Reading 1: Isaiah 11: 1-10 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+11%3A+1-10&version=NRSVA
Reading 2: Matthew 3: 1-12 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+3%3A+1-12&version=NRSVA
A few weeks ago, Beny and one of his colleagues did some work on our garden. It was quite a big job. Over a long period, certainly longer than our year here, the garden had become really quite overgrown.
At one stage I thought of tackling it myself. I can date that thought exactly. It was 16 April. I know because I took some photos on my digital camera. I planned to make a photo diary outlining my progress. When I finally created something that make Kew look like the work of beginners, I thought I would do a before, then a ta-da unveiling.
That thought didn’t last long. Maybe until 17 April. I realised very quickly a novice like me didn’t stand a chance, particularly if, as I planned, I hoped to achieve it by filling one brown wheely-bin a week. Almost as soon as the following Tuesday came around the bit I’d cleared was back. Over summer it got worse. I took heart that more experienced folk told me ‘if you’re going to have a chance you need to get someone to chop this right back.’
So I was grateful when Beny arrived. They worked really hard with chainsaw’s, trimmers and assorted other tools. They soon had everything ripped back, so that yesterday evening (this is a few weeks after they’ve been) my garden looked like this. I admit it doesn’t look like much right now. Some plants look a bit sorry for themselves. But at least now we have a fighting chance to get the garden into some sort of order over the next year or two. There is stuff in there that will come again in spring or summer. Out of the same earth and even in many cases the same seeds, the stuff we want to cultivate has space, air and light to grow and develop. All the overgrown stuff was standing in the way of doing anything productive with the garden. Now it’s chopped right back we have a chance to do something new with it.
A similar metaphor appears in our two readings this morning Isaiah opened with the image of a tree stump. A tree has been felled and looks to all intents and purposes dead. But that’s not the end, or even the focus of the picture. For from that same tree a new shoot is emerging.
A similar image appears in the preaching of John the Baptist in our second reading from Matthew. He speaks of an axe that has been laid at the fruit of tree. Of the tree being cut down.
This morning I want to pick out three words, images or ideas particularly from Isaiah. They even begin with the same letter. They are the stump, the shoot and the spirit.
The image of the stump is indeed a very sad one. A tree stump marks a story which lies behind it. What once may have been a mighty tree has now been reduced to little more than annoyance to trip over on the ground.
But it would have been appropriate image for the people and time about which Isaiah was writing. Last week we saw a very positive message from Isaiah, with lots of hope for the future. It was of people flocking to Jerusalem to worship their God. Even then I said he was setting a context against which they were to view harder words to follow. Today’s reading, initially at least, is a darker.
Christian tradition, going all the way back to the first disciples, has found many echoes of the life of Jesus in the words of Isaiah. But he was primarily speaking to his own times.
This was a time of huge political turmoil. After the death of King Solomon Israel split into two. There was a Northern kingdom, still called Israel, to the North, and there was a Southern kingdom, Judah to the south. The era about which Isaiah is speaking here is about 200 years later.
By this time Assyria was the political power in the region. One by one nations that lay between Judah and Assyria crumbled beneath the weight of this empire. The Northern Kingdom of Israel joined forces with Syria (yes it’s a little confusing, but politics always has been) to fend off Assyria. They tried to persuade Judah to join them, but Judah said no. So Israel and Syria attacked Judah.
Judah’s king, Ahaz, wanted to call on Assyria for help. Isaiah warned him this would be a bad idea and urged him to trust God to rescue them. Ahaz ignored Isaiah and called on Assