The Future Belongs to God

“O Branch of Jesse.” Today’s messianic title for Jesus comes to us from our first reading from Isaiah: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse [the father of David], / and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” Jesse’s lineage, the line that included the renowned King David, was not cut off, according to this prophecy, but would continue with the advent of a future leader, like new growth from the remnant of a fallen tree.

What a metaphor! If a stump is a symbol of death, then the shoot growing from that stump is a symbol of new life. If a stump is a symbol of hopelessness, then the shoot is a symbol of possibility. If a stump is a symbol of resignation, then the shoot is a symbol of hope against hope.

Leave it to nature to attest that life will make a way even where we least expect, even where we can’t imagine. But even nature can’t imagine the full extent of God’s promised future. As the prophet declares:

The wolf shall live with the lamb;
  the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
 the calf and the lion will feed together,
  and a little child shall lead them.
 The cow and the bear shall graze;
  their young shall lie down together;
  and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
  and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
 They will not hurt or destroy
  on all my holy mountain,
 for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
  as the waters cover the sea.

You might rightly wonder how a predator and its prey could ever dwell together in harmony. It’s a stretch. But alas, is it any easier to believe that humankind could ever accomplish something like a lasting peace?

Good thing it’s not up to us to fulfill the promises of God. When we confess that “the word of God is living and active,”[1] we mean that God is reliably at work to enact God’s vision for the world God loves. “[My word] shall not return to me empty,” says the Lord, “but it shall accomplish that which I purpose / and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”[2] That is to say, it is God who encourages the growth of the shoot from the stump; it is God who makes a way where we can’t see one. Despite our foibles and frustrations and fears, the future belongs to God.[3]

We can only marvel at that promise, and tune our hearts to its melody. Forgive me for indulging in a little sentimentality– although we’ve sworn off Christmas music in church until December 24^th, let me break the rules this once and share with you one of my favorite songs from Amy Grant’s 1992 holiday album Home for Christmas:

Do you remember me?
I sat upon your knee;
I wrote to you with childhood fantasies.

Well I’m all grown-up now,
And still need help somehow.
I’m not a child,
But my heart still can dream.

So here’s my lifelong wish,
My grown-up Christmas list,
Not for myself,
But for a world in need:

No more lives torn apart,
That wars would never start,
And time would heal all hearts.
Everyone would have a friend,
And right would always win,
And love would never end.
This is my grown-up Christmas list.[4]

I’m not a child, but my heart still can dream. That sounds a bit like the prophet Isaiah, doesn’t it? What is it, do you think, that keeps the dream alive? If it were up to me, I suspect I would have given up the dream of a just and peaceable world a long time ago. But somehow the word of God persists, working in and through our little lives to anticipate the future God has in store. “Be ready,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel from Matthew, “for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Be ready, in other words, because the fulfillment of God’s promises will surprise you.

Friends, the future belongs to God. The divine project to renew the world is already begun in the life, death, and resurrection of the Messiah, the Branch of Jesse. And the work continues now and in the time to come.

Hear how 20^th-century German theologian, Eberhard Arnold, articulates the old promise:

So it shall be with our yearning for the redemption of humanity and for a new shining forth of the world of God. When we are discouraged by the apparently slow progress of all our honest efforts, by the failure of this or the other person, and by the ever new reappearance of enemy powers and their apparent victories, then we should know: the time shall be fulfilled. Because of the noise and activity of the struggle and the work, we often do not hear the hidden gentle sound and movement of the life that is coming into being. But here and there, at hours that are blessed, God lets us feel how [God] is everywhere at work and how [God’s] cause is growing and moving forward. The time is being fulfilled and the light shall shine, perhaps just when it seems to us that the darkness is impenetrable.[5]

[1] Hebrews 4:12.

[2] Isaiah 55:11.

[3] See Bruce C. Birch, in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 1, 3; also Stacey Simpson Duke, 6.

[4] “Grown-Up Christmas List.”

[5] “When the Time Was Fulfilled,” Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, 282.