March 17, 2013 Romans 11:16-21
If the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.
When Jesus rose from the dead and stood in the middle of the disciples in the Upper Room, the first thing He said was, “Don’t be afraid.” When the women arrived at the empty tomb, the angels said, “Don’t be afraid.”
Today’s text from Paul is the exact opposite. “Be afraid.” It seems strange and foreign to our theology to preach on fear. The whole message of the Gospel and salvation by faith is that you don’t need to fear God’s wrath. God’s wrath already came down on Christ. We don’t want people who believe in Jesus to be afraid. John says that perfect love drives out fear. We don’t want people being driven by fear but by faith and love of God. Nonetheless, Paul preaches fear. How do we understand that? Let’s listen to Paul and find out.
Be Afraid!
Paul uses the picture of an olive tree to drum up fear. Trees aren’t usually scary. Adam and Eve should have feared the consequences of eating from that Tree. You could say that Jesus feared the tree of the cross when He knew that He was going to be punished for our sins on it. He sweated drops of blood. So Paul uses and olive tree and waves it before our eyes. Let’s look at this picture of the tree and see what’s so scary about it.
First of all, let’s take note that Paul specifically spoke of the OLIVE tree. Olive trees are referenced several times in the Scriptures.
• Judges 9:9 personifies the olive tree and has it ask, “Should I give up my oil, by which both gods and men are honored?’
• Exodus 35:28 says that olive oil is used for light, anointing and for the fragrant incense.
So the olive tree may have been used by Paul because it is the means by which the true God is honored, light shines in the world, and people are anointed into the kingdom through the fragrance of Christ. The olive tree would be a good picture of how God plants and uses the church. But what does that have to do with fear?
Paul makes a distinction between a cultivated olive tree and a wild olive tree. A cultivated olive tree would be one that was specifically and specially planted by a gardener. He would make sure to plant it in a place that had good water and sunshine. He would look over the tree to make sure that it grew well. From a farming perspective, he would put time and effort into the tree specifically so it would produce olives. He would make sure to prune it and get it the nutrients it needs and also to keep bugs and insects from making it decay.
This is a picture of how God established the Israelite nation. He called Abraham and planted him in Israel. He made him fruitful and enabled his family tree to grow. He nourished his descendants with the promise that the Messiah would come through them. He gave them specific laws to live by which made them different than any other nation. The LORD set the Israelites aside and treated them special; different than any other nation. They were supposed to be the people through which the LORD would show the world how He was her Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.
The other nations were like wild olive trees. They grew wherever it was convenient. Their branches were not trimmed. They were allowed to grow sideways and crooked. They had no special caretaker. This would be representative of all of the other nations who marched to their own beat and did their own thing. They established their own laws and lived by their own morality. You might think of any variety of nations in the Bible or even in more recent times. The Assyrians who were especially cruel or the Ammonites who practiced child sacrifice; the Romans who had wide spread slavery and immorality; the native Americans who ran wild in north America and worshiped the earth. They are all wild in their own unique ways; springing up in a variety of ways and times.
This seems to me to be a picture of where America is headed. She who used to have some sense of cultivation has turned to a democracy that is governed only by what I want instead of what God wants. Those who try to cultivate right and wrong are vilified as morality police and hypocrites. Even within the church her own members do not want accountability. This is equated with “freedom,” but it is anything but freedom. Sympathy for the wild has led to apathy of the wild and is now becoming tyranny of the wild. That which we used to decry “out there” is now happening in here; and this is equated with being “modern” and not “out of touch.” Culture is creeping in; we are growing wild and out of control.
This is the sad thing about the cultivated olive tree. She somehow thinks that she is being sheltered too much by the Gardener. The Israelites continually wanted to break free from Him. They didn’t like the way God fed them and cared for them and harvested their fruit. They wanted to keep it all for themselves. They wanted to get out from the tree and set free on their own. This is a fearful thing.
Old Testament history shows us what God did with the Israelites. He didn’t just give them empty threats. “I really mean it now, come back here! I’m counting to 3! 1, 2 – 2 and ½ - I really mean it now!” No. He cut them off again and again, hacking away at the tree limb by limb until nothing but a stump was left. Two major captivities by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. and the Babylonians in 586 B.C. took the Israelites into complete captivity. Those who remained ran away to Egypt and died there until there was basically nothing but a stump left of a once great and cultivated nation.
What happened to those who wanted nothing to do with their Messiah when Jesus came? The great traditions of the teachers of the law and the Pharisees? What happened to the mighty temple that Herod built? It was all torn down to the ground by the Romans in 70 A.D. Worst of all, the unbelieving Jews were cut off from God’s grace and cast into hell.
