Images of Christ
(series)
The Branch
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United, Aurora, CO 2/03/2013
Based on Isaiah 11:
1-5, 10
This
past week I had the pleasure of hosting my sister, brother, and mother. There was a family re-union of sorts, with my
mother’s older sister, two of her daughters and a grand-nephew joining us for a
dinner in honor of mom’s 80th birthday. It was a grand time, as it’s been a couple of
years since mom and my aunt had seen one another and many years since mother
had seen her two nieces and the grand-nephew.
When my family gathers there is lots of laughter, but when we gather
around the dining table the intensity goes up as we regaled one another with
family stories of the past.
It
has long been a custom on both sides of my family, that much of the table
discussion wasn’t centered on current events but rather the reciting of family
history. Those stories that if not told
would over time become forgotten, losing a vital connection between the present
and the past. It was through these stories
that I have come to realize that the confidence I posses as I look toward the
future comes because I know some of where I come from, through the lives of
those who preceded me.
I know that by
nature, I tend to have an adventurous spirit because of the examples of my
ancestors who crossed the Atlantic Ocean, seeking to plant new roots in a
foreign land. Out of these roots, my
ancestors moved to each new frontier as it opened up. Through diaries of my ancestors I can renew
my history, knowing of and in a sense have ongoing re-unions with those that I
never had the opportunity to meet.
Sometimes you may
wonder why we as Christians give such value and weight to the Hebrew
Scriptures, since we do not refer to ourselves as followers of Abraham, but
rather followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
As we read in the Gospels of Mathew and Luke a genealogy of Jesus is
given, making us aware of those family connections between Jesus and his
ancestors. Through the Gospel stories we
have an understanding of the earliest relationships between a nomadic people
and God and how those relationships formed Jesus’ understanding and
relationship with God, which gives us some basis on how we struggle to forge
our relationship with God work for us in our present lives.
“A shoot shall come
out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” This was a description by Isaiah, speaking to
the hope that the young Hezekiah who would become king after his father Ahaz
might be the righteous Davidic ruler long hoped for. This did not happen as in time the Hebrew
people would be carried off into exile and viewed as a consequence for their
lack of faith. This branch from Jesse would
rise to leadership with the blessing of God, as did King Saul and then King
David, each being anointed by God.
We see this
anointing or blessing in the Christian Scriptures of Jesus with his baptism by
John the Baptizer in the symbol of a dove descending down from Heaven, and then
again at the top of a mountain after Jesus visited with Moses, and Elisha. It is through these stories that the church
has grown to understand Jesus as being the “anointed one”, the one that God
will use in a covenant commitment, employing actions of righteousness and
equity. Those who will receive the
benefit of this “anointed covenant” are the poor and vulnerable, those with no
voice to plead their needs.
As followers of
Christ, these stories from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures are the diaries of
our faith family. They are history that
needs to be read over and over, as a way to ground us and help us understand the
basic principles that we base our visions and ministries on. As the Christian church we too are the “root
of Jesse”. As I am a branch of my
ancestors, and you of your families of origin, Mountain View is a branch of
three denominations. Those three
denominations are branches of earlier brands of Christians. All have changed in their original make up
with each generation. Each of the
changes has come from the shift in needs of each of those generations. Each of these new branches takes on a new
vision, working toward providing fresh voices of justice and equity.
We speak about a
“God who is still speaking” with the assurance that there is an ongoing
relationship with God. Yet when God
speaks to us, often there is a feeling of unsettledness, confusion, and
fear. Confusion because we have to work through the process of discerning
what God is saying to us, unsettledness
because doing something different is hard, and fear because we don’t know what the outcome will look like. Questions asked tend to focus on our own
personal needs, making it hard to focus in on the greater needs of our
community.
When I arrived here
last February, wondering what Mountain View was all about, wondering what I
could bring to you, and what possibilities we would achieve together, I received
a phone call from the pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church in Denver, sharing how
God’s spirit was moving within their congregation. The question was put forward asking if
Mountain View might be interested in exploring if there were some common
interests that might enable our separate congregations to join in some shared
ministries. Although Calvary is going
through a major discernment process as to what God has in store for them and
what their ministry might look like in the future, we have been asked to help
them in their discernment process.
I see this as one
of a number of ways that God is speaking to Mountain View. This summer, I initiated a congregational
retreat as a way of laying down foundations to start an intentional process of
developing leadership within the congregation, preparing ourselves to start our
own discernment process of examining how Mountain View understands God’s
call. After three years of the
leadership holding the church together until a settled pastor arrived, it is
now time for us to start intentional conversations to discern what we think God
is asking of us as a congregation. This
means confusion, unsettledness, and fearfulness for a time.
We are, I believe
being asked by God to grow a new branch out of the root of Mountain View. What is this new branch? Who will be a part of this new branch? How will the new branch function? I don’t know.
This is a group process, even though it might seem to be questions
focusing on Calvary, it has nothing directly to do with Calvary, but with our
own need to understand what we at Mountain View see as God’s calling for us. Maybe our future might intersect with Calvary
or another congregation, maybe it doesn’t, but what I know for sure is this: We
must be willing to open our minds and hearts to listening to the leading of the
Holy Spirit, if we are to continue to be a branch out of the root of Christ. In Romans 11: 17-18 Paul says of the church, “and you have been grafted in among the others and now share in the
nourishing sap from the olive root… Consider this: You do not support the root,
but the root supports you.”
We
are not lone rangers, living as an island, but are a part of a larger
story. A history that goes back beyond
our 40yrs as Mountain View, a history that goes beyond the origins of any of
our three parent denominations, a history that goes back beyond Jesus’
ministry. We are a part of God’s
creation, intertwined to all that God created.
This is who we are! It is a
history that guides us in the present toward the future. A future that we do not know what will look
like. But we can be assured that we will
not look the same in the future as we currently are. We don’t look like what we did last year,
three years ago, or even twenty years ago.
If you don’t believe me, just
look in the mirror and then look at an old photo of yourself. We change even when we try not to.
It
is scripture that gives us not only the knowledge of where we have come from,
but it gives us the assurance that when we listen to the prodding of the Holy
Spirit, that we will become a branch that God will honor. We do not support the root, but the root
supports us. God is our root, we are the
branch. Let us be nourished by the food
that comes from our root! Amen
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