I am afraid I have had a bad week this week, coughing and wheezing, eventually I was put onto antibiotics and fell asleep at the drop of a hat; and wondered if I would ever be well again? You can hear and see me give this Homily on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nBfdWcgUeo
Of course I was being impatient with myself, giving up hope quite so quickly, and this is particularly ridiculous given I am a keen gardener and know all about the way plants grow in God’s time, not mine. Plants in the Northern Hemisphere at this time of the year often seem to get more and more dead, rather like I was feeling; but then little flickers of life begin to show that there is a future for them. I hadn’t noticed, until I thought about this, that this image, of an apparently dead plant, features right at the beginning of our 1st Reading (Isaiah 11:1-10) ; where we hear of the stock of Jesse from which “a shoot” will spring. The stock that he is referring to is just a nobbly piece of wood which looks completely dead; and only an expert, would ever believe that from such a dead stump a full crop of grapes will appear next Summer.
When Isaiah refers to this, he is actually using the technical term for all that is left of a Vine once it has been pruned. This image of a Vine crops up quite often in the Bible, not least when Jesus uses it to tell us that he is the Vine and we are the branches. (John 15) Here again, reference is made to the fact that the good vine must nonetheless be pruned right down to its stock, if it is to bear fruit next year. The message is clear, if the Vine is allowed to make more and more growth for too long without being pruned, it loses its strength; and although lots of branches may grow, there will be very few grapes. In this way, the great prophets of Israel dealt with the fact that their little nation easily became corrupt when it was successful, and only gained a new and purer purpose when it had to face darkness and despair. For God can see beyond outward appearances of life and success, as he can see beyond outward appearances of death and failure ; as Isaiah says, God “Does not judge by appearances, he gives no verdict on hearsay, but judges the wretched with integrity, and with equity gives a verdict for the poor of the land.”
I am always a bit bewildered by people who hear passages like this about judgement and immediately begin to feel guilty that they have failed, when in fact we are being told very firmly that we need to put our future into God’s hands, rather than sitting around feeling sorry about ourselves or about some failure that we imagine has ruined everything. Of course, we humans often fail, not least in the way we treat our poor world; but sitting around feeling sorry about them is not the way of the Christian. Those who do need to feel guilty (and this point often occurs in my homilies) yes those who do need to feel guilty are actually those who think that they are doing ok and think this means that God is blessing them. John the Baptist in our Gospel (Matt 3:1-12) deals with such people in this way. “Do not presume to tell yourselves, “We have Abraham for our father,” because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones. Even now the axe is laid to the roots of the trees, so that any tree which fails to produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown on the fire.” But I repeat again, this warning is for those who think they’re doing all right, not those of us who are aware how often we fail, and how much there is yet to do. We who know this, are called, indeed empowered, by God to get out and make the world a better place, even if at times the project seems hopeless, and all we can see is a bare stump.
We might well think here of the similar approach of the scientist who makes some new discovery that can help our world. The scientist approaches the problem very gently, trying out many different ideas, many of which come to nothing. The point, as we all know well, is that it is these many failures that lead eventually to the success. It is “Not this way,” and “Not that way”, until the breakthrough is discovered. In the end, it is the scientist who proceeds ahead on some hare-brained scheme that hasn’t been fully proved who is the fool. This is surely why Isaiah tells us that those who will succeed, those from whom fruitful branches will spring are those who are open to God’s gift to us of “A spirit of wisdom and insight…. of counsel and power… of knowledge.. and of the fear of the Lord.” Or to use a modern 19th Century way of looking at things “Mistakes are there to be learnt from.”
We are therefore reminded that God has created a world in which experiments and mistakes are the way we move forward both in the area of science, but also in bringing more justice to our world. When one doctor noticed that one area of London had many more cholera outbreaks than others, he eventually found it was the fault of one pump whose source was contaminated, and thus the whole nonsense that plague and disease was produced by breathing contaminated air was shown to be at fault, and the production of clean water for all became part of the way true justice was brought to the poorest people – “the poor of the land” as Isaiah calls them. Thus I remember once walking through a slum in Pakistan with my friend who was saying that nothing could be done; and I said to his surprise “London used to be like this.”
Thus we are reminded that true justice is available, not by grand words and gestures, but by the quiet work of examining carefully the world that God has made for us, and then using it in ways that can be of use to everyone, not just to the rich. This is what God wants, it is his will, and Advent is especially a time when we stir ourselves up to believe that things can be done, rather than saying everything is hopeless. That’s why St Paul can write to the Romans, as in our 2nd Reading (Rom 15:4-9). “Everything that was written long ago in the scriptures was meant to teach us something about hope from the examples scripture gives, of how people who did not give up were helped by God.” May we never give up on the ways of God. May we always use the hope in him that he provides for us, even in the darkest days.
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