You Are a Forest

sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA

by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Third Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 16, 2018

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Canticle 9; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

Today we hear that people are leaving the bustling city of Jerusalem and going all the way out to the wilderness around the Jordan River to hear John tell them how awful they are. “You brood of vipers!”

I love that insult. I should use it more often. What if I preached like John the Baptist? Let me try it for a minute. I’m excited. And in honor of this occasion, I haven’t shaved in three whole days. Here we go ...

“You brood of vipers! Who gave you a heads-up that you should all be in church? It’s not like you really mean it. You’re just going to go home and keep doing the same things you’ve always done. You say you’re a Christian, but you’re not interested in changing your lives—only in making yourselves feel better! Your carbon footprint is gigantic, and you have no plan to stop using coal, oil, and plastic. You have too many clothes in your closets and too much money in your pockets. Your clothes and technology come from sweatshops, and you’d know that if you bothered to spend five minutes on Google. People in your neighborhood are homeless and hungry, and the help you offer them is just a Band-Aid. What’s the point in you coming here for forgiveness? Brood of vipers!”

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

I’m guessing that you wouldn’t like me much if I preached like that. (I seem to remember that John lost his head.) I wouldn’t like me much either, because it would make me a complete hypocrite. If anyone needs to go down to the Jordan for a cleansing and a fresh start, it’s me. And maybe you, too. I don’t know. Join me at the river if you like, but be warned that before anything else happens, we’re all going to endure what feels like verbal abuse from John. We’ll think it’s verbal abuse, but it’s really just stark truth-telling. When we’re accustomed to politely running our own lives, right judgment feels like violence. John comes to us with the words of a healthy conscience—and our conscience really doesn’t care about our tender feelings.

One of the core messages of Advent is that the world’s a total mess, and we are collectively responsible for it. It’s a message that won’t sit well with many of us. Of course we’re doing the best we can, right? We do give our money and we do feed the hungry and we do shelter people in need! Of course we only have so much time and energy, and we come from a certain context, and we have certain expectations of comfort in life and the means to sustain that comfort. Life is hard enough without becoming total ascetics and forswearing all pleasure in life just because someone has it worse off than we do!

This is also true. It’s not our fault as individuals. It’s not our job to become total killjoys. And guilt trips offer no path to life abundant.

Here’s the thing, though: we hear the words of the Bible very differently than the ancients did. We wouldn’t even recognize their view of things like personal responsibility and individualism. They didn’t have Descartes—“I think, therefore I am.” They didn’t have Immanuel Kant—“I had to remove knowledge to make room for belief.” They didn’t have the Enlightenment, the Scientific Method, democracy, human rights, capitalism, health care, the notion of progress. They had none of the perspectives that lead us to make the excuse that when bad things happen, it's probably someone else’s problem.

But we do. And sometimes, some of our most cherished perspectives on the world can also get in our way. Our ancient ancestors were just people like we all are. They were just the same. And they were very, very different. So when we listen to the same words that were given to them, we need to adjust our ears to think less like individuals and more like a community.

What does John say will be the result of our collective sins? He warns us that “even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

And here’s where I want to give you some solid reassurance. John seems to have used “trees” as a metaphor for “people.” If you are a tree, you have every right to feel paralyzed right now. If you are a tree, you’re waiting for that ax to start in to work on you and end you—and for the fire to lick you up and make you crackle and pop. Many Christian preachers love threatening people with these images.

But new times, with new perspectives and new lenses, call for new metaphors. Today I want to suggest that you are not a tree. You are an entire forest, inseparable from the even larger network of forests that includes everyone else.

You.

As a forest, you have all sorts of trees inside you: oaks, firs, cedars, a whole bed of ferns. You have old, stately trees and new saplings. You have healthy trees and diseased trees. You have rotting logs that are gradually turning to mulch, and you have surprising twigs sprouting out of them. You have favorite, long-standing trees that are not at all healthy. You are a forest full of trees. And your Savior is coming to begin a controlled burn.

Today we all stand planted at the river, enraptured by John, this wild man who is hurling invective at us. But his words aren’t hateful. They’re just cutting. And some of our most familiar trees are taking a hit. Hack. Hack. Hack.

“What, then, should we do?” Hack. Hack. Hack.

“What should you do?” John replies. Remember that a moment ago he told these people there was no point in them even coming to him. But now it’s different. John is happy to answer a question born of sincere panic. “Want to nurse some of your trees back to health? Here’s what you do. Notice the people you’re stepping on. Live more simply: give away what you don’t need. Tax collectors? OK, we’ll call you hedge fund managers: Question the source of your easy money. Soldiers? OK, we’ll call you law enforcement: Call your prejudices into the light and admit to how they affect your behavior. You’re all part of the same system!”

So John says. But if it sounds like he’s giving us tips on how to save ourselves, think again. Our good works will never save us. Salvation is coming regardless! John is just teaching us how to make salvation less painful.

See, your forest may have many, many bad trees in it. Those trees are going to get chopped down and burned. But your Creator planted you lovingly in the very beginning and has always been tending you. In the middle of your forest are trees that grew from seeds taken from the Garden of Eden. You have in you fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and some of its fruit is good, and some of it is bad. But you also have in you fruit from the Tree of Life, and that fruit will never go bad. That divine fruit will keep spreading new seeds, no matter what else happens in your forest.

John’s words are cutting, but they are not themselves the cut. John comes first to bring the necessary judgment. But someone greater is come next, to begin the Great Clearing.

I went to the doctor once with a badly swollen pinkie, an infection probably brought on by the stuff I was spraying to get the moss off my roof. The doctor looked at my finger and said, “Yup—we’re going to have to drain it.” She wasn’t able to give my pinkie anesthetic. So she sat me down and invited me to turn my head. Then she took a scalpel and started slicing the edge of my finger. And it hurt—oh, did it hurt! I remember sitting there with my eyes closed and letting out a racking sob. I remember the doctor saying, “Oh, wow—there’s so much of it coming out. Do you want to see?” No, of course not. Another sob shook my body. And as the doctor wrapped my cut finger in a bandage, she patted my arm gently. I had been a good patient.

The doctor’s judgment was that the infection needed to come out.

The gardener’s judgment is that some of our trees will need to be cut down and burned.
John is not the one who will do this. John takes us for a swim in the Jordan, where in his presence, in all sincerity, we say, “I’m sorry. Please allow me to start again.”

And then, the one who is still coming will also go for a swim with John, because we need to know that he’s just like us. Just like us, and also not like us at all. This one will be just a son of a woman, just another human being. And this one will be the Son of Man, the one coming into the world bearing a winnowing fork, if you don’t mind one more change in metaphor. A winnowing fork is for separating the useful grain from the useless chaff. Did you hear that? He’s going to keep the grain! Your grain will be used for bread. Your chaff will burn up.

“What, then, should we do?” Oh, it’s such good news. If you’re even asking this question, then God is already at work in you, preparing you, smoothing the rough places in your soul. God wants good fruit from you, because if you can’t bear good fruit, you won’t be able to grow at all when someday you’re replanted in heavenly soil. But the Master Gardener is here, with tender hands and a green thumb.

And you may be a whole forest, but you are only one forest in a planet full of forests, all dependent on each other for life. We are responsible for each other, but God is responsible for all of us.

So do not worry about anything. Sing aloud! Rejoice and exult with all your heart! Draw water from the springs of salvation: suck it up into your roots! Though the ax will chop and hack, and though fire will burn up all that is diseased, you shall fear disaster no more. Amen.