Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25; Luke 21:25-36
As many of you know, I once owned an orchard. Apples, peaches, pears, cherries, even persimmons grew in my orchard. When a derecho, a horizontal tornado, came through, I lost a small apple tree completely, broken off level with the ground, and a large pie cherry tree went down. I cut that cherry tree off about two feet above the ground, because that was where the trunk broke.Over the next months, a green shoot grew up from the trunk, using the stored energy from the roots to send out new leaves, for the heart and power of a tree is in the roots. The energy is stored in the roots, the power of life is in the roots. Left by itself, the shoot would develop into an entire tree, as strong as the first one. In fact, every year, to ensure that orchard trees and grapevines continue to bear well, the branches of old wood are pruned off, cut off, and new shoots are encouraged to grow. Most orchard trees are pruned to lose a quarter to a third of their old growth. It is necessary for the tree to bear new fruit consistently.
With many grapevines, it is common to cut off 90% of the old growth and only leave 10% as a basis for the new growth, for it is on the new growth that the fruit grows. And so a spring vineyard looks like it has been attacked by locusts, with only a couple of vertical trunks per vine, and a short stub of horizontal. Yet in the fall, the vine is overwhelmed with new growth, bearing much fruit. And the people of Israel understood grapevines…
In ancient Israel, the greatest the kingdom of Israel ever grew was under the leadership of King David and then his son, King Solomon. Israel’s control extended from the Sinai though modern Israel, the “West Bank”, the area known today as Jordan, most of Lebanon, Damascus in Syria, and even up to the Euphrates River in northern Syria. Israel dominated the Middle East trade routes.
However, after Solomon, Israel became weak and divided because of a civil war (which divided the country into Israel in the north and Judah in the south) – and the fact that the new kings turned away from God. Other kingdoms began to reclaim parts of Israel. Eventually, even Jerusalem was conquered by outsiders and the people were taken into captivity. The kingdom had been cut down – only the root was left – But God was the root. God was the power and heart of Israel. From God, a new shoot, a new branch, a new, living growth would come forth. Jeremiah saw this destruction of Israel, but God spoke to Jeremiah in Chapter 33:
“Look, the days are coming”—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
“when I will fulfill the good promises
that I have spoken
concerning the house of Israel
and the house of Judah.
In those days and at that time
I will cause a Righteous Branch
to sprout up for David,
and He will administer justice
and righteousness in the land.
In those days Judah will be saved,
and Jerusalem will dwell securely,
and this is what she will be named:
Yahweh Our Righteousness. (from Jeremiah Chap 33)
Jeremiah spoke of a branch of the family tree of David sprouting up from the roots like that shoot growing from my cherry tree, like new growth coming from a pruned grapevine. And so the people of Israel began to look forward to a coming Messiah, a Savior, a man who would rescue Israel and make Israel and Judah great again, a place of peace, a place of safety, a place of beauty!
The Land and the Characters
When the Romans conquered the area we know as Israel about 50 BC, during the civil war that started with Julius Caesar, they established several garrisons around the country. One of these was established a short distance from Capernaum, near the village of Nazareth, which was located about two thousand feet above and 15 miles southwest from the Sea of Galilee. This location was defensible, and guarded the road from Galilee to the coast. A few hundred Jews built up the small village of Nazareth, partially to provide goods and services to the Roman garrison, and partially because it was just a good place to live. Among these was a carpenter named Yo’sef ben Yacob – Joseph, son of Jacob.A carpenter in those days held some prestige. His skills were in demand, much as an engineering degree has some prestige today because of the difficulty in mastering the profession and the resulting above-average pay that an engineer today – and a carpenter back then – received. Joseph was not wealthy – but he was not poverty-stricken either.
He had a fiancée, a woman named Miriam – or Mary. She was a descendent of Aaron, the first High Priest of Israel. Her older cousin Elizabeth was married to an important priest at the Temple in Jerusalem, a man named Zechariah. So she, too, had connections. But neither Joseph nor Mary owned any significant farm land, so Joseph spent his time in his carpentry business. She was in her mid-teens, a normal marrying age for women of that day. We don’t know how old Joseph was.
Around the year 4 BC, the carpenter and his young fiancée began the journey from Nazareth, a village near the Sea of Galilee, to the village of Bethlehem about 3 miles from Jerusalem. (What? Not in the year zero, you ask? No, for the monk who 400 years later would calculate the date made a mistake, but by the time the mistake was discovered, it was over fifteen hundred years too late.)
