saying that the patience of God is a good thing, even if we may not always experience it that way. And I think that all of that does apply to God’s promise of peace as well. You see, one of the real impediments to creating true peace in this world is our own haste. We are in too much of a hurry to get the sensation of peace now, and that prevents us from building the kind of peace that lasts.
When We Rush to Peace
And so, to give a simple example, when parents are desperate to get just a little bit of peace and quiet from their kids at this time of year, they may opt for the quick solution of giving them candy or some other thing to indulge them. And of course, it works in the short term. But wise parents learn quickly that short-term peace can lead to a much more turbulent situation in the longer term, especially if, for example, you load up your kid with so much sugar that they practically lose all control.
The wise parent knows that the real way to build a peaceful family is through character and relationship building for parent and child alike. That can be a lot of work and it may not always be comfortable, but it really is the only way to have peace that will last.
And that is how it is for so many other things. Building true and lasting peace takes risk, commitment and time. But we are always too tempted to take shortcuts and that is a big part of our problem.
Paired Concepts
The psalm doesn’t just promise that God will speak peace to his people. It also describes the process for creating such peace. “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; Righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, And righteousness will look down from the sky.” This is describing, one by one, those very concepts that are needed to heal our troubled world. We will not get anywhere unless we are able to do it with love, faithfulness, righteousness and peace. But notice how the author very poetically presents these notions. He presents them as pairs, pairs that are meeting one another and intimately embracing one another.
The message behind the intentional pairing of these words seems clear. You cannot have one of these things without the other. Love without faithfulness can easily become self-indulgence. Faithfulness without righteousness can lead to supporting a person, a country or a company even if they are doing evil things. When we become focussed on promoting one thing, no matter how good, without taking the care to balance it with other good things, it can actually lead to an evil outcome.
Righteousness and Peace
And nowhere is that more important than in the central pair: “Righteousness and peace will kiss each other.” Peace that is not established in a positive relationship – a kissing relationship – with righteousness will fail.
Let me explore what that is saying a bit. The word righteousness is one of those biblical words that people sometimes don’t understand the full meaning of. For many people, the word righteousness doesn’t really have the best of associations. For many of us, righteous people are simply people who think that they are better than everybody else because of some moral stance that they have taken.
Righteousness/Justice
But the Hebrew word that is used in that verse means so much more than that. The word that is used in that verse in Hebrew isצִדְקָה (tsidqah) and it does not mean moral superiority or feeling as if you are better than other people. It means justice and not retributive justice when you get back at somebody who has hurt you. It refers to a situation where all things are in balance and where everyone gets a fair shake. It means righteousness in the sense that all the right things happen.
What that means is that whenever we rush towards peace and it doesn’t work or it doesn’t last, the reason is clear. We have tried to establish peace without justice. The two are not kissing each other. And peace cannot last without its romantic pair.
Lasting Peace
In your personal life, if you try to create peace by pushing all of the grief and the loss and the worries and fears deep down inside and you don’t let them out, for example, that will not create lasting peace. You need to allow for what is right – for your fears and losses to be expressed and dealt with. The peace can only last when it is paired with what is right.
If you want to seek peace in your relationships, it is never going to be enough to establish that peace in isolation. Yes, you can decide to not talk about the differences that exist between you and the other person. You can act peaceful on the surface, but unless you are able to work through the points of contention and find a balance and judgement that is fair to all, you won’t find lasting peace in your relationship. Peace and righteousness must kiss.
National and International Conflict
And, of course, this is nowhere truer than when you talk about national and international conflict. Again and again, nations have sought to impose peace through strength. They’ve created a situation where their army has such an overwhelming advantage in terms of arms or sheer numbers, and they believe that that is what will pacify the people that they have colonized, occupied or invaded.
It often works in the short term. But it never works in the long term. Until you can address the deep issues of injustice, racism and exploitation, there will never be peace. It doesn’t even matter how much an oppressed people are outgunned, the mere fact that they know that, no matter what they do, they cannot beat their oppressors, will only eventually lead them to the conclusion that, since they have nothing to lose, the only thing that they have left is the possibility of lashing out at their oppressors.
No Justification of Terrorism
None of this, in any way, should be taken to be a justification for those who resort to extreme tactics like terrorism or suicide bombing. These are absolutely deplorable acts and worthy of all condemnation. But condemnation and reprisal will not stop it from happening. That is a problem that we are all dealing with and that prevents true peace from being established in our world.
