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"Stepping Beyond Our Willow Tree"
January 20, 2008
Mr. James Hamilton
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Year A
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Glen Ellyn
Revised Common Lectionary
I can always remember how I climbed up into that weeping willow
in my backyard, the weeping willow that was finally torn down
this past spring to make way for the new landscaping. First,
you shimmied up onto the old, rotting, whitewashed doghouse,
the one that we kept only until we got a dog and then got rid
of, inexplicably. Then, grabbing hold of the lowest branch,
you hug it tight and slip your left foot into the knot facing
the Dunmire’s house. Swing your right leg over the branch
and heave yourself all the way up. You are there, hidden under
a canopy of drooping branches in a safe and secret place.
I can also remember how it felt to be up in that tree. There
in that alcove, under the shelter of this great weeping willow.
In the late summer it held a special magic. The breath-like
rhythm of cicada buzzing and the warm yellow-green glow of the
summer sun through the branches made my hide-out seem womb-like.
There encased in a dome of willow whips, on one of those summer
afternoons when I was nine or so, I vividly recall singing aloud,
with childish abandon:
I am a promise, I am a possibility.
I am a promise, with a capital “P”
I am a great big bundle of potentiality.
There were no limitations yet. In that tree I could be or do
anything. I wasn’t even limited to logic. It seemed that
if I focused hard enough I could fly, or be an astronaut, or
travel to the Galapagos Islands. I lived in the simple certainty
that God had a plan for me. Not only a plan, but I was someone
super-special.
Can you remember a special place like that from your childhood?
Can you remember the place where possibilities were limitless?
For many, the loss of that childish innocence is marked by
an event; maybe a divorce lifts the canopy to reveal a starker
reality or the death of a loved one knocks you clear out of
your tree. Or maybe for some, like it was for me, the loss of
that innocence crept up gradually. At some point I traded the
tree for a cement bench under the steeple of a nearby churchyard.
It was as bare and austere as the tree was enveloping and nurturing.
My shift from certainty to questioning was incremental enough
to sneak up on me. I found myself to be alone, and that feeling
of limitless possibilities was gone.
Isaiah puts words in the mouth of Israel, anthropomorphizing
a nation that was no longer up in its weeping willow. “I
have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and
vanity,” Israel says bleakly. And almost like a question
or a pleading prayer, Israel continues, “yet surely my
cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God.” Israel
needed to sing its version of “I am a promise;”
because, scattered to the four winds and without a solid identity,
they had forgotten God’s promise to Abraham, the covenant
binding together all Israelites to a common heritage. God said
to Israel, “I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
How often does it seem that the optimism of childhood is replaced
by the vanity of labor and the monotony of adult responsibilities?
Vanity in this case in Isaiah means vapor, work so meaningless
that it evaporates and leads to nothing. Far from a ‘light
to the nations’ our work without the power of God is steam
or diffuse smoke, lasting only momentarily and then vanishing.
But with God, with the assurance of God’s attention,
we can be so much more. Today’s psalm suggests that if
you just ‘wait patiently’ God will stoop down and
scoop you up, placing you on the mountaintops. It is from the
mountaintops that good-news can be shouted. It is from high
places that lighthouses can shine their beacons to guide in
ships. God wants to set us on high places to be witness and
watchtower to the nations. But how can this be, if the work
we do is vapor and without meaning? And how can we wait patiently
in the face of poverty, heartache, loss or disease? Isn’t
this too much to ask sometimes?
The psalmist goes on to parse out two aspects of that patient
waiting. On the one hand, we are to work at deepening the righteousness
in our hearts. It is a hidden well of love and faithfulness
in God that refreshes us in times of trouble and provides a
source of self-renewal. On the other hand, that deep well of
peace will naturally radiate out from us. It is un-concealable,
this love received from God that illuminates our life. Much
like Moses descending from Mount Sinai, those who are filled
with the Spirit of God glow from within. In the words of the
famous hymn, “No storm can shake my inmost calm, while
to that refuge clinging. Since Christ is Lord of heaven and
earth, how can I keep from singing?”