The entire area was under control of the Roman Emperor, and the rulers of the Empire had decided it was necessary to count the number of people in the different territories, so men had been asked to bring their families to the ancestral homes of their clans. Our carpenter was part of the clan descended from King David’s father, Jesse of Bethlehem, so it was necessary for this man and his family to travel for the counting to Bethlehem.
The man was Y’osef and his young fiancée was Miriam. These were solid, traditional names. Joseph had been the name of one of the sons of Abraham. Joseph had rescued the entire family of Abraham because God had allowed Him to rise to a very high position in the government of Egypt just as a famine hit Israel.
The original Miriam had been Moses’ sister, who rescued Moses with her quick thinking and had him raised by Pharoah’s daughter when Moses was found floating in the Nile River. Joseph – and Miriam, both strong leaders of Israel.
Later English-speaking people would change the names to the more familiar Joseph and Mary. Both man and woman were also descendants of King David, the great king who had lived some 1000 years earlier. Mary was scandalously pregnant with her first child, so tradition has it that Joseph put her on a donkey for the journey rather having her walk.
Their family was still missing something – a child. But the child would arrive soon. Meanwhile, Joseph and Mary had a journey of about a hundred miles to travel on dirt roads that would scarcely hold a single cart. The roads were unpaved, dirt and mud and rock and ruts.
Do you remember when you were young and beginning your life with your husband or wife? Do you remember how difficult things were – and how you did things that were physically demanding, things you wonder how you ever survived, things you simply could not do today? But you were young and you were able – and willing – to work hard to make it, weren’t you?
The Comfort of Nazareth
Nazareth lies above and south west of the land of Galilee. Galilee is the land around the freshwater Sea of Galilee in the north of modern Israel. The Romans called the lake the “Lake of Tiberius”. This lake is mainly fed by snow melt from the mountains north of the sea, in modern day Syria, the disputed territory of the Golan Heights, and the mountains of Lebanon.Because of the geology of the area, the surface of the lake is almost 700 feet below sea level, about 13 miles long north to south, and about 8 miles wide from east to west. The Sea of Galilee is about 140 ft deep and contains many fish, similar to what Americans commonly would call tilapia. To the south flows out the lower Jordan River, which leads down to the Dead Sea. It is down the Jordan Valley that the road lie to the Jerusalem, because it was down this valley road that people could count on having water and being protected from cold wind and weather. It was to this road that Joseph and Mary walked and rode, about 15 miles from Nazareth.
The land around the lake has long been a farming area. The land is well-watered, and the low elevation means that the area stays warm even in the winter. In ancient Israel, Galilee was considered to have some of the best farmland in the Holy Land. By ancient standards, living in Galilee, even living in Nazareth was comfortable. Very comfortable.
But the journey down the Jordan Valley would not be comfortable for Mary. Mary’s discomfort began the day she realized she was pregnant, for at that time she was not married. Her society was much less tolerant of single mothers than our society, for they blamed the mother for everything that had happened, never thinking about the responsibilities of the father.
But the Father of Mary’s child would always be with her, even before and after Joseph found out and accepted her pregnancy, for her child had been conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit of God, as she explained many years later to a man named Luke, who, in turn wrote about this in the first chapter of his gospel (Luke 1). No man’s flesh had become intimate with her. Yet people still talked. “And SHE says she is pregnant from the Holy Spirit! – SHE says an angel showed up!” For now, Mary was not comfortable. She was not comfortable at all. Falsely accused of doing what she should not do, Mary was not comfortable in that society – and now, nine months later, she was not comfortable on the donkey that Joseph had so kindly provided.
Life was uncomfortable for Joseph, too. The sweet, kind, beautiful girl he had planned to marry had turned up pregnant – and Joseph knew he was not the father, no chance, un-uh, no way! So he thought he might quietly send her off, perhaps with a bit of money, for he had heard – as all men heard – of deadly diseases being passed on from women who had slept around. Plus, she might hurt his business – so he thought. Until he had a dream where an angel appeared to him and told him not to be afraid to take Mary home as his wife, confirmed that the child was supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit, would give a son, and that Joseph should name the boy “Y’shua”, or Joshua, which means “The Lord saves”. The ancient Joshua had been the great Jewish leader who led the people into the Promised Land after Moses died. The boy would do the same. The name was rendered in Greek as “Jesus”. But his neighbors would make Joseph uncomfortable, having to defend Mary’s honor. Yet Joseph stood up and kept Mary with him. You see, a man with character takes care of his family, even if it makes him uncomfortable. For Joseph also wanted a family.
In our lives, we live in comfort. However, just like Joseph and Mary, we often discover that we are missing something in our lives. We have an emptiness in the comfortable lives we live. We work – but why? To make money to keep our comforts? We spend tremendous time and money on leisure activities – watching television, on social media, looking at our phones, crafting, upgrading our homes and property, preparing food for family get-togethers. But what is our purpose in life?
