Romans 11:11-24             “The Root”

 

            To start, the sermon title is about grafting branches as was mentioned in our Scripture reading for today.  If you thought you were going to hear about anything else, I am deeply sorry! We are not going to talk about “graft" in the church!

 

            Once upon a time, a farmer sat under an olive tree in order to enjoy a little shade from the midday sun. Looking up, he noticed the olives hanging heavy on the gnarly branches. Around the olive trees where he sat, he had planted gourds and melons. He looked at the skinny vines that were holding the gourds and melons and wondered about them. He looked up into the branches of the olive tree and wondered aloud, “God, why did you make the large gourds and melons on such a small and delicate vine? Why did you not put them up into the sturdy branches of the tree under which I sit?”

            At that very moment, a breeze rustled the branches of the olive trees in the garden and a solitary olive came down and plunked on the head of the farmer. He had received his answer from God. He called out to the sky above: “Thank you God for not putting melons in trees!”

            Why God put coconuts and jackfruits up in the trees is another story all together!

 

            The olive tree in the Bible has special significance. You will recall that when Noah was on the Ark waiting for the waters of the flood to subside that the dove brought back to him an olive branch in its mouth. This has become the symbol of peace and restoration for mankind ever since.

            The olive tree is known as the “Resurrection Tree” as well. This has to do with its incredible ability to sprout up again long after it is presumed dead. In fact, if any piece of a branch or root is placed in the ground, it is able to sprout a whole new tree. It can survive droughts that leave the rest of the greenery dead and gone. No one is quite sure how long the tree can actually live, but some say up to three thousand years.  If that is the case, surely there are olive trees in Israel today that might have provided shade and fruit to Jesus himself.

            Consider Jesus’ journey in life. When he comes to Jerusalem, he and his disciples cross back out several times to the Mount of Olives where they worship God. It is from the Mount of Olives that Jesus ascends into heaven. And, by the way, the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus spent his last night in prayer, was an olive garden—that is what “Gethsemane” means in Hebrew: “The place of the olive press.”

 

            The Apostle Paul is writing his letter to Rome from Corinth, Greece. This town is at the top of the most fertile agricultural area in Greece. It is the Argos valley on the Peloponnesian peninsula.  Yes, there are plenty of olive trees all around him while he is writing this note to the people of Rome. Rome itself is surrounded by olive gardens—and I do not mean the Italian Restaurant chain.   

            As a bit of an aside, I will share with you that when I was seventeen I had taken a trip down to Greece. I had taken the train across what was then Communist Yugoslavia to get there from Germany where I lived. I visited friends in Athens, then took the train to Mycenae which was below Corinth. I was there to see the famous ruins of the Neolithic town. You can find the Lion’s Gate and Agamemnon’s tomb there.

As it turned out, I ran out of money while I was there. I went to the proprietor of the Youth Hostel in town and explained my situation. His brother was a farmer. So, I was allowed to stay at the Youth Hostel and even got food for going out to help with the apricot harvest. Yes, I picked fruit in Greece for a bed and a meal! I can really relate to Paul in Corinth with the olive trees!

 

Paul is speaking directly to the Gentiles, the non-Jews of Rome, when he talks about branches coming off the olive tree and new branches from wild olive trees being grafted on. You see, the metaphor that he uses is that the Jewish faith is the root of the tree. Consequently, we must understand and accept today that our Christian roots are firmly in the Jewish Faith tradition. We may not forget or literally set aside the fact that Jesus was a Jew.  

Turn with me to Matthew 5:17. This is the Sermon on the Mount. This is the same sermon that gave us the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill them. For I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” Not one jot or tittel in the Hebrew (these are the smallest parts of Hebrew writing) will be lost or set aside.

Some have asked me why Christians have to read the Old Testament. It is our root. We cannot ignore one letter of it. If you have not read it yet, it is time to get cracking! You could start this Sunday! I will just lock you in until next week.

