Isaiah 11:1-10 The Jesse Tree and relatedness Steve Butler
11:1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
11:1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The prophets looked forward to “the once and future king”, So do we. With Isaiah, we watch and pray for the coming of “great David’s greater Son”. With him, we pine for paradise. With him, we long for the New Jerusalem. The coming king will be “a shoot from a stump”. Matthew Henry comments: “Both the words here used signify a weak, small, tender product, a twig and a sprig (so some render them), such as is easily broken off.” A later poem, also attributed to Isaiah, will speak of one who “grew up like a root out of dry ground” (Isaiah 53.2). “The Messiah was thus to begin his estate of humiliation,” says Henry.
More musings on our Advent theme of our 'shared inheritance' - inspired by Jesus's genealogy - which we heard read so well last Sunday, and which John Bell was helping us to recognise as a something most surprising - a list containing a 'parcel of rogues', from whom Jesus, it says, was descended.
People often tell me that my elder son Sandy, looks very like me... particularly folk who knew me when I was his age. I don't see it - and I don't think he fully appreciates how lucky he is.... But it always fascinates us, doesn't it. Here is a photo - my Father - who I think my younger son looks a bit like (the inheritance jumping a generation).
Even I, an unscientific soul, can get my head round the idea of genetic inheritance - amazing as it is. Every other day I glance at the backs of my hands and recognise them as my father's.
It's 'understandable' that we should receive the physical characteristics of our family. What's more baffling is how we can receive more ephemeral characteristics - personality traits, mannerisms, expressions, handwriting. And we can only marvel at how far back these characteristics might go - and therefore, how many people we are, in some way, related to.
The entirety of the human genome is carried on 23 pairs of chromosomes and it is the smallest of these, the Y chromosome, that is most useful for genealogy. The Y chromosome is only found in males, and because it passes exclusively down the male line, it can be used to check whether someone with the same surname is, or was, a relative. The Y chromosome is unusual because it doesn't swap and recombine genes with the others, and so remains almost unchanged as it is passed down over the generations.
Just in time for Christmas, The Guardian reported this week that the Silicon Valley company 23andMe - the name refers to the number of pairs of chromosomes in human DNA - has begun offering a personal genotyping service. For a $1,000 (£483) fee, 23andMe will run a sample of your DNA through a specialised gene-reading microchip that is able to identify, the company says, "nearly 600,000 data points on your genome".
It then uploads your genetic information on to its website, where you can use various "web-based interactive tools" to explore your ancestral origins and your likelihood of contracting hereditary diseases. To provide 23andMe with a DNA sample, you have to send the firm a small test tube filled with saliva. That requirement at first struck me as distasteful, maybe even demeaning. To have one's earthly origin and destiny reduced to a vial of spit seems like an affront to human dignity.
But 23andMe is worth special note because it has the might of Google behind it. The search engine giant was an early investor in the startup, and it has a personal connection as well: Google co-founder Sergey Brin is married to 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki.
Google's involvement suggests that 23andMe probably has larger ambitions than just providing individuals with gene maps. As its online store of genetic information grows and as customers add personal information, the company could end up with a database of extraordinary value to pharmaceutical firms, medical researchers and insurance companies.
The company also says that it will give users "the ability to connect with other 23andMe customers through sharing features". 23andMe could evolve into a social network, a biotech version of Facebook where people make connections not with friends but with people who share similar genetic traits. This, too, could provide the basis for a lucrative business.
This kind of glimpse of the future might alarm us in a 'brave new world' sort of way. Who know where it all might end, but in one way it strikes me as an affirmation of the 'connectedness' and 'relatedness' that is implied in the biblical ethos articulated in Isaiah's poetry of the shoot from the stump of Jesse - the fragile but perfectly formed root-pattern of inheritance, that linked Christ with the earthiest of antecedents - as though creator God makes the point - I am in you, and you are in me. I'm reminded of the great Advent hymn by John Bell and Graham Maule - I am for you
Before the world began, One Word was there; Grounded in God he was, Rooted in care; By him all things were made, In him was love displayed; Through him God spoke, and said, "I AM FOR YOU".
All who received the Word By God were blessed; Sisters and brothers they of earth's fond guest. So did the Word of Grace Proclaim in time and space And with a human face, "I AM FOR YOU".
The tune is called 'Incarnation' - perhaps we shall sing it next week.
A root that links us all to God and to each other. Which is why this life makes so much more sense when we are 'connected' with each other - when our life choices and ambitions are centred on 'relationality'- being in relation with others. You might think this is to state the blindingly obvious - but it is something even the church has been awfully blind to.
Beverley Harrison is retired from her position as Professor of Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she taught for 34 years. She taught feminist theology and social ethics with particular concern for sexual and economic ethics. She argued that above all else a feminist moral theology insists that relationality is at the heart of all things.
All things cohere in each other. Nothing living is self-contained. The ecologists are reminding us daily that we are part of a web of life so intricate as to be beyond our comprehension.
Our life is part of a vast cosmic connectedness, and a spirituality that fails to commit to this will be unable to make sense of our lives or our actions today. Harrison speaks of how far traditional Christian orthodoxy has wandered from the central concern with relationality that characterized the faith of the Israelite community and that was so central to Jesus' ministry. She stresses that the basic images of God that emerged in early Christianity were devoid of relationship - by stressing that God is "the wholly other," - a Christian tradition that many of us grew up with that implies that a lack of relatedness in God as holy... Up there, out there, beyond us - not connected. This encourages the idea of a God who is free from reciprocal and mutual relationship. It is an image of a patronizing God, - it's the love of divine strengths for the humanly weak, or, conversely, the sniveling gratitude of the humanly weak toward the strong God who grants favours. ... By contrast, the rhythm of a real, healing, and empowering love is take and give, give and take, free of the cloying inequality of one partner active and one partner passive. That is the wonder of the Incarnation we anticipate in Advent - God reaching out to us in Christ.
Mutual love, says Harrison, is love in its deepest radicality. It is so radical that many of us have not yet learned to bear it. To experience it, we must be open, we must be capable of giving and receiving. Like Jesus, she says, we are called to a radical activity of love, to a way of being in the world that deepens relationship, embodies and extends community, passes on the gift of life. (not to make rules about what you must believe, not to exclude you from leadership because you're a woman or because you're gay, not to take you to the High Court because your play is blasphemous and we're offended, not to say we can't have a communion service together in the local council of churches because we're protestants and you're catholics) - but called to a radical activity of love, to a way of being in the world that deepens relationship, embodies and extends community, passes on the gift of life. That's what Adventfest was about! That's what being a wee church community is about.... not just so that we can have a nice time together, but to nurture in each other the radical activity of love.
But we have to remember that this isn't necessarily a cosy calling. Those in power in this world believe such love to be "unrealistic" - because those touched by the power of such love tend to develop a reluctance to accept anything less than mutuality and self-respect, - they become reluctant to accept anything less than human dignity, anything less than authentic relatedness....not necessarily prepared to go along with the ways of the world - the decisions of a city council, or of a government, or of a line manager, or shareholders..... It is for that reason that such persons become powerful threats to the status quo. And Christ, as we know, is the best example of that.
Harrison says "We are not called to practice the virtue of sacrifice. We are called to express, embody, share, celebrate the gift of life, and to pass it on! We are called to reach out, to deepen relationship, or to right wrong relations - those that deny, distort, or prevent human dignity from arising -as we recall each other into the power of personhood. We are called to journey this way, to stay in and with this radical power of love".
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots - This is the network of root and branches into which we Christians are grafted.