Have you ever been present at the birth of a baby? … Oh yes you have!
There’s a lot going on - excitement or hush, quiet, fuss, anxiety, hope, sorrow, wondering what happens next. Rarely do you have to make a run for it…as if having a baby were some sort of criminal activity, John Dillinger in diapers — or a threat to the state, a subversive activity — so you had to go on the lam into hiding, or exile. But with this baby—
Maybe there is a threat! A threat to the old regime, the old order of doing business.
Because this is a revolutionary baby. Its birth means the old order of things is going away and something new is emerging. It’s a revolution that begins with a child — and a little family sheltering in the old home town, a visit from total strangers who smell of sheep and then some travelers who smell of strange spices, followed by a warning, in a dream, to get out of there, leave it all behind, and go far away. Over the border, across a river and a desert, to sanctuary.
Like anyone fleeing what they cannot stand and face.
Like anyone carrying something so precious that the hope of the world, the promise of ages, depends on its deliverance.
That could be any baby. Couldn’t it, but it’s this one, right now, in the little town of Bethlehem, under the shadow of the soldiers and their towers, then into exile in some distant place then return — another dream — and then settled down in the hill town of Nazareth in Galilee.
Not back home. Not really. The situation has changed.
And that is the threat, and the promise of this infant revolution. All is calm, and then nothing is. And we will see this child grow, as he learns who he really is, and who we really are.
Behold the child of God. And behold God’s love for all his children.
Old Herod the Great and his three dysfunctional sons and the emperor over the sea and all their minions and sycophants, — know what it takes, know what it means, for this small infant to come.
It seems fanciful, ridiculous, that a king, a great builder, and an empire could feel threat from something so small as a family, and a child. But the hope — that is great and inexorable — that is fragile and perfect, is already present in this small beginning.
And in the small beginning each of us makes. Knowing that we too are the children of God. And that now something new, a new way of being, is coming to life.
***
Eric celebrated his 70th birthday again this year. He and his wife Viviana, my cousin, have been working together creating the Blue Ox Millworks and Historic Park in Eureka, California, since they were married. I was there for their wedding and three years ago for their fortieth wedding anniversary. That afternoon as we gathered in the yard of the Blue Ox they stood in front of their Redwood Shrine, built around a very large cross-section of a coast redwood tree. Describing it, I imagined a 16 foot diameter. Nope. More like 35. The tree that it came from was called the Fieldbrook Giant. It was more than 350 feet tall, and was felled a hundred twenty years ago on a bet. Sections were shipped as far as England. And one ended up in a Eureka tourist shop, for a hundred years, until Eric salvaged it and brought it to the Blue Ox.
The thirteen-and-a-half ton section they took to England ended up in Cliveden, the trophy home of the wealthy man who had the tree cut down. The National Trust had an interest in studying its tree rings - but it was set in a floor and the researcher they called in, another cousin of mine, decided not to mar it. So there it was, a once living thing over a thousand years old, in pieces, one on the floor of a building in England and another propped against the back of a shop in Eureka, California.
Pretty dead huh? But the story continues… in a minute.
Matthew recalls that the Scripture says he will be called a Nazorean” - probably a conflation of two separate verses. And the meaning is unclear. A Nazirite is a person set aside, dedicated. Which fits. They are settling in Nazareth. Okay. Obvious. And last — and this is intriguing —
the word Nazorean could come from the Hebrew nezer — which means “shoot” or “branch.” The prophet Isaiah says, “A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse.” (11:1) And there you are — the branch of Jesse’s tree has come to life.
Now whatever happened to that big old tree cut down in 1896? We heard about the sections here and there, distributed for the admiration of tourists. But what was left of the living tree? No way could you make anything grow again, right? Is there hope for a tree cut down?
Someone learned of a project to clone the one hundred oldest biggest trees, to make a living archive of these ancient giants - and as they were thinking about it they walked by the Blue Ox. There was the Fieldbrook Giant - or a slice of it.
What if…? So he went in and talked to Eric, and then to the living archive people. And the tree archive people got ahold of the landowner in Fieldbrook where the stump still stood - and from the stump a shoot had sprouted and they were able to start a few new little saplings.
One of them I saw in September, in front of that big old round off the old tree. And when I went back in early December, it had grown…
The story of the Holy Family, the Flight into Egypt, is at first a story filled with fear and apprehension, with sudden movement from safety and joy into a harsh world, and through the desert seeking refuge in a new place.
But then it becomes again what it was when we beheld the babe in a manger - a story of extraordinary hope, revolutionary hope, of seeing beyond dreams to a new reality. God’s vision is of a future for us of hope.
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
What happens when a new tree emerges from an old stump? When a people re-emerges from captivity into new life? When we, held back perhaps by the sins of our own lives or the circumstances we are surrounded by, are able to look beyond and see that God is with us?
Then that is revolutionary indeed.
January 5
https://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/redwood-reborn/Content?oid=15732133
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