A Branch Out of the Roots
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
December 6, 2009
Isaiah 11:1-10; Luke 3:1-6
Isaiah 11:1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
10 On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.Luke 3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
I. INTRODUCTION
There is a house across the street from my building that I’ve been coveting for some time. As soon a I put together the $1.4 million necessary, I’m going to buy it. It’s a three story brick townhouse, on a triangular shaped piece of property at the intersection of the avenue with a street. When I first moved into my building some years ago, there was a large dead tree in that triangular shaped front yard. I moved in in the fall so I didn’t really notice that the tree was dead, since most of the trees in the neighborhood lacked leaves. There was the possibility of resurgence.
The following year, they cut down that dead tree and left a big old stump in the middle of the yard. It became pretty clear that that tree was not going to have a resurgence after all. What had once been a mighty tree was now a wreck of its former self. A stump.
That stump proved to be the vexation of all the subsequent owners and tenants of that building. Some would try to ignore it. One built a rock garden around it that was more hideous than the dead stump itself. It was a big ugly reminder of what had once been a glorious tree. Eventually, an owner with a little more cash, or a lot less tolerance for the stump, had a work crew come by and remove it altogether.
II. THE TEXT
I cannot help but be reminded of that stump when I come across this passage from Isaiah that we read earlier:
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
“A shoot shall come up out of the stump of Jesse.”
To understand what Isaiah was talking about, it’s important to know that Isaiah was a court prophet for the Kingdom of Judah. He worked for the King himself. This is a pretty good gig: you’re God’s voice to the powers that be. The king makes a number of decisions–what alliances to forge, what wars to get involved in–and you can be there in the middle of it all, giving input as a representative of God. Sounds like a fun job. Too bad they don’t have something like that today.
Of course, it wasn’t always a great job. Most of the time the prophets were ignored. Or worse. Jeremiah was thrown into a cistern and left to die before being rescued. The prophets were often on the outs of the political establishment, even when they were on the payroll.
And it wasn’t like you were working with the best and the brightest. No, even though the rulers of Judah were descendents of David and Solomon, there was little left in terms of their power and glory. No, in fact the rulers of Judah were more often duds. Occasionally, you’d get a good king like Hezekiah, or like Josiah, but usually the king would be a disappointment. The glory and power that had been known in the days of David and Solomon was long gone.
Isaiah started off his career as a prophet with a fair amount of hope in the line of David. The coronation hymn for King Hezekiah found in chapter 9 of the Book of Isaiah is full of hope and optimism. Full of images of justice and power and glory. Hezekiah was okay, but hardly a return to Davidic glory. And as the years went on, and Judah’s fortunes waned, Assyrian power threatened, followed by Babylonian power, Isaiah began to sour somewhat on the heirs to David’s throne.
But Isaiah was a firm believer that God had made a covenant with David, son of Jesse, a covenant to provide an heir on the throne of David forever. And so, Isaiah might have been disillusioned with the current occupants on the throne, but he never lost faith in God’s promises through that line.
And so Isaiah writes: “A shoot shall come up out of the stump of Jesse…”
The image is a stark one: what had been the mighty tree of David’s line is now but a stump, but out of that stump shall come a shoot, a branch out of the roots.
And so Isaiah would voice the hope that some day, out of this diminished royal line would come a king like David, one who would rule in justice and righteousness. As Isaiah’s career went on, he became less fond of the kings under whom he served and began to project hope more and more into the future for a king like David.
A century and a half after Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem, the Babylonian Empire would conquer Judah, destroy the temple, destroy the city of Jerusalem, and carry the last of David’s line off into exile. The Davidic line would come to an end. There was no longer an heir of David’s on the throne. The monarchy was gone. All the glory that was once David’s lay in ruin.
