"Saviors out of Stumps"

Advent 2A: 12-8-13

Sermon Texts: Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

Saviors out of Stumps

It’s amazing what God can do with a stump.

We don’t think of them as being all that special - usually, they’re more of annoyance and eyesore than object of wonder.  They hide under tall grass and dead leaves, waiting for you to stub your toe on them or to catch your mower blade and bend it out of shape.  We pay people to come in and remove stumps from our yards, grinding them down and digging them out to remove the roots from our yards.  Or if we don’t remove them, we try to find ways to repurpose them - we put other plants on top of them, turn them into displays and tables, use them as bases for fountains and bird feeders, drill into them to put a scarecrow in the center of our gardens, and find all kinds of other ways to make something useful out of a stump.

This was the state of the Israelites at the time that Isaiah wrote this prophecy.  This once mighty kingdom, this great and gorgeous dynasty tree whose trunk was the glorious king David was now just a “stump of Jesse.”  Their current king, Ahaz, had been a wicked and terrible king - he went against his heritage and worshipped foreign gods, he burned his own son as a sacrifice, built false idols, and desecrated the temple to build altars to other gods.  He led the kingdom of Judah into ruin and eventually into Assyrian slavery.  Isaiah speaks into a time when his nation is coming to the end of a tyranny that lasted 16 years.  He speaks into a time where the people of Israel and Judah have been plagued by kings who time and time again have either failed their people or have led them completely in the wrong direction, away from God, and into the arms of false idols and foreign nations - when even those that worshipped God and walked in the ways of their fathers still failed to live up to the legacy that had been left before them.  In the previous chapters of this book, Isaiah has already warned of the consequences of these actions, telling the people that Assyria will wash over them like an oncoming flood, that they will be broken in their pride and arrogance, and that they will face God’s justice for their failures - he warns the people that this great line of kings will be reduced to nothing but a rotted, moldy stump!

And as the people see these things coming to pass, as they feel the oppression of the Assyrians, they yearn for a king who would lead them back into a new “golden age,” who would deliver them back into the open and waiting arms of a loving God.  They wonder what could possibly come out of a rotted stump, what life could ever come again from a tree whose roots have already had the ax taken to them.  But Isaiah sows words of promise in the midst of his warnings - he conveys the promise of a king yet to come, who will lead the nation into a time of prosperity and blessing once more.  Who will be the embodiment of Emmanuel, “God with us,” and lead the people with justice and righteousness once more.  And for the people of Judah in the time of Isaiah, that promise was delivered and fulfilled in the king Hezekiah - Hezekiah cleansed and re-established the temple as a place to worship God, led the people once again in the celebration of the Passover feast, and eventually God used Hezekiah to help his people win their freedom back from Assyria, bringing them fully back into their own land and into a time of peace and prosperity during his reign.

There’s probably some confusion at this point - and understandably so.  Why are we talking about Hezekiah, of all people?  I thought that these passages were supposed to be about Jesus… isn’t that the whole reason we’re lighting candles and singing carols and Advent hymns?  Isn’t Jesus the “little child” who will lead them, the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests and who establishes this wonderful time when lions become vegetarians?  If Isaiah’s words had already been fulfilled in an old king of Judah, why do so many pastors and Christians around the world say that these prophecies point to Jesus?

The thing is… it’s a little bit of both.  Biblical criticism and study tell us a far different story than what we’re typically used to hearing - as much as we want it to be the case, prophets like Isaiah, Micah, and Malachi didn’t gaze hundreds of years into the future and predict that Jesus Christ would be born and come to earth.  The prophets could perhaps be better compared to divinely inspired political analysts, men who were especially skilled at reading the “signs of the times” and conveying God’s message of the more immediate consequences of the actions of the people of Jerusalem - the message of the prophets was meant for their own people before it was meant for us - if their own people did not have the opportunity to repent and to enter into restored relationship with God, then why bother speaking to a specific people through specific prophets in the first place?

Jesus may not have been the original subject of the prophecies, but what inspired the Gospel writers to cite these ancient prophecies is the fact that Jesus nonetheless fulfilled them.  Every promise of peace and glory that Isaiah describes is either fulfilled in Christ or guaranteed to us as people of faith in the promise of Jesus’ resurrection and Ascension.  In the birth of the little child and the movement that it causes, we see the advent of the “little child” who is our leader, the promise of a kingdom of peace, and the ultimate fulfillment of our soul’s desire for a leader who will rise above the failings of all other earthly leaders, the corruption and the weakness of humanity, and the binding shackles of sin and death.

It’s no wonder that John the Baptist was so urgent in his call to repentance and his dramatic proclamation of the nearness of the kingdom of God.  Like his prophetic predecessors, John sees the “signs of the times.”  Being related to Jesus, he likely knows the story of his cousin’s birth, knows about the extraordinary encounters with angels that surrounded Jesus’ birth, and he has the insight and the Spirit to understand what that means.  John knows that the world is about to change drastically through the life and ministry of Christ - he understands the social situation in Jerusalem as it once again suffers under Roman oppression and longs yet again for the fulfillment of God’s promise of a savior.  And his understanding spurs him into action - he cries out his message in the wilderness in the same way as Isaiah describes, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!  Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!” and the people who hear his message respond and are baptized.  They hear something that has been missing somehow in that message - the green and living shoot that sprouts from the stump that had been all but rotted wood, and they find hope in this call to repentance.

But amidst the hope that Isaiah gives us and the offer of baptism and repentance that John gives, we can’f afford to ignore the elephant that sits over there by the riverbank next to the Pharisees and Sadducees who have come to be baptized, as well - we don’t know whether they’re coming to be baptized in some kind of ironic fashion, just because it’s en vogue, or whether they’re actually there looking for ways to undermine John’s prophetic authority - either way, John makes it clear to these Jewish authorities that he sees through the veneer and the pretense, that their repentance needs to be genuine because there is one coming who is greater than he is who will hold them to an even higher standard.  John calls them out for their overconfidence and their reliance upon their cultural heritage and identity rather than on their relationship with God.

During this season of Advent, it’s easy for us to get caught up in the excitement leading into the Christmas celebration, to treat these four weeks in December as just one more chance to relive the events leading up to Christ’s birth, and to want to rush headlong toward the manger with gleeful abandon.  We know the message - for many of us, we’ve heard it so many times that it’s ingrained in our minds.  But today, as we listen to John, we should be reminded that it’s never good for us to get too comfortable in this season, lest we take it for granted and become overconfident.  In this season, God reminds us: in Christ, we’re not allowed to be stumps anymore.  We can’t just sit back and to let moss grow over us and wither away to dirt - in Christ, we are given new life and the opportunity to grow, to branch out, and to bear fruit that is worthy of the Gospel.  It’s amazing what God can do with a stump.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.