Advent 2A
Isaiah 11:1-10
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
My parents
used to have a wonderful picture above our piano that I loved as a child.
Perhaps you have seen it: it’s a sketch of a child in a white dress of some
sort, surrounded by all kinds of animals – a cow, a lion, a wolf, a lamb. I
loved it because of the child, because seeing that made me, as a child, feel
important. As I grew older, I continued to love it because even though I didn’t
know it was a picture of Isaiah’s Peaceable Kingdom, I could see that this
picture meant peace. Those creatures shouldn’t all be together, I knew. A child
should not be able to lead all those different beasts, and all those different
beasts should not be willing to stand there together to pose for a picture
without literally biting each other’s heads off.
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| William Strutt, 1896 |
Now as a
pastor, who spends significantly more time studying the Bible than I did as a
child, I have an even greater appreciation for this image. It continues to be a
beautiful and captivating one, but now what I find so compelling about it comes
from this part of the passage that precedes the description of the Peaceable
Kingdom, because that part gives some context for why that image is so
important.
Allow me to
explain. We found at Bible study this week that this was a confusing text for
people for a variety of reasons, so I’ll use this time as an opportunity to explain
its context. For starters, we have this opening line, “A shoot shall come out
from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” So the
first thing we need to know is, who or what is Jesse? Anyone who wasn’t at
Bible study this week know? Jesse is the father of King David. Do you remember
King David, and why he was important? You may remember him from such stories
as, David and Goliath, or more scandalously, David and Bathsheba. Ringing any
bells? David was born in a little town called Bethlehem, and became one of the
first kings of Israel. He is known for being a great warrior, a musician, and
the writer of several Psalms, including the one often used as an offertory,
“Create in me a clean heart, oh God.” He’s a complex character, not without his
faults and sins, but overall is considered a righteous king of Israel, and the
most important. What is significant about him for today, and for the season of
Advent, is that Hebrew scripture says that the messiah promised by God to the
Israelites would be from the House of David, a direct descendant of King David
(Jesse’s son).
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| King David |
Everyone
with me so far? Okay, now fast forward a couple hundred years to the 8th
century BCE, when Isaiah is writing the text we hear today. By this time,
David’s once strong line seems to have been cut off – he has no more prominent
descendants. Furthermore, the Israelites are being attacked by the Assyrians,
and their king, Ahaz, was not making good decisions. I won’t get into the
political stuff that was going on, but I assure you: it was a tough situation
for the Israelites, one without much hope.
So here they are: being attacked by
their enemies, and aware that the line from which God had promised a messiah, a
savior, would come has been cut off – it is no longer a family tree, but a mere
stump of a once grand line. Their messiah, they think, is not coming, and they
will not be saved. They cannot find hope in any part of their situation.
Let’s just
stop here for a minute and let that soak in. Even though this all happened
centuries ago, hopelessness is not something in any way foreign or removed from
us. It often goes with helplessness, this feeling of being at the end of your
rope, with nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to. You’re out of ideas.
You’re out of energy. You’re out of time. Hopeless. It is such a precarious
place to be. It can look sad and alone. It can also look chaotic and
overwhelming. It can feel like the brink between win and lose, between yes and
no, even between life and death. However it looks, hopelessness is hard, and a
state we will do anything to avoid.
Back to our
story – that hopeless state is where the Israelites were: under enemy attack,
with no trust in their short-sighted leader, and with no more hope that a
Messiah might ever come to save them, because the line from which that messiah
was supposed to come – the line of Jesse’s son, David – had been a dead stump
for years.
And that is
when they hear these words from Isaiah: “A shoot shall come out from the stump
of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” Here, in the midst of war,
they hear a word of hope: the savior promised to you will come. Jesse’s family
tree, the line that you thought was dead, is not dead. There is life in it.
There is hope sprouting out of it.
Have you
ever seen that in nature? A little piece of life sprouting out from somewhere
you would otherwise think life is impossible? A dandelion pushing through the
pavement, perhaps? Or a tree growing out of a rock? You may remember the Dutts,
who moved shortly after I came. Before they moved, Marlea told me a wonderful
story about new life sprouting. When they first moved to Webster some 40 years
ago, they planted four trees, one for each member of the family. The tree
planted for their son Mike was a beautiful, flowering crabapple tree, with twin
trunks that blossomed each year. But right around the time that Mike became
very ill and eventually passed away from a brain tumor, the tree, too, started
to get diseased. Some time after Mike’s passing, during a wind storm, one of
the twin trunks was broken… but then to their surprise, they began to see a new
shoot growing out of that broken trunk, as if it was a sign that Mike was still
very much alive, living a new sort of life. That shoot grew for a couple more
years. Then, shortly before the Dutts moved from Webster to Boston, they heard
a loud crack. They went outside to see that the entire diseased part of the
tree had blown over, and all that was left was that one, new shoot, still
standing strongly, reminding them of the new life that their son was living.
Stories like
this – they have a profound ability to bring hope to a previously hopeless
situation. One ray of light in the midst of darkness. One beginning in the midst
of endings. One yes in the midst of
so many nos. One sprout in the midst
of hopelessness.
And at this,
Isaiah goes on to describe who and what that sprout will be, what hope he brings,
and the resulting Peaceable Kingdom, the image that so captivated me as a
child: a place where lambs and wolves lie down beside each other, where babies and
snakes, enemies since creation, can enjoy tummy-time together, where bears and
cattle graze side-by-side, and where a little child, a weak, innocent child,
can lead them all. Where no one is attacking anyone else, physically or
emotionally, where people no longer hunger, and where everyone lives in the
righteousness of God. A place where there is, in a word, peace. This peaceable kingdom, Isaiah says, will be possible.
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| Living in the Peaceable Kingdom, by John August Swanson |
And is it?
Do you believe it is? Have you ever seen a glimpse of this kingdom? A kind word
from a notoriously nasty co-worker? A small occurrence that snaps you out of a
funk? A chance to spend quality time with someone you know won’t be around
forever? Glimpses like these can’t always make the pain go away. But they can
provide just that little bit of hope we need to continue on, and if they cannot
take the pain away, at least that hope can bring us some sense of peace in our
hearts.
Fast-forward
another 800 years. The Emperor at the time, Caesar Augustus, put out a decree
that everyone should go to his hometown to be registered. There was a man named
Joseph, who was engaged to be married to a young woman named Mary, who was with
child. Since Joseph was a descendant of David, he had to travel with his
pregnant fiancé to Bethlehem, the birthplace of his ancestor, David. And while
they were there in Bethlehem, Mary gave birth to a son, and they named him
Jesus, Emmanuel, which means, “God is with us.”
Let us pray.
God of all the ages, you have been with
us in many and various ways throughout time. You have offered us the promise of
your presence and grace in many different forms, so that even in seemingly
hopeless situations, we might still find something in which to hope. Help us to
trust that promise, especially as we prepare for the coming of your Son. In the
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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