+There are so many images that come to mind while listening to today’s readings:
¬ Wolves and lambs lounging in a peaceful co-existence, leopards and lions playing, a baby crawling safely within the reach of the snake.
¬ Gentiles being welcomed into Judaism through the cleansing act of baptism—no 30 foot walls being erected to keep the Palestinians out of Israel back then-- the images are almost unbelievable!
¬ And then we have wild and woolly John the Baptist flying INTO A RAGE at the Pharisees who’ve come to gawk at his baptizing act in the River Jordan. There he is, all smelly and wrapped in camel hair, blasting his message to all within ear shot, a touch of crazed ramblings infused with a wisdom that cannot be denied.
¬ And one of my favorite images of all—that earnest little seedling shooting up from a stump: a branch from the tree of Jesse.
Have you ever felt like a stump….a mere fragment of your former self? A little dried up, worn down, feeling as if life has cut you off at your knees?
The prophet Isaiah tells us: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…” The family tree that was the House of David, looked mighty bleak when Isaiah was writing in the 8th c. BCE—it was a mere stump of its former glory---they were under attack by the Assyrians, they were surrounded, defeat was at every turn. It’s hard to imagine the Israelites hopeful at that time, isn’t it?
Who can imagine anything growing while sitting on the stump of utter despair?
I’ve sat there myself, perhaps you have, too. You may be there now -- at that place where hope is cut off, where loss and sadness have deadened your heart. A place where peace seems out of reach and happiness, the thing of fantasy.
The good news is that God’s Advent word has come to sit, on that stump, alongside us, right where we are. God’s Advent Word won’t come in a blaze of glory, it’s not delivered on a chariot of fire. It won’t ask us to get up and dance! It comes to us, exactly where we are and it comes to us just how we are...happy and hopeful, sad and despairing, raging and ranting. It doesn’t matter—God’s Advent Word meets us where right we are.
Today’s Advent Words come to us from Isaiah—hopeful words creating a vision that’s surprising in its simplicity and honesty. Nothing hyperbolic and lofty here. The Word is matter-of-fact and brutally honest--the nation as they knew it would never rise again. The shoot would not become a mighty cedar. No, the shoot would become something altogether surprising, altogether different than anything anyone could ever expect. It won’t look mighty, it won’t be fierce… no, it will be a child…a BABY!
Much later in the book of Isaiah we read:
“For [the Lord] grew up before them like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”
Yes, a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse… fragile, yet tenacious and stubborn. It will grow like a plant out of dry ground. And it will be strong and miraculous enough to push back the stone from a rock-hard tomb.
The shoot will grow in the heart of those cut off by unbearable sorrow until one morning they can look up again. It will grow in the hearts of people told over and over that they are nothing, they are nobody.
In the depths of that sorrow, in the grip of that hate, the plant will grow. It will break through the places where darkness dwells, where hope loses its way, where loneliness spreads. The shoot will grow to sing shouts of Hosanna and Glory to God in the highest.
My friends, this shoot emerging from the stump of Jesse—this fragile sign--- is the beginning of God’s incarnation—of God’s coming to us, as one of us!
What about the seedling longing to burst forth in our own hearts? Deep in that place where faith longs to break through the hardness of our disbelief, the frozen ground of our fear, the rock hard stone of our despair? Folks, don’t wait for the tree to be full grown. Search for that sprout, encourage that shoot, welcome the God who comes to us in Advent; inviting us to move beyond all that was into all that will be.
We may still want to sit on the stump for a while and brood—that’s ok--God will sit with us. But God will also keep nudging us: “Look! Look -- there on the stump. Do you see that green shoot growing?”
“O come, green shoot of Jesse, free
Your people from despair and apathy;
Forge justice for the poor and the meek,
Grant safety for the young ones and the weak.
Rejoice, rejoice! Take heart and do not fear,
God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.”
Preparing our hearts for the coming of our Lord requires that we let the shoot of Love take root and grow within us. Because, when we do that, we’ll find ourselves awestruck, alongside Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the donkey, and all the other barn critters, gazing down upon the Savior of the World, come to us as a precious baby boy.
Amen!
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