Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
At my grandma’s house was a giant willow tree. It stood at the edge of a small hill in a meadow, its grand curtain of leaves and branches draping round about it luxuriantly. It was easily ten feet across at its base and seemed to be the closest thing to an immortal being I would ever encounter. Every summer for decades, on whichever occasion saw all the grandkids assembled, we would all clamber up into the nooks and crannies of this living colossus and someone’s mom would snap a picture. For years it seemed there was no stopping this time-honored tradition– as solid as the ancient fixture of that sunny meadow.
But those children became adults. Discomforted pain and unresolved conflict created wedges. Hurt people hurt people. There stopped being days when we all gathered, even at the base of that old willow tree– even when grandma and grandpa died.
Then, late one winter– an ice storm. Thousands upon thousands of acres of pine and hardwoods snapped like toothpicks between God’s fingers. Dozens of counties were without power, disconnected from the rest of the world by debris-laded roads and telecommunications systems in shambles. Water wells for that most basic modern amenity, indoor plumbing, rendered inoperable for want of electricity. And that mighty willow was laid low, soaring trunks snapping under the weight of the ice coating every square inch of every leaf, twig, and branch. A tangle of once resplendent tendrils knotted up around the jagged, twisted, torn stump that once cradled a generation with ease.
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We talk about hope and joy like they’re choices. “Choose joy” the word art placards declare from waiting room walls. We announce “seasons of hope” like we can flip a switch or plug in a string of lights and instantly our hearts and souls will be flooded with unrelenting positive affect. It’s not so simple as that.
Paul reminds us that hope and joy aren’t ours to command into being. They proceed from God. Indeed, God calls us into hopeful lives through the encouragement and instruction of Scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit. But there’s a certain amount of “fake it till you make it” at play here. He encourages the Church in Rome to accept one another as Jesus has, even while we may know that this effort doesn’t necessarily mean hearts and minds are just going to snap into conformity. But if we never begin to live into a hope unrealized, how is the hope ever to be realized?
In the early stages of social transition, we go through this same kind of living into a hope unrealized. At some point, the only way to become yourself is to start being yourself. I remember the first time I went out to run errands after I began socially transitioning…standing in line at a checkout, I noticed myself thinking about how I needed to stand a certain way to take up less space. I paused and realized that this was coming through the voices of my grandmother, aunts, and mother telling me, countless times in countless ways, to make myself smaller– to be a lady. “Well, I don’t want to be rude and take up more space than is reasonable, but I’m not a lady, and I should stop trying to be what I’m not,” I thought, feeling my shoulders stretch back as I mentally inflated into my own body, widening my stance. “Oh, this feels better,” I thought. “What if I just—walk however feels right, and stop worrying about what it looks like?”
My gait loosened. I felt the balance of the momentum moving from my hips into the rest of my body as I stopped “walking narrow” like I was wearing high heels without stomping. I felt lighter. I felt…right. I knew that in my fat, curvy body, even with a binder and “boy clothes,” I still read as femme to people around me, but I could feel the change inside.
When the Pharisees and Sadducees approach the River Jordan to be cleansed by John the Baptist, he rebukes them for presuming that this was just another ritual– a “one and done” moment of atonement rather than a radical reorientation. He knows they’re not doing the internal work to reorient themselves. It’s showing in their behavior. In his very John way, he reminds them of the stakes, that the accident of their birth into God’s chosen people was meaningless if they didn’t live into what it means to belong to God.
All life is transition—changing from moment to moment—a never ending process of becoming, unveiling what God calls us to be. We orient ourselves, in large part, through the vision we hold of what might be. I don’t have a clear mental picture of the man I’m becoming, but every now and again, I get a glimpse of him out the corner of my eyes as I pass a mirror and see him in my shadow. He’s there. I see him. But I’m also not him—yet.
The Prophet Isaiah casts that vision for what the whole world could look like when the Liberating King comes to dwell among the people. He speaks of all the ways that the impossible will come to be: vegan lions, pacifist snakes, even poor people getting a fair shake in our institutions of power. But crucially, he describes how all of this is to come from the stump of Jesse. This monumental new world does not arise out of nothing. This bright future brimming with possibility comes directly out of the death of what was.
We can hold on so tightly to what has been that we forget to make space for what can be. We can grow impatient and anxious as we sit in the tension of the “not yet,” lose sight of the vision behind that longed for hope, and then give up on the being at the heart of becoming. This is why, as Paul says, scripture offers us encouragement and a call to persevere, pointing us to God’s promise of the radical hope of transformation, so hope and joy can run through our whole lives. Rather than demanding an unyielding positivity that ignores the harshness of reality, Paul encourages us to develop deep roots to ground ourselves in God. We can then be reminded of what we’re orienting ourselves toward and let that guide our actions—so that we can experience the fruit of hopeful lives.
In effect, we are choosing joy and living in hope, but we cannot fully live into it without God’s help… a welcome relief from the responsibility of individual instrumentality. There’s effort, to be sure—internal work to do—but God also works things out, albeit in God’s own time. In the meantime, we can rely on the visions cast by those who have gone before—and by our own hearts—to give us the courage to keep at it.
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The other day, I drove past my grandma’s house and saw, in that meadow, green shoots rising out of the wide stump of the old willow tree. No children will be climbing into it for decades yet, but there’s hope in what is there. Willow trees are tough like that. Likewise, there is always possibility for renewed relationships and reconciliation among those of us who climbed that grand tree. It might be awkward, and there’s risk that tender shoots may not be sturdy enough to withstand all hardships, but as long as the roots remain, something other than death and mourning is possible.
The Reverend Beckett Leclaire is an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of the Great Lakes and Ministry Developer of the AuSable Inclusion Center, based in Mio, MI. He is a husband, father, godfather, and cat dad. In his spare time, Deacon Beck enjoys reading, playing video games, hiking, and birdwatching. You can learn more about him and read more of his writing at www.beckleclaire.com.
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