And in the midst of Exile and afterwards, the people of Israel would begin to look to a time when another descendant of David would arise to lead the people. They referred to this individual as the Lord’s “anointed” one, in Hebrew: mashiach . Messiah. The line of thought that Isaiah began as a reaction to the disappointing kings of Israel and Judah, was now a full-blown hope for national redemption and restoration.
God’s messiah would come to save the people.
III. THE FIFTH GOSPEL
Now, as Christians, we profess faith in Jesus Christ as God’s Messiah, the anointed one who fulfills the longings of the people of Israel. And Isaiah’s writings have been there with us from the beginning.
Early on, when the early Christian community began its reflection on who Jesus was and what he had accomplished, they turned to their holy scriptures for insight. The earliest Christians were Jews and the only Bible they had was what we would call the Old Testament. And so as they looked through their scriptures they came across the writings of Isaiah–and therein they found passages of hope and expectation for one who was to come.
In those oracles of hope for a future king like David they saw their own experience of Jesus. In fact, so deeply did they see Jesus in those oracles, that they would even see him in other elements of Isaiah’s writing: Hezekiah’s coronation hymn, an oracle about the Syro-Ephraimite war, and so on. The Book of Isaiah would be used so often as a source of understanding about Jesus that it has, in later Christian tradition, become one of the most important books of the Old Testament for Christian understandings of Jesus. It has even been referred to as the “Fifth Gospel” because of the heavy Christological interpretations applied to its contents.
IV. JESUS AS KING
But there’s just one question we might raise: did Jesus ever sit on the throne of Israel the way Isaiah seemed to expect? Now, we Christians like to pride ourselves on saying that while Jesus’ followers expected him to come and reign like a king, we certainly know better that he was meant for something else. But if that’s the case, why do we still focus on these messianic kingship texts as texts about Jesus?
Our association with the passage is not simply about a king we were waiting for who finally arrived. They are about a deeper hope, a deeper understanding of what that one would represent.
For the text speaks not only to the hope for a messianic king of the line of David, it speaks to a time of peace and plenty, a radical transformation of the world:
6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
It is not out of any belief that Jesus actually sat on the throne of Israel, that he defeated Israel’s enemies in battle, that we ascribe Isaiah’s oracles to Jesus. It is because we believe that his life, death, and resurrection were all part of the in-breaking reign of God. The manifestation in our midst of that world changing reality. We see Jesus as the one who not only preached the Kingdom, but who is ushering it in. That Kingdom where the wolf shall live with the lamb, and the leopard shall lied down with a kid. That world free of violence and fear, that world free of pain and sorrow. A world redeemed. And because we believe that Christ has vindicated this hope, we see in him the one Isaiah spoke of.
V. A BRANCH OUT OF THE ROOTS
There is one more thing.
In Christ’s resurrection we see the ultimate reversal: life out of death. He who had once been cut off from the land of the living, lived again. What had been a stump, now bore a shoot that brought new hope and life.
And so it is with us.
Advent is a time of waiting and expectation. A time when we are reminded of the brokenness of the world, its unredeemedness. It is a time when we contemplate the difference between the vision of the Peaceable Kingdom and the world we inhabit.
We will often feel cut off. There are times in our lives when we will feel that what we had hoped for, what we had intended has come to nothing. The glorious planting of old has become a stump. There are times when we might feel as if we have no more future than that dead tree in the yard across the street. Nothing but a stump remains.
And yet, we have faith in a God who causes a shoot to come out of a stump. A branch out of the roots. The Christ whom we await this advent, is not simply the one who is the restoration of long lost glory for the people of Israel. He is the one who can work this renewal in us. The one whose own life, death and resurrection represent the ultimate renewal of hope. This one has the power to work our lives anew. Redeeming us, renewing us, restoring us in ways we barely would believe possible.
This is the Christ whom we await in Advent. The one whom we greet at Christmas: the long hoped for messiah, the prince of peace, the herald of the Peaceable Kingdom, and the one through whom all the stumps of our lives, the cut off roots, may yet flower again.
