Advent 1: The Jesse Tree and Abraham

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always acceptable in your
sight, Oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It’s the first day of Advent!
We’ll spend the next four weeks waiting together for the joyous celebration of
Christmas.
While the rest of the world has decorated their spaces for Christmas:
(My own home included)

In the church:
We wait.

And one of the ways that the church has done that in its history,
Is through a Jesse tree.

You might’ve heard of it before.
In the book of Isaiah:
The Messiah’s family tree is identified:
And it’s identified as the root of Jesse.
(Jesse was David’s father)

Isaiah knew that the house of David would produce an ideal king, who would
inaugurate the reign of peace, justice, and universal knowledge of God.

In art: a reclining Jesse dreams of a genealogical tree that grows out of his loins
with “leaves” in the tree that name the ancestors of Jesus.

In homes and in churches, a barren branch or bare evergreen is laden with the
“leaves”
Of messianic lineage until the Jesse tree blooms on Christmas day with Jesus’
arrival.

Traditionally, the first “leaf” om the tree is Adam and Eve, representing the
common origins of all humanity.

And the New Testament opens with Matthews genealogy:
A list of the lineage of Jesus:
Another sort of “Jesse Tree.”

Matthew opens by saying:
“An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the Son of
Abraham.”
He then lists many names:
Some of which we hear in the biblical stories of the Old testament.

In the next four weeks,
We’re going to make our own communal Jesse tree.
Each week,
We’ll explore a different story from Jesus’ lineage.

And then you’ll be invited:
To go home, and find a common object in your home to bring to church and add
to our tree.
It’s going to be weird.
It’s going to be fun.
And it’s going to teach us more about God and each other.

So are you ready for our first story for our Jesse tree?

One of the most significant stories in the old Testament is that of Abraham and
Sarah.

(READ THE STORY HERE) Genesis 38:12-26

Abraham and Sarah left their own home to travel to the Promised Land.
They crossed through enemy territory multiple times,
And they had all but given up on God’s promise to provide them with a child.

They relied on Sarah’s slave Hagar to bear Abrahams son, Ishmael, on Sarah’s
behalf.

In this story:
God clarifies:
“Yes, of course, I’ll take care of Ishmael, but that is not what I meant! Sarah
herself will have a child. Go ahead and laugh.”

When Abraham, and later Sarah, laugh at the absurdity of the promise, perhaps
God laughs along. But only because God knows how the story will end.

God’s work with Sarah and Abraham is already happening. The promise is already
in progress:
Like a current that will flow down through the generations.

But Sarah and Abraham just can’t believe it.
Rather than letting go and joining the current,
They struggle against it,
Trying to find their own ways to do God’s work:
Rather than trusting God to provide.

When their own son Isaac is finally born,
The joy of his birth seems to take them by surprise:
Completely out of the blue.

In the pages of Genesis, however,
God has been repeating this promise to them for twenty-five years.

Sarah and Abraham are the first generation identified in Jesus’ ancestry.
They’re an unlikely, disbelieving, and at times vengeful, and meddling couple.

They aren’t all bad, but they aren’t all good either.
And yet:

God works with them.
They become the ancestors of nations and of salvation itself.

This week:
I invite you to go home,
And find something that seems impossible to understand.
Like Abraham and Sarah,
Who couldn’t begin to believe or understand what amazing things God was up to.

Whatever weird thing you find:
I hope you’ll bring it back with you next week to add to our Jesse tree.

Something impossible to understand.
Like a challenging puzzle,
A difficult book,
Or your tax return.

Next week:
At the beginning of the service:
I’ll invite any of you to briefly share your found object,
And add it to our tree.

Again:
Our tree is going to look weird.
But it’s going to be ours:

With ordinary objects that might begin to remind us of what God is up to in our
world.

In the next four weeks:
Let’s see how our tree changes,
With findings from our own lives and homes:
As we re-read a few of the stories form Jesus’ lineage.

Amen.