The Second Sunday of
Advent, Year A, December 9, 2007
Metaphors in Advent
The Rev. Robert B. Wood,
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, Alpharetta, Georgia
I’ve told you before about the looks we
clergy—the designated religious officials—get with a collar on. It’s
quite a symbol. Right out of seminary, in Clarkesville, Ga, I
realized that where the church was close enough to downtown to walk to
lunch on the square or to the post office. I got a few double-takes,
but maybe that’s just because there were not many Episcopalians or
Roman Catholics up there.
But even here in cosmopolitan
Alpharetta, I get the look. Just the other night at Taco Mac, I
passed someone with a nose ring, three pierced ears, and tattoo on his
forearms. I must have been looking at him because he gave me one of
those “what are you looking at” looks. But I was looking right back at
him: “What are you looking at?” We were both taking ourselves
pretty seriously.
As a designated religious official, John
the Baptist too had his uniform too—camel’s hair and a leather
belt—and a diet of locusts only improved his image. It worked.
People came out to see him, to listen to him, in his prophet-speak,
and he got people from Judea and all over to repent. But that was
not the end of his message. “There is one coming after me,” he says.
His prophet-speak also includes axes, fruit, and a winnowing fork.
All metaphors. His prophecy is full of metaphor…poet speak. More
than symbols like a collar or camel’s hair.
You remember studying metaphors in high
school and college (maybe). Metaphors are all over the place in
poems, novels, and in movies. A good example of metaphor is
Shakespeare’s poem about a season of the year, when yellow leaves, or
none, or few do hang upon the boughs of a tree. He seems to be
talking about late Fall. But really, the point of the poem is old
age—one lover asking another—will you still love me, care for me, when
we are older, when leaves are off our trees? Do we take our love
seriously, or is it as passing as falling leaves? A great metaphor!
Remember a little more about metaphors
now? Metaphors also have two parts. The first part of the metaphor
is called the vehicle. In our earlier case, the season of the year is
the vehicle. The second part is that below-the-surface point or idea.
In poet-talk, it’s called the tenor of the metaphor. Just as you
listen to the tenor of someone’s voice—not just the words but the
feeling behind them--are they angry, happy, questioning—so a metaphor
has a tenor. In Shakespeare’s metaphor, older age is the tenor.
You get that short lesson in poet-talk
today because our prophets Isaiah and John the Baptist employ
metaphors to get their message across. In the lessons, you hear about
wheat and chaff, wilderness, axes, stumps and shoots—all of these are
vehicles carrying a deeper meaning about the coming of Christ.
Isaiah gets us started…saying “a root
shall come forth from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out
of his roots, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.” Isaiah
is talking politics and kings, not horticulture. God’s promise of new
leadership is the tenor of his metaphor. He simply uses the vehicle
of growing plants to make his point—that Israel needs a righteous and
faithful leader—and that God will put his axe to the present tree and
grow a new leader from the stump. This is not grafting or
fertilizing. It’s all but starting completely over.
Anyone whose ever trimmed a crepe myrtle
will understand the metaphor--how the tree grows back after you trim
it off. I’ve got a redbud tree that does the same thing. It was
just overcrowding this part of my yard—you know when folks landscape a
yard right after a home is built. They’ll put the baby bushes and
trees close together, but when the whole thing matures, every thing is
bunched together, competing for light and water. So I cut down this
one redbud. It was 12 feet tall, and I cut it to the stump. But the
darn thing had come back 3-4 times. Shoots out of the stump, just as
Isaiah said.
The difference for Isaiah is that God
wants the tree to grow back. That tree is his anointed line of kings
starting with David—the son of Jesse. Jesse, therefore is the root,
and David and Solomon and others formed the trunk and branches. But
David and Solomon, as good as they were…well, they need to be
bypassed. Thus the ax. Isaiah’s metaphors and prophet-talk all point
to the end of that tree’s life at the hand of God’s ax—and a shoot
coming forth from Jesse.
It’s not good news if you are the tree,
the king of the moment. But the good news is that tree won’t be
uprooted and supplanted. The good news is that there is still hope.
Metaphorically, Isaiah speaks of the new
tree as righteous and faithful—as spirit-led with understanding—not
judging by what he sees or hears, but wise enough to see the hearts of
people, and powerful enough to defeat the wicked.
It’s no wonder that Christians hear
these words as describing Jesus himself in this prophet-speak. And
it’s no wonder that John the Baptist takes up nearly the same metaphor
in his prophecy of the “one to come” after him. “Even now,” says
John, “the ax is lying at the foot of the trees. Every tree that does
not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
I say this is nearly the same
metaphor because for John; there is no shoot of growth after the tree
is cut down. There is just survival or fire. And the tree in
question is not some lineage of leaders but individuals like you and I
who hear they can repent and be spared the ax. With these metaphors,
John is indeed preparing the way—the last opening act in this concert
of our salvation. The main attraction is coming and coming soon.
However, John does not describe the main
attraction in glowing terms…unless you think the glow of unquenchable
fire is attractive. By the time John finished his prophet-talk, he
has made his point of preparation through repentance clear, and you
can see why he’s called John the Baptist and not John the
Methodist, or John the Lutheran. Just kidding—he’s called the Baptist
because he baptized—obviously. And obviously, he’s not a poet or an
English major because he mixes his metaphors. That’s right. He
started with axes and trees and then all of a sudden, he’s on to
wheat, chaff and threshing floors.
But these new vehicles in his metaphor
have the same tenor—Jesus is coming, and he wants to see fruit and
strait paths to our hearts. It’s a great metaphor really—this new one
about wheat. Because, you see, the stalks of the wheat and the chaff
of the wheat are vehicles themselves: they hold and support the
grain. The stalk lifts the wheat to the sun. The chaff cradles it
and secures it so it doesn’t blow away in the wind. So the wheat
grain—the main purpose of the plant—has its vehicles of salvation: the
stalk and the chaff.
When the farmer comes along—not in a
John Deere, mind you—but with his hands, it takes a lot of breaking,
beating, and time to pry that wheat loose. That’s what happens on the
threshing floor. The stalks might become bedding or brooms or
baskets, but the chaff—like pecan shells—let it fuel the fire that
keeps people warm —or maybe even cook the bread.
Has the tenor of all this prophet-talk
made you ready to bear fruit worthy of repentance? Has it made you
ready to show yourselves as wheat and not chaff? Ready, as Isaiah,
says, to inquire of Him? To ask how his ways of righteousness can
become your ways? How his concern for the poor can become your
concern? How the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord may be
yours? How his path to the granary can be the path he has for you?
And maybe, after all these metaphors,
you can see how the tenor of Advent is a little like the tenor
Lent—that these two church two seasons (and all church seasons) are
themselves vehicles for our self-reflection and our rededication. How
they are a time of breaking, beating, and prying our lives from the
crooked paths of this world.
We don’t observe Advent for Advent’s
sake—blue or purple vestments, cute candle lighting. No, the tenor of
our Advent observation is to prepare the way of the Lord, to light the
flame of faith in here, not just up there.
You were made for the granary, not the
ax, not the fire. That truth of your life is something to take
seriously, and that truth is the reason for our hope. Yes, you were
made for the granary, and by the grace of God, and through Him who
baptized us through the power of the Holy Spirit, it will be a
fruitful harvest.
© The Rev. Robert B. Wood. All Rights
reserved.
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