“Bringer of the Best Yet to Come”
Original sermon given December 4, 2022, written and delivered by Pastor Gregg Ramirez at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church
Watch the sermon live here.
“Bringer of the Best yet to Come”
Matthew 3:1-12
Matthew 3:1-13
As a child growing up in a small town south of here one of my friends was Ronnie who lived down the street. Ronnie’s dad was from the state of Mississippi and when I came home to visit, I’d see him occasionally in passing. He was a conductor on the old Illinois Central commuter line, and I’ll never forget the time when he told me of the day he saw a young woman who was with her boyfriend, a black man, on the train. Cecil said that he gave her a hateful look and then in disdain spit on the floor of the train. He told me that she got the message.
I never forgot that story, and in the years following I would always find myself—even to this day—amazed while watching football and seeing young black men playing for teams like the University of Alabama. This bordered on a miracle to me, the impossible made possible. And it was many years later before I heard about the man who opened the door for black Americans to get beyond the Jim Crow systemic racism blocking their way into American sports. His name was Branch Rickey. Isn’t that an unusual first name? Branch. Some have called him the second great emancipator following Abraham Lincoln. Raised in a religious home, Branch had instilled from youth a great sense of moral purpose – especially in regard to helping the cause of the downtrodden.
Indeed, a pivotal moment for Branch took place when as a college baseball team manager, when his team checked into a hotel in South Bend. “Yes, rooms are available,” said the clerk, “except for him”, as he pointed to Rickey’s catcher, Charlie Taylor, who was a black man. Later, Branch found Charlie sobbing and frantically looking at him. “It’s my skin,” he said, “if only I could tear it off.” Later, Charlie would become the highly successful dentist, Dr. Charles Taylor, but Rickey would never forget that moment and for decades labored against discrimination. Then in 1944, as the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch told the sportscaster, Red Barber, “I’ve heard those cries of Charlie Taylor for 41 years. Now I’m going to do something about it.” And so, he did! Branch Rickey – an individual of great vision, courage, and service—despite huge obstacles, brought Jackie Robinson, the first African American into Major League baseball. It would be grueling for Rickey and Robinson, but the best was yet to come as it opened the door for African Americans in all manner of college and professional sports.
Why do I share this with you? Today’s Old Testament lesson is all about his namesake – the Branch. It’s because you could never convince me that Branch Rickey did something so monumental to emancipate a whole people group and open the way that the best was yet to come regarding their advancement and it was only by chance that his name was Branch. No, there was destiny involved here, but in truth, this man’s exploits are only a faint reflection of the One called The Branch in our lesson. We find him described as the shoot that would grow out of the stump of David’s dynasty – the One with all wisdom and understanding – with perfect personal traits and great executive capacities. He would be endowed with a godly vision for the nation’s future and dispense justice perfectly with absolute righteousness. Therefore, He would accomplish far more than the most enlightened monarch. Greater than Solomon His rule would affect human history to the end of time.
The Branch – the promise of a new ruler of superhero proportions and a glorious new kingdom. I wonder how this promise of revolutionary change came across to its first hearers – a people in a Jim Crow – like environment of systemic racism and oppression under their Babylonian overseers? In their own servitude the nation had lost their identity of who and whose they were. Theirs was a slave mentality that making them prone to give up on themselves. Under such circumstances it’s easy for one to become the bitter cynic and to get stuck in life. Those joyless and hopeless people were beaten down and felt the cards were stacked against them.
Those people really needed help from the outside, and, in truth, nothing can lift the downhearted in spirit more than the promises of God. Indeed, I believe there were those among the first hearers of Isaiah’s prophesy who took heart in God’s promise of the Branch who would bring forth transformational change. Don’t we need the same in our personal lives to lift us up when we inevitably get down about something? It’s those marvelous promises that the Lord’s on our side and has a good plan for our lives. So, instead of focusing on regrets, pain and fear, Isaiah’s hearers built their lives on the ample promises of God’s grace, protection and security. They made a deliberate, conscious decision to lay a foundation for living from the storehouse of hope. Moreover, for the faithful, it would lead them to a new reality, a holy environment. God’s promises would lead them out of the toxic negativity of their current environment and into the clear air of His new world. This is the promise that God would have them receive a gentle spring shower of the rain from heaven. The Lord would have them receive it, to have it soak deep within them and prosper their lives by strengthening the human spirit. Here it is:
The wolf will lie down with the lamb; the calf and the young lion will be together
and a child will lead them; an infant will play beside the cobra’s pit.
They will not harm or destroy each other on my holy mountain.
At first glance, and maybe also on second glance, doesn’t a scene like this seem like pie in the sky, a fairy tale, a pipe dream? That’s because it’s a supernatural world where the curse has been reversed. There’s no more animosity among creatures – between animals in the world of nature and also between human and animal. That’s our future – not a dystopia – grim end of the world – but a future as back in the Garden of Eden. But what about Isaiah’s first faithful hearers of the promise? One day they will awake, along with us, possessing resurrected bodies and so enabled to live in eternal bliss. Will it happen? It will because The Branch will make it happen.
Ultimately, all of this is the result of the work of our Lord Jesus. He would bring forth righteousness into the world by becoming the Lord our righteousness – leading a perfectly righteous life and taking God’s punishment as our substitute for sin at another branch, the tree of the cross. In this way He would take away God’s curse upon a guilty world and gain for us forgiveness, peace with God and eternal life. What’s more by His Spirit working within us, Jesus, the Branch would usher forth radical change as did Branch Rickey in sports, but oh so much more! It’s a whole new destiny that begins for those who by faith seek to be engrafted – united to Christ in His destiny – and it enables us to live with unshakeable hope.
Indeed, just as those Israelites in bondage where so stuck and beaten down in spirit back then, isn’t it even an epidemic of hopelessness in our time. We live in a day of despair. Thirty million in this nation are living with debilitating depression. The suicide rate in American has increased 24% since 1999. 24%! How do you explain it? We have the resources of education, technology, entertainment, and recreation. Yet, people are dying for a lack of hope. Why? Our secular society sucks the hope out of people’s lives. Many people believe that this world is as good as it gets, and let’s face it, it’s not that good around the world these days.
So how critically important to be rooted in Him Who is the Branch. People of the promise ponder and so root themselves in Him. It makes all the difference in the world, and where I see it most, and I’m generalizing a bit, but I’ve seen it over the years with immigrants from Africa or Latin American nations – people of faith who are not weighted down by an enslaving victim mentality of systemic racism and who just get out there and prosper as they live in the promises of God.
In your life, how rooted are you? Know that being rooted in the branch, results in the branching out of His increased love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and strengthen your being with integrity into your life. His promises are able to motivate and move you forward out of those areas when you were once stuck – to trust that no matter what your age, the best is yet to come as the tree of His Presence keeps branching out – becoming greater and greater in your heart and life. In this way He enables us to us to be lifted in spirit – giving us wings to fly. Yes, the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and a little child will lead them. Yes, nature and your human nature will be forever changed. It’s a done deal because He is the great Emancipator who has come to set the whole world free and capable of making all things new. His banner is the cross – that’s where we find unity – all sinners in the need of grace. It’s that emblem of peace ever working to bring about change to nations, subdue angry passions by defanging our fallen human natures, setting us free from the sin that so easily entangles and so granting us His peace, the peace of Christmas which the world cannot give.