Mary was not comfortable, but she undertook the journey because she had a purpose for this trip. Both Joseph and Mary knew they had a purpose common with many people during this trip. At one level, their journey to Bethlehem was simply for the purpose of following the order of the government, an order to return to the home of their family to be counted, and since Joseph was from King David’s family, he was to return to Bethlehem, the home town of his ancestor, King David. This was their general purpose, common to many people.
But Joseph and Mary both also knew that their baby who was soon to be born was special, conceived by the Holy Spirit of God, and thus was very special, perhaps even the promised Messiah, the Savior of Israel. Mary had received the Holy Spirit inside her. They had each encountered an angel, and God had given them a particular purpose, a purpose they would not fully realize for many years as that son grew and ultimately began his ministry to the world. Their purpose was to protect the child growing within Mary, the boy they would eventually know as God on the earth, allowing Him to grow as an ordinary human boy as much as possible.
Each of us has two purposes as we journey through life. The first purpose, common to all people who have been baptized and received the Holy Spirit inside them, is to gradually let that shoot of God grow in our heart, to let that life of God expand into every fiber of our body, mind, and soul, to help God take over our life so that we can live eternally with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But we each have a particular purpose which we can only find in Bethlehem, as Mary and Joseph did.
Each of us needs to journey to Bethlehem from our comforts in Galilee. We need to find our particular purpose, our calling, our life which God has planned for us. Each of us needs to understand why God is sending us on journeys that are difficult, that take us out of our comfort, that beat us up as we walk over difficult roads.
Joseph knew that no wood ever became a beautiful piece of furniture while remaining on the tree.
But there is a purpose simply to leaving home. No one has ever become great who did not leave the comforts of home. No tool of metal ever became tough without being placed in fire and beaten by the hammer of the blacksmith. No tree ever bore good fruit without being pruned. Joseph knew that no wood ever became a beautiful piece of furniture while remaining on the tree. The hero must undertake a journey if the dragon is to be slain and the princess rescued. Change begins when we walk out our front door, not knowing when – or if - we will return. We leave our comforts and that is when we begin to find our purpose.I think we instinctively realize this, for many teenagers know that they must move away from home, they must travel to another town to live and learn, to work, to marry. Perhaps this is why our small-town young people who move out generally become independent and successful, while many of those who remain in their home town, living with parents, have a difficult time succeeding in their lives. But this leaving home and beginning the journey was not just the journey of Joseph and Mary. It was not just the journey we each undertake.
Jesus left His comfortable home in Heaven to be vulnerable among us, to be hungry in a cradle, to walk barefoot on the earth, to experience the cruelty of children to each other, to work and sweat and thirst, to be taunted by people, to be beaten, to bleed, to hang upon a cross, to suffocate, and to die. He had a purpose in leaving home – that we could become reconciled with God the Father once more, that we would live eternally in comfort instead of suffer eternally in pain. That’s why Jesus left his comfortable home and came to be with us. That was His particular purpose. He left his comfort in Heaven to ensure our eternal comfort in Heaven.
And so Joseph and Mary packed their bags, loaded Mary on the donkey with their most precious cargo in her womb, and began the walk to Bethlehem. This day, they would travel downhill 1500 feet and walk about 10 miles. It was the beginning of a long journey, for they were leaving home – and would not return for several years. But soon, very soon, they would watch – and Mary would feel – the arrival of God upon the earth, Jesus the Christ.
Many years later, as Luke recorded, Jesus would tell His followers about the day of His return: “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars… People will faint from terror…At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
As we look forward to the arrival of Christ once more, I ask you to take your Bible out of the bookcase or from under the coffee table, to open it up to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to read a chapter in each every day– one every morning, one every evening.
And ask – “Lord, what is here for me this year? What is my purpose over the next twelve months? What shall I do for you, Lord, in this terrible time of waiting?”
As we enter the time waiting that is Advent, as we wait in this time of COVID, I ask you to bow in prayer with those questions:
- “Lord, what is here for me this year?”
- “Lord, what is my purpose over the next twelve months?”
- “Lord, what shall I do for you?”
Prayer
Let us pray: Heavenly Father,Thank you for the lessons about life that you teach us about yourself. Thank you for your consistent, perfect love that was with us even when we did not know you. Thank you for sending your Son, the One who left home for us – Jesus Christ. Show us the next step in our long, long journey to learn about you. Please grow each one of us in Your ways. Help us to Praise your Son to our family, friends, and neighbors. We pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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