Jesus, the Righteous Branch

 
                                                                        

Are You Joined to Jesus, the True Vine?

‘Graft’ to attach a twig or bud from one plant   to another plant so they are joined and grow   together.

 
 Most years, Advent is lost in the glitter
 of the weeks before Christmas.
 
 This year, when we are told that there are no rules for   Christmas, Advent has all but disappeared in   the rush to buy gifts and put up trees either side   of circuit breakers and lock downs.
 
 But in its rightful place, after the thankful days   of Harvest in October, through to the solemn   days of Remembrance-tide in November,   Advent marks the beginning of the new   Christian year.

Advent is a modest season.
The most it offers perhaps is an Advent wreath,
the lighting of candles each week in the approach to Christmas and Nativity. 

And perhaps an Advent calendar, with chocolate or some other luxury hidden behind 

its 24 windows.
 
Advent offers a quieter time, if you can keep the bustle of a secular Christmas at bay.
It provides readings and prayers to help us think more deeply about life’s bigger issues.
Sometimes the biblical themes across the four weeks can seem to be too big.
Little wonder then that most, even within Church, seem not to engage with it, preferring 

to distract ourselves with increasingly early Christmas meals, carol services and parties.
 
On this second Sunday in Advent, the lectionary readings from the Prophet Isaiah, 

the Apostle St Paul’s letter to the Romans, and the Gospel according to St Matthew, 

all link back to days for God’s people, when with the threat of a serious destruction in their nation, in part due to their own disobedience to God, 

they looked ahead to a promised Saviour.
 
Their forefather Jesse, father of much famed king David, is described as a once great tree.
Now, reduced, the threat is that he has been cut down to a mere stump.
 
It connects with Psalm 1, which hoped that God’s people would flourish like a tree;
or those parables of Jesus, when He speaks about fig trees not bearing fruit and eventually being chopped down.

In today’s readings, that has happened.
Jesse’s line has been greatly reduced and diminished.
At times for God’s people, there was a great fear that all was lost.
At times they lost Temple, people, influence, respect and even their own land.
But from that reduced state, a righteous branch would grow up.
 
We have come to know that branch as the Lord Jesus.
 
At times His Kingdom is described as a great tree in which the birds of the air 

will come to rest.
He has grown up from Jesse, from the throne of His forefather David, 

to restore peace and justice and hope to His people.
 
As a committed gardener that makes all the sense in the world to me.
I know that at times, even when a great tree is cut down, and it seems that all is lost,
at a point in the future you might well see a new branch shooting out from 

that seemingly dead stump and bring new life once again.

So too with Jesus.

The prophet Isaiah looked ahead to that day, when the Saviour, the righteous branch would appear, and restore wisdom, understanding, counsel and might.

St Paul much later urged the early Christians to live in peace and harmony with one another, in the way of this righteous branch, Jesus.
He knew that, not only was Jesus new life and hope for His own people the Jews,
but that in Christ, others who were outside the household of faith, would also be called to belong. And to use another gardening image, themselves would be grafted into Christ.
 
In other words, those of us Gentiles, as we are described in the New Testament, would be called to join Christ, the righteous branch, and come under the blessings promised to God’s people.
 
In order to belong, to be grafted in, Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, told his listeners and us, that we must therefore bear the fruit of repentance.
A tree without fruit will eventually be cut down.
Until then, we are to show whose we are, and to bear the fruit of the kingdom in our lives;
the fruit of repentance, changed lives, living the values of Jesus, and working for His Kingdom and His way.
 
John said, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"
Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
 
And Jesus Himself said, ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. 

Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.’
 
This is indeed a season of trees. They are appearing in shop windows, shopping centres 

and family homes, bedecked with twinkly lights and decorations.
 
It is a season very far removed I think, from these days of Advent.
In these days, there is quite a different tree we are asked to consider.
One, who is Himself a righteous branch, in whom we may by grafted.
 
We are allowed to take on His values and His ways and live our lives for Him.
 
The days of Advent may be overlooked and unnoticed in this fast paced and distracted age. But they still have something very important and life changing to offer to us after all, 

if only we took the time to consider what so easily is overlooked. Amen.