We are charged to sing, we need to sing, to bear witness. But,
what about that problem of our “grown-up,” censoring,
“limited potential?” It operates under the pretense
of logic or pragmatism. It is that nagging voice that says,
“You are stuck here in this identity forever so, for good
or bad, hunker down and sleep in the bed you made.” A
friend of mine once told me, and I cringe to share this with
you…she reported to me that a study shows that all of
our adult habits are learned and set by the age of 30. If we
are exercisers as young adults we will be exercisers for the
rest of our lives. If we are healthy eaters as young adults
we will continue to be healthy. But, statistically, if we have
never jumped on the healthy bandwagon by the age of 30, the
jig is up. Life might not be over at 30 exactly, according to
this study, but it was at least pretty locked in place. What
a distressing concept. And, even if it is statistically true,
I will not accept it as a truth for me. I have to believe in
the power to change our own circumstance. As George challenged
us last week, we are called to be transformed, a changed and
changing people. That transformation is sealed in our baptism
and nurtured by the Holy Spirit.
The words to embody for those of us who have lost that childish
ambition are these, the words of John the Baptist, “I
saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained
on him.” The spirit remained. It was not a momentary gift,
descended into him as it descended into us, it stayed there.
It stays in us. We are currently inhabited by the Spirit of
God.
All of this stays within the theme of how God works in the
world. God uses the ordinary and elevates it to the extra-ordinary.
God used the faithfulness of Ruth, an outsider Moabite widow,
essentially a beggar, to bring about the line of Jesse who eventually
came to David. David was the youngest son, a shepherd with no
inheritance chosen to be the greatest king of Israel, a ruler
whose courage and faith set the standard for all the kings that
followed. When those kings fell away from the path of God, humble
servants like Amos, born without a prophet’s pedigree
he was only a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees, to act
as the mouthpiece of God. Until finally, in a stable in Bethlehem
an unwed mother who, by the standards of her society should
have been ostracized, gave birth to a child raised by a carpenter.
A helpless baby, the lamb of God, who would eventually save
the world from sin. Don’t tell God that you are unworthy
of God’s call. It didn’t work for Moses. It didn’t
work for Jonah. God has plans to use you to be a beacon to the
world, as humble as you are. The more unworthy the recipient,
the more God might be glorified. Consider the words of Isaiah,
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant.”
It is too insignificant a thing that we should be called to
do God’s purpose and yet our seemingly insignificant,
vapor of a ministry will be amplified by God as a beacon.
We might say, “I am too old,” or, “I am under
skilled.” We might say, “I will get to it as soon
as I can live comfortably,” or “I found something
that works ok…I am just going to stick to what I know.”
But remember, Christ called disciples from established careers.
These fisherfolk, tentmakers, leatherworkers and tax-collectors
were presumably locked into their rolls, probably more-so in
a 1st Century honor/shame culture than you are today. And in
today’s Gospel we hear in one phrase the essence of what
Jesus really wanted from them and from us. It is the first thing
that Jesus says in this Gospel. Jesus first asks, “What
are you looking for?” And when they show interest in him,
in following him, Jesus says, “Come and see.” Come
and see. Knock and the door will be opened. Trust in God enough
to take the first step.
There might be something in your life that you are not attending
to. You no longer sit perched in that hypothetical tree, filled
with wonder and optimism. So, you have pushed it to the back
of your mind. But Christ is asking you. “What are you
looking for?” Fill in the emptiness with a response, respond
to Christ’s question. What are you looking for? Or rather,
what is God calling you to do, to be? The first step toward
that goal is a small action of faith. Jesus is saying to you,
“Come and see.” As Paul attests to in his letter
to the Corinthians, when you take that step God will not abandon
you. You have been enriched by God, God makes good on God’s
promises. So, friends, you know how to climb back up into that
place of dreams, whatever that place was for you as a child
before you were embittered by the starkness of hurt and heartache.
Like I can remember how to hoist myself into the willow in my
backyard, remember how to find a place of childlike wonder and
faith in God. And if you can’t quite make it back to that
place, God will stoop down to hoist you up. All you have to
do is answer God’s call to you. That, and then come and
see, come and see how God will make you a light, shining with
the radiance of Christ.
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