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Holy seed
Monday, November 30, 2015
First Week of Advent
Romans 10:13-15
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent? … How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news!
Sometimes feet are beautiful, yes they are. And then sometimes they are smelly and wrinkly and a little crooked and not so … beautiful. Who among us is comfortable having our feet washed by our friend before Easter? If I close my eyes and just feel the water and the gentle hands, it’s not so bad.
Paul describes how God sends him to preach to the people so they will hear of Jesus and believe in him, and then call on him. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Still, this smooth sequence of events eludes us. I’m reading Isaiah 6, another story about being sent, and I see that God’s plan for Isaiah’s preaching is that his message be Rejected. When Isaiah’s listeners have lost everything and have nowhere else to turn, only then will they call on the name of the Lord. But God does not want Isaiah to despair. Finally he says that within the disaster and devastation, “The holy seed will be the stump in the land.”
Jesus enters our earth, this world, as an innocent baby. And he comes as God. God sees through us and finds the holy seed he planted. Baby Jesus is soft and sweet, held tenderly both in the rough hands of shepherds and to the soft breast of Mary. He sleeps.
And when he awakens, his eyes pierce us all. He will do what needs to be done to plow the ground of my soul, cultivate the soil and harvest the ripening seed that God planted in me. Strong, tough, gentle, soft. All these things. Come, Lord Jesus.
Your judgments, Lord, are true and just. They are made of love, more precious than gold and sweeter than honey from the honeycomb. Your plans are to give us hope and a future, but we cannot penetrate your plans, nor know them, anymore than fish can escape from a net cast round them. So we trust in you and your love. No matter what.
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