And so, on this second Sunday of Advent, let us indeed pray for peace on earth. The earth is sorely in need of it. But let us pray with some understanding that true peace, peace that lasts, is not an easy thing. I am thankful for a God who speaks peace to his people and I pray that all God’s people will hear that voice. I pray that we understand that real peace will take some work and will take some change. Above all, I pray that we understand that it will only last when peace and righteousness kiss one another.
There is a famous, some would say infamous, story in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus is out walking with his disciples one day when he sees a fig tree in the distance. The tree has lots of leaves on it so he goes over to see it, thinking that perhaps it might have some figs.
But it is only springtime, not yet the season for figs, and so of course there aren’t any figs, only leaves. This is when the story goes off the rails. Jesus doesn’t react like a normal person and say, “Oh well, I guess it's just too early for figs.” No, Jesus becomes enraged at the tree for failing to produce fruit out of season. He curses it saying, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.”
A Serious Curse
But it is not that Jesus – obviously a bit cranky because he didn’t get any breakfast – utters a lighthearted curse. No, he is apparently deadly serious. When, the next day, the disciples pass by the same spot they are shocked to discover that the poor fig tree, which only acted according to its nature, has withered away to the roots. It will indeed never bear any fruit again.
It is the kind of bizarre story that, if someone came up to you and told you it was in the Bible, you might not believe them. But the problem is really only there when you pull the story out of its context. When you look at everything that is going on around it, you realize that there is more to this odd little tale than what you see at first.
A Symbol
The fig tree, you see, is not just a fig tree. It is a symbol. In the Bible, a fig tree is used as a symbol of the people and the nation of Israel. The Prophet Jeremiah specifically says, for example, that the people of Israel are like a fig tree that produces no figs. (Jeremiah 8:13) So, what Jesus does is meant to be a reference to passages like that.
What’s more, between the time that Jesus curses the fig tree and when it withers, what does he do? He goes into the temple in Jerusalem and cleanses it of all the money changers and sellers. He essentially shuts the place down which suggests that the unfruitful tree is symbolic of the unfruitfulness of the temple, the central institution of Judean society, and its failure to care for the needs of the people.
A Few Days Later
Well, a few days after all that happened, we are told that Jesus was sitting around and shooting the breeze with the disciples on the Mount of Olives. And he began to talk to them about the things that would happen in the future.
A lot of what he was saying was kind of disturbing and frightening. He spoke about the temple being destroyed and horrible events like the sun going dark and the stars all falling out of the sky. I don’t think that it was all meant to lay out a perfect roadmap of exactly what would happen so much as he was just warning them that there were a lot of troubles ahead.
A Callback
But then Jesus said something that I find interesting because it seems to be a callback to the whole fig tree incident of a few days before. “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.”
I mean, would you say that if you had done what Jesus did? It could be a kind of embarrassing reminder. “Hey guys remember how the other day I made that stupid mistake? How I thought that, because a fig tree had leaves, it was autumn and it would have fruit, but I was wrong, and the leaves meant that summer was coming? Yeah, don’t do that!” I mean, that is essentially what he is saying.
But (as much as I am certain that Jesus had a good sense of humour) I don’t think he is saying any of this to make fun of himself. I think that it is a confirmation that the whole fig tree incident was an intentional object lesson. He calls it back because he wants to bring the lesson home.
What is the Lesson?
And what is the lesson of the fig tree? If the figless fig tree represents the failure of the temple to respond to the needs of the people, then it is a very discouraging image. It represents the failure of the central institution of that society to do what it was created to do. That is potentially catastrophic. A society whose institutions have failed is usually on the brink of utter collapse – which is, of course, the very thing that Jesus is talking about in this passage.
What’s more, it is a kind of discouragement that we can all sympathize with. We seem to be living in an age where institution after institution is failing to live up to its promise. These institutional failures are causing many of the crises that are overtaking us.
The Housing Market
Take, for example, the institution of real estate in our country. It was an entire system that was set up to provide people with places to live near where they could work and companies space to flourish. But have you noticed how it doesn’t fulfill that purpose anymore?
More than anything else, it has become a vehicle for investment, profit and speculation. Those things were always part of it, of course, but they have taken on such a central role that it can no longer fulfill that original mandate. That is one big reason why we are dealing with a housing crisis.
So far has it strayed from its original purpose that we have seen a government thinking that the only way that they could do anything about the housing crisis was by giving environmentally protected lands, far from anywhere, to developers who would build mansions to sell for millions to people who can only drive fancy cars to work.
