Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the first Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2002, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!

                      -Isaiah 64:1

     This whole reading from Isaiah is a prayer. We don't pray like this, but it's a prayer anyway. It's a special kind of prayer called a lament. You can find laments all through the Psalms and the prophets.

     In our common parlance we think of a lament as an outpouring of pain or self-pity: Woe is me! But in the Bible it's a lot more than that. It's a cry of pain, yes, but it's also a testimony of confidence in God. It says, in effect,

look at the state of things!
The world is not at all as it should be,
there are horrible things going on
and no sign of an end to them,
no reason to expect any improvement,
no evidence of God doing anything to make it better,
yet in spite of it all
God is there, God is alive, God is busy, God is at work this very moment
overpowering all the wrongness and putting it all right.
It's true, and that is the truth we live by.

     Watch out for people who engage in this Biblical sort of lamentation. They are dangerous, because they have hope. They are not resigned to the way things are. They expect something profoundly different, and they trust it enough to bet their lives on it.

     And guess who they are, these dangerous people who dare to live by their hopes. They are us. That's the whole message of Advent.

     Advent. Coming. Something is coming. Someone is coming. God is coming. A new reality is coming, a whole new way of living. We know it, we trust it, and we will not allow the old ways to have charge of us.

     If we know these things, we tremble with anticipation, like a dog who is about to be unhooked from the leash and allowed to run free. As for those of us who don't know these things or don't put any confidence in them, those who are pretty much counting on the world to stay pretty much the way it is, they should be trembling too, because the world as they know it is doomed, the rules by which they live are being repealed, the ground on which they stand is being washed away under their feet, and that is a terrible prospect.

     Behold the Jesse tree, this pathetic, this comical thing. What on earth gets into us every Advent and causes us to drag such a barren, ugly apparition into our lovely sanctuary and set it up in a place of honor? Why not something colorful, something beautiful, something symbolic of life's goodness and plenty? Why not a Christmas tree in that place?

     But the Jesse tree is a revelation. It reveals the despair and emptiness and cruelty and poverty and meanness and pain that lurk beneath the surface of things. And by putting it here we are saying that we are not afraid of it, even though we probably are afraid of it. We know, or at least we hope, that God isn't going to let it stay barren and empty and ugly. We can see the new shoots growing on it even though we can't see them. God will decorate the Jesse tree.

     We've seen the Jesse tree in other guises: In those thorns, for example, that the soldiers twisted into a crown and put it on Jesus' head, thinking only to mock him. In the cross itself, also called a tree, on which they hanged him, thinking only to destroy him. In the bush on Sinai in which God appeared to Moses and set Moses on fire. In the wood of the manger that cradled Christ.

     All of these trees testify how things are not as they seem. In our hands they are much worse than we are willing to believe they are. In God's hands they are far better than our fondest dreams could imagine them to be. And we are here to acknowledge that it is all in God's hands. Including ourselves.

     Amen