It was their rejection that then led Paul to reach out to the Gentiles – people like us – and graft us into the tree. There’s much to take comfort with in this picture. Grafting is a neat thing. Farmers are able to do some pretty incredible things with trees through grafting. If you Google grafted trees you can see them formed into all kinds of interesting shapes and sizes. One guy by the name of Axel Erlandson made a wide variety of trees out in California in the 1920’s. In a more practical sense, one apple tree could be used to produce a wide variety of apples instead of just one brand. People do this when they don’t have much land to work with. You could do this with a branch of a tree that was attached to a trunk that had been damaged or was dying.
This is what we see happened to us in our baptism. We were grafted into the Israelite tree; the kingdom of Christ. Paul says that as long as we are attached to Christ we are holy in God’s sight – not just good or better people – but holy. We also get to partake of the life giving sap of the Gospel in the word and the Lord's Supper which nourishes our faith and encourages us to hope for the resurrection through the forgiveness of sins from the body and blood of Christ that flows into us. We have God’s promise of protection and love in Christ. He says that every hair or our heads are numbered and that all things work together for our good. Even our good works are prepared in advance for us to do. He does some amazing things through us. When He takes a real wild man and places him in the kingdom he can really produce some unique fruits!
So where is the fear supposed to come from and why is there a call for fear? When God does amazing things through you and when He treats you so well, there’s a temptation to arrogance. With all of their rich history, the Jews eventually came to believe that they were the root instead of the branches. It was almost as if God should have been proud that they let the Messiah come through them. It was even worse. They were so proud of their tree that they didn’t even think about whether the Messiah would come at all. This caused the hacked off God to hack them off. Imagine how sad it would be for a farmer who put so much time and effort into getting a tree to grow to finally come in and hack off the branches and have to start over from scratch.
Paul says, You do not support the root, but the root supports you. Do you approach God as if you were God? Should He worship you for coming here to worship? Do you think that you are so indispensible that your team or your family couldn’t survive without you? Do you think that God is weak without you? Do you think that He needs your prayers to keep people alive and fed? It reminds me of the cartoons where someone is sitting on the edge of the branch and the branch is being cut by someone else. In the cartoon, the branch stays in mid-air while the tree and the land fall out. That’s what proud Christians think of themselves. God has to revolve His life around what THEY want and do whatever they say. If He doesn’t, when they aren’t treated the way they want, then they’ll cut HIM off!
The other kind of arrogance assumes that we are so much better and stronger than others who fell. Sinful children see the sins of their parents and say, “I’ll never do that!” They see David commit adultery and say, “How could he do such a thing?” They watch how their parents talk to each other and say, “I’ll never talk like that!” You think you’ll be such a better husband or wife? You think you will never get divorced?
Paul says, “Look at the branches below you.” They were cut off because of a pride that thought that God should be feel privileged to be in their tree instead of vice versa. They were cut off because they thought God couldn’t cut them off. God didn’t spare them just because they were His chosen people.
God wants you in His kingdom. He wouldn’t have died for you and baptized you if He didn’t. He can do some amazing things through you and with you. But just because He does those things, it doesn’t mean that you deserve the praise or that you are more important than the one shaped you. He wants you, but He doesn’t NEED you. He didn’t graft you into the tree so that you would be the Messiah. He grafted you into the tree to feed you with the Messiah and attract people to HIM – not you. If you become arrogant, then you will be cut off just like they were.
Even apart from the fallen branches, the very nature of faith excludes arrogance. Who of us could brag about being wild olive branches that were grafted into the cultivated one? If God says you’re born a filthy sinner, you believe it. If God says your best of acts are like filthy rags, you believe that. Yet if God also promises that you’ve been grafted to Christ in your baptism, you believe it. If God says that you are holy because you’ve been connected to Christ, you love that. When Jesus says there is no life apart from Him, you know and accept that. You realize you need the word and sacrament. You know that as a sinner you need God’s strength and mercy every day. You were grafted into Christ to grow with Him and through Him. You also know and believe that because of Jesus’ death on the tree of the cross your sins are paid for and you have the promise of heaven. You are sure of it. That’s not arrogant. That’s faith.
It might seem odd for Paul, the apostle of faith; to preach fear. We don’t like people to be driven by fear. But our sinful natures are real. Arrogance is a real temptation and God’s wrath is also real. Look underneath the olive tree, and don’t assume you could never fall or God would never cut you off. If it happened to the Jews of Jesus’ time and the Old Testament, it could happen to you.
Fear can be a good thing. I want young children to fear crossing the street. I want them to be afraid of putting their hands on the stove. In a sinful world fear needs to be real because there are real dangers out there. With sinful bodies and minds we need to fear ourselves; fear our own arrogance; fear the desire to live on our own; fear separation from God. The more we fear ourselves, the more we will be driven to the Tree of the Cross and the life saving nourishment of the Gospel; for in Jesus we have God’s promise of forgiveness and resurrection; we have refuge from fear. Amen.
