Saturday, December 21
Written by Peter Wall
First Congregational Church of Fresno
Jeremiah 33:14-16
And the “righteous branch … shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”
Reading these words of Jeremiah through a Christian lens (which is not the only way to read them), I think of the long “farewell discourse” of Jesus in the gospel according to John, especially this part:
I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away; and every branch that bears fruit he trims clean so that it might bear more fruit. … Remain in me—and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit from itself unless it remain in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. *
Radical hope is not about waiting. It is about seeing subversively and recognizing the more challenging truth. And I submit to you that the challenge here stems from this: that Jesus did not “execute justice and righteousness in the land”; rather, the Christ entered the world as the root of the vine, and we are the branches, charged with bearing the fruits of justice and righteousness.
The hope of Advent is not a passive waiting for a divine skyhook. The hope of Advent is an active practice of growing into, and trimming clean, the righteous branches that shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
How will you execute justice and righteousness in the land today?
* Look up John 15 to read more. The excerpt above is from the recent translation of the New Testament by David Bentley Hart.
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