 

When Paul talks about the branches breaking off the tree, it is because some have accused the church of leaving its roots. Paul reassures us that that is not the case at all. In nature, as we have seen, very often a branch will break off of a tree. That is going to happen when stresses build up and the trunk can no longer hold the branch. A strong wind blows, and the branch falls to the ground. I have a Jambolan tree next to the driveway that is always dropping branches when the fruit becomes too heavy.

That is not the case with those who follow Christ. In fact, Paul is more likely referring to the fact that Jews in Rome had been told to leave their faith or leave Rome itself. Many of the Jews in Corinth where Paul is writing this letter are from Rome and have been pushed out of the heart of the Roman Empire.

Let us turn to Acts 18:1, “After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. . . .” So it was the Roman Emperor Claudius (and his predecessors) who were trying to bust up the tree of faith we know as Judaism. The politicians were doing it—not the early Christians.

Paul’s point is that Christianity is like a new branch being grafted on to the old faith. And, now is a good time to do it, because some of the branches are being broken off by the politics of the day. Paul says that these new branches are from wild olive trees. Grafting wild olive shoots onto domesticated trees can strengthen the tree and help it to bear more fruit. We should understand that this means that Christianity should strengthen the faith in God that is rooted in Jewish traditions. Every time a new branch is grafted on, the tree is strengthened and is made that much more alive.

 

One of the complaints I hear about Church often times is that it has too many different branches. We see Roman Catholics, Greek and Russian orthodox, Methodists, Baptists—and then a cornucopia, a plethora, of different kinds of subsets of these denominations. Thousands of different groups of Christians exist today. So many branches have been grafted on to the trunk. Does that make the faith weaker or stronger? The argument from Paul is that the faith will become stronger for this.

Going back to what Jesus himself said about fulfilling the Torah, the ancient Jewish faith: What happens when one actually breaks off a branch from a tree and grafts new on? The new branch does not grow simply as a single twig! It in and of itself will branch off. If you trim a tree, where you trim grows back much fuller than it was before. Get rid of the dead wood on a rose bush, and new roses start sprouting up. This is pruning.  New life, new hope, new branches are made through this action. It is a natural process that God seems to have set in place from the beginning of time.

Way back in the 20th Century, a scientist by the name of Mandelbrot noticed this in nature and decided to try to come up with a mathematical formula to show what happens when branches generate from a trunk and then eventually come out into leaves. He invented “fractal” geometry. The word “fractal” itself comes from Latin and means “broken.” When Mandelbrot was asked what fractals were, he said “BEAUTIFUL”!  In other words, when we look at nature and see beauty, more often than not we are seeing fractals. For instance, a snowflake, each one being different, can all be calculated back to a simple triangle using fractal equations. We do not see a triangle in nature; we see a beautiful snowflake.  Whereas a triangle can look empty; a snowflake always looks full!

Fractal equations today are used to help encrypt computer communications so that they cannot be broken. If you are on your computer and are asked to log in to a site by copying letters you see in a picture, that is a fractal security device! Our eyes can see what is there because we are used to seeing similar lines in nature, but other computers cannot make it out! Clever, no? Even AI today still cannot make out fractals.

In Genesis 1:29 we can read how it was that at the time of Creation God gave every tree and plant to humankind to till and “subdue.” Our hand is supposed to be on those trees, breaking and grafting, making them more beautiful. In this way we take part in God’s Creative power. 

 

Now the other thing that happens of course when grafting is that DNA is shared back and forth between two living plants. The best qualities of both come together.  We call this hybridization. It is good for both and makes a better new one! Paul, at the end of his point on this, tells of that new tree that has been grafted being used to go back to the wild olive trees that would then also be grafted. Do you see that in the last verse? Wow!

Paul is telling us to go ahead and break off our own branches now that we have this new DNA, so that we can share this DNA out to those wild trees that can then also be made more beautiful!  This is the Great Commission of Jesus Christ! Share out the love and change the world.  We are NOT one singular tree! We are an orchard! An olive garden! A forest, if you will! We have a world to graft on to!

 

Amen.