The Grafted Olive Tree--The Tree of Love; Romans 11:13-36

This Advent I have been doing a series on the theme of trees. If you are interested, you can find prior messages on my blog: pastorparato.blogspot.com. One is an audio recording and the others are manuscript versions. And I will be posting today’s message on there as well. I started with the Tree of Life as a symbol of hope. The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden shows us that it was God’s plan from the beginning to give eternal life to people. The Tree of Life in the New Jerusalem, in the new heavens and new earth, shows us that God’s plan has not changed, that our hope of eternal life is a sure hope. It’s just now been given to us by a different means, which brings us to the second Sunday of Advent, in which I shared that the cross is the tree of our peace. Instead of eating from the tree of life, God sent Jesus to die for us to make peace and to give us eternal life. Colossians 1 says that we have peace through the blood of the cross of Jesus. This peace isn’t just between us and God but broke the curse over all creation. God is reconciling all things to Godself through Christ, and Jesus’s death also helps us to have peace with each other. The beams of the cross point to our reconciliation—the vertical beam, our peace with God, the horizontal beam, our peace with other people. Last week, I preached that the tree of Jesse is the tree of joy. The tree that grows up from the root of Jesse is a person—Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the source of our joy. On this last Sunday of Advent, I aim to show that the grafted olive tree as heard in our Romans passage this morning is the tree of love. We often think of olive trees as the sign of peace. And certainly they are. The first mention of the olive branch in Scripture is when the dove flew back with one in its beak after the flood, letting Noah know that it was okay to open the ark. Consistently throughout Scripture, the olive tree is used as a symbol of prosperity and peace between people. But the gift of peace and reconciliation is also a sign of God’s love. The promise of God not to destroy the earth again by water is a sign of mercy. The sparing of Noah and his family was mercy and grace. All of God’s actions stem from the root character of God which is love. God is love. God’s work of reconciliation is the work of love. Last week, in looking at the Tree of Jesse in Isaiah 11 and Romans 15, we heard that the Gentiles were repeatedly told to rejoice because the Tree of Jesse was and is their hope too. Jesus is the hope of the Gentile and the Tree of Joy. Jesus reconciles both Jews and Gentiles to God and with each other, which is what we see in today’s Romans passage in this image of the grafted olive tree. I did some research on olive trees and grafting. When I was in Israel, I saw some olive trees, including ones on the Mt. of Olives, which are over a 1000 years old. I even picked an olive and bit it, which I don’t recommend. They must be cured in order to be edible. But grafting olive trees is a common thing to do. Cultivated olives produce tastier fruit. Wild olives produce better olives for oil not used for eating purposes, for example for fuel, as a lubricant, in medicine, soap, etc. Native olive trees can be more acclimated to the environment whereas cultivated olive trees need more tending. Grafting is usually done by adding cultivated branches to wild root stock, so good fruit will grow from strong rootstock. Rarely would the reverse occur, but that is precisely what we read about today in Romans 11. God grafts wild branches into cultivated root stock. Last week in Isaiah 11, we saw that the Jesse Tree had been cut down. It was a stump. It started out as a cultivated tree. Out of all the families on the earth, God chose Abraham and his line to bless the earth. God chose a son of Jesse, the youngest son, David to be king of those descendants. God chose God’s people Israel, carefully cultivated, to be a model for the nations and to use them to point the nations to God, but they failed miserably. Yahweh’s people pursued other gods, broke the Lord’s commandments, were violent and greedy, and buy the time Isaiah writes, they had become so corrupt, that the Lord pronounced judgment upon them. Israel had been destroyed by Assyria, and Judah had been carried off to Babylon. The tree of Jesse had been cut down, but the rootstock was still healthy. God always keeps God’s promises, and God had promised that the line of David would not die out. And so Isaiah prophesies that a shoot would grow out of the root of Jesse. We know that shoot is Jesus, the Righteous Branch. With the coming of Jesus, the Branch is now a healthy tree. God’s people have been redeemed. The cultivated olive tree is producing some good fruit. But Paul notes in Romans 11 that some of the cultivated branches still had to be cut off. They weren’t producing. We know that many Jews rejected Jesus, and so because of their unbelief, they were cut off from the trunk. But the God who keeps promises, also kept God’s promise to the Gentiles in Isaiah 11. God has grafted the Gentiles, wild olives that don’t produce good fruit, into the cultivated olive tree. God makes them part of God’s family in Jesus. And something amazing happens. The wild olive branches are able to bear good fruit! Paul says in Romans 11:16-17, “If the root is holy, the branches are too, but if some of the branches were broken off, and you being a wild olive, were grafted in among them, and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree.” We are made holy and are able to bear good fruit because the strong, good root, Jesus, passes His holiness on to us. Paul warns that while this is indeed a great reason for us to rejoice, it is not a reason to become arrogant. Our promise keeping God is able to graft in the branches that have been pruned away for their unbelief. And Paul says, that it will be easy to graft them in again, because they were part of the cultivated tree to start off with. They are of the same stock as the root. Paul emphasizes the nature of our Promise-keeping God when he writes in verse 29 that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” God is in the process of bringing all God’s people back together into one tree. Praise be to the God of love. God’s original plan to give eternal life to people is being fulfilled. In warning us not to be arrogant and prideful because we are grafted into the tree nor to be envious of the cultivated branches that have been there all along, we are called to be people of love. Jesus reiterated that the greatest commandment is to love God with everything we have and everything we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are called to love our brothers and sisters in Christ and to work for reconciliation in the world. Paul warns us that if we are unkind, we risk being cut off as well. If we do not want to be cut off again, we must abide in the trunk of the tree. Using the image, not of an olive tree, but of a grapevine, Jesus said, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in Me, bear much fruit.” The fruit of the wild branches and cultivated branches may be different, but when grafted into Jesus, the fruit will be good fruit. Jesus goes on to say that abiding is to abide in His love and the love of the Father. “As the Father has love me, I have also loved you; abide in my love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.” Obedience is key to not being cut off from the trunk. Obedience is the way we demonstrate our love for God. Kindness is the way we demonstrate our love for one another. Too often today, we confuse niceness with kindness. They are not the same. Niceness is cultural, kindness is self-sacrificial. We can be nice when we don’t want to upset or offend people. But kindness can be misconstrued as being not nice. When you are acting on behalf of another’s wellbeing, they may think you are being mean, when you are trying to be kind. Houston Kraft points out that kindness requires empathy, intention, vulnerability, and perspective. Niceness does not necessarily require any of those things. Being nice can be a burden because it can mean that you are not being authentic. But being kind is being a blessing to others. And as you are a blessing, you will find that you are filled with joy. God has shown love to us by making us part of God’s family through Jesus Christ. Have you been grafted into God’s olive tree of love? If so, rejoice and be glad. Pray that all of God’s branches will be grafted back into the main trunk of God’s olive tree of love. Are you bearing good fruit? Are you at risk of being pruned or are resting in Jesus? How might you spread God’s kindness this week?