I can see how such a move would have juiced all kinds of profits and rewarded the speculation of the developers, but I fail to see how it could have done much to help any of the people who can’t afford housing now. But that is where we seem to be now, so much has the system failed that we can’t even imagine how it could work for its original purpose anymore.
I believe that that was the kind of thing that Jesus was pointing to when he pointed out that the temple was bearing no fruit. And it is not the only institution that is failing our society today.
Other Failing Institutions
Institutions of higher education are failing to yield the fruit they were created to produce. They were supposed to set students up with the knowledge and tools they need to find stable and meaningful employment. Increasingly all that they are setting students up for is life-long debt and jumping from one gig job to another just trying to survive.
And, if that were not enough, these universities and colleges are increasingly dedicating their resources to bringing in international students, taking all of their money and offering them little more than a substandard education and the vague hope that they might be able to become citizens. I’m sorry to have to tell you these things, but that fig tree is no longer producing its fruit.
And can we talk about how seniors’ residences, these institutions that were supposed to offer people the possibility of aging with dignity becoming increasingly institutions whose goal it is to suck up all of their residents’ assets before they die? Can we talk about how government becomes less and less about creating policies that actually help people and more and more about duelling personalities?
Jesus Would Criticize
I suspect that, if Jesus were among us today, he would look one by one at the various institutions of society – churches, policing, drug companies, journalism – and he would point out all of the ways in which they have become corrupted by the selfish, hateful and cynical spirit of our age and are no longer bearing the fruit that they are supposed to. He would point out that that is exactly what is making our times so miserable.
I know I am being blunt, but I do think that if Jesus was that hard on the fig tree that was the temple, he would be just as hard on our institutions.
None of that should reflect negatively on individuals within those institutions. Many, if not most, are good people just trying to do their best. Just as there were, no doubt good priests in the temple who cared about the people, there are lots of good congregations, good journalists and politicians, good cops and developers who do their best to help. But, when the institutions themselves have lost their orientation towards what matters, sometimes even the efforts of the best people can come to nothing.
A Positive Lesson
I realize that all of this might sound rather discouraging, and the fact of the matter is that we do seem to be living in discouraging times right now. But I want you to stick with me a moment here because this is actually not a discouraging verse in the Gospel of Mark.
When Jesus reminds his disciples of the lesson of the fig tree that is producing lots of leaves but no fruit, he is encouraging them. Yes, he is saying that the institutions of our society are collapsing because they are not producing their intended fruit, but there is still hope. The leaves are a sign. They are not a sign that fruit is present. Jesus doesn’t want us to make the same mistake that he did. But they are a sign of the coming summer.
He is Near
And so Jesus says, “When you see these things taking place,” when you see your institutions failing, “you know that he is near, at the very gates.” What does that mean? It means that, when our society fails, that is when God steps in. And, yes, ultimately in this passage that is imagined in terms of Christ returning and such apocalyptic signs as the sun going dark and stars falling from the sky. But, at the same time, the message also has to be that we don’t have to wait for that ultimate resolution to see the action of God and the rebirth of hope.
Jesus promised the disciples, after all, that “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” And, while some of it did happen in their lifespans, it certainly didn’t all come to pass.
Nevertheless, the promise he was giving was real. Though the unfruitful temple may be razed to the ground – and, as Jesus promised, that did happen in 70 AD – you don’t need to lose hope. In the same way, Jesus would say to us today, though all of the institutions of your society may fail, do not despair because God will not abandon you.
Active Waiting
And I don’t believe that we will have to wait until the Son of Man comes in clouds with great power and glory to experience that hope. God is already at work to create hope for our society even as our traditional institutions fail.
I see some of that in our community. I see it in a project at the Legion to actually go ahead and build affordable housing. I see it in new efforts being put forth in the city to prevent people from being evicted. I see people coming forward with creative ideas to reinvent these institutions even as they fail.
I do believe that God is in all such efforts and always has been. When our human institutions fail, God will always appoint people here and there to create renewal and possibility. Maybe God is doing that work in you even now.
We should not close our eyes to the problems that plague our society. We should not try to pretend that they are not there. But, at the same time, we must not lose hope when we don’t see the fruit that is needed. The leaves mean that the summer is coming. The promise of warmth and life is coming. And before long, the autumn will follow with its promise of new fruit. That is the lesson of the fig tree.
