Year A, Advent 2 Isaiah 11:1-10
I am horrible with plants. I love them and I am always trying to grow them, but it just never seems to work out for me. Therefore, bringing a dead plant back to life seems almost unfathomable. However, after reading this text from Isaiah about 10 times, I started to wonder if a dead stump could actually sprout. The text says, “A shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” According to my extensive research on two different gardening websites, it’s possible. Apparently, you can grow a brand new tree out of an old stump.
Who
is this Jesse and why does he have a stump? Jesse was the father of King
David. This stump represented the
dynastic line of David. Clearly things
weren’t going particularly well for the House of David when Isaiah
prophesized. A stump doesn’t exactly
project strength and vitality. Israel
had been ransacked by multiple enemies by the time the Book of Isaiah was
written. The people were exiled, the kingdoms fell. They had a few good and
righteous kings after King David, but the line was almost unidentifiable 500
years after King David reigned. Since
our country is less than 300 years old and created without a king, it’s hard to
imagine a 500 year dynasty. Seem like a
pretty good run to me.
But
this dynasty was about more than just leadership. To some extent, it was about salvation. It was about God’s commitment to Israel. The people of Israel were supposed to be
God’s chosen people and David was the chosen king. When all they had was a stump, there was
despair. Yet what today’s text tells us
is that this stump still held life within it.
Perhaps that is not the best description. The stump wasn’t alive as much as it was
receptive to the spirit that washed over it. The spirit gave that stump life.
It changed everything.
The
first part of our reading is about the transition from despair to hope. It speaks of a new leader who will be
righteous and just. This leader will
receive God’s wisdom, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
“Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around
his loins.” Of course one of the reasons
that we read this in Advent is that Christians believe this is all pointing to
Jesus. And one cannot deny that Jesus
was righteous and faithful. I am not sure
that he was the leader people were really hoping for as he ended up betrayed by
many of his followers and crucified. He
was not the leader people imagined, but he was the leader people needed.
The
2nd half of the reading paints a picture of utopia. It’s actually a kind of ridiculous
image. I can imagine a cow and a bear
hanging out, but a child playing with a poisonous snake seems a little
crazy. Of all the creatures to play
with, why a snake? As you can tell, I am
not a fan of snakes. Of course if you
think too much about the image, it loses its appeal. The point is that this new world has no
natural enemies. Forget about the
enemies we create. There are no enemies
at all. The whole natural order is thrown out in this new world.
Now
part of me wants to say, this image is too unrealistic. Look at the state of our world right
now. We’ve had 4 mass killings in the
last month—and that’s just our country.
This idea of a world with no conflict is beyond our hopes and
dreams. Yet perhaps we have been trained
to dream too little. In our need for
realism and attainable goals, we have lost sight of a God who wants us to see
something we can barely imagine.
Unfortunately we lose that ability to dream as we age. We forget what it is to imagine. This place where there are no conflicts and
only harmony is God’s dream for our world.
It’s God’s dream for us. God
wants our dreams to go beyond what we can see.
Isaiah’s vision isn’t a goal to be achieved. It’s a dream by which we set our course.[1] One of my favorite prayers is sometimes also
used as a blessing. It reads, “Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with
ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little…” I wonder in our desire for attainable goals
and benchmarks, we have lost the ability to see what God so desperately wants
us to see.
Our
Gospel reading was brought alive by that powerful depiction of John the
Baptist. John the Baptist is a typical
prophet in many ways. He was delivering
hard truths to people who did not want to hear it. John appears in all the gospels, but it’s
only in this gospel when he specifically calls out the Pharisees and Sadducees,
the people who were far too comfortable in their lives and confident because of
their religious pedigree.
I
think what was really frustrating John the Baptist wasn’t that the Pharisees
were wrong or even immoral. It was that
they had become too complacent. They
were ok with the system as it was because it was benefiting them. I think it’s fair to say that most of have
become a little too comfortable in our lives. There are times, like in the
pandemic when changes come that we can’t control and we are forced to change
how we live. That definitely shook a lot
of us out of our complacency. But most of the time, we just move through our
days quite contentedly. This isn’t to
say that things are smooth sailing or we never have bad things happen to
us. But all in all, we don’t want
someone coming in here and telling us that everything has to change, that we
have to change.
Like
Isaiah, John was also trying to paint a picture of a new kind of leader. He wasn’t presenting some utopian
future. In fact, the way he describes
Jesus sounds a little scary. But he knew this leader would be led by the Spirit
and would change people--- change the world.
John clearly still had the ability to dream and imagine. He knew that whatever was going at that time wasn’t
right. Too many people were suffering.
So he dreamed of another world. I
think it’s why he dragged people into the wilderness. He wanted them to get away from their
everyday lives, force them to see things from a different perspective.
As
we age, it’s hard to keep dreaming, but there are moments when the blinders
slide a little and we dream again. Often
it’s when we are with babies and children.
Children allow us to hope like we once did. They make us see new
possibilities. They also challenge us to
make changes. I never cared as much
about the environment as I did after I became a mother. Because the more I imagined his future, the
more I realized that he was going to be on this earth a lot longer than me and
the things I do now can have a major effect on him in 50 years. Children can
remind us that there is a future worth fighting for, a future that can and
should be better than what we have now.
So it is fitting that
we have a baptism today. Because baptism
reminds us not only of the wonder and innocence of babies and children, but
also about the renewal that is available to us all. That is why we do the
baptismal covenant. We want to remember
who we can be as children of God.
I
want to give you all some homework. I want you to take some time to daydream,
to remember what you hoped for as a child and also try to consider what you
truly hope for now. What is God’s dream
for you? Don’t be realistic. Don’t be
reasonable. Don’t try to create a smart
goal. Be like Isaiah. Be like John.
Just open yourself to God’s dream and then take one step, any step, in
the direction of that dream. If an old
stump can grow a new tree…if Jesus Christ can rise from the dead, then surely
we can remember how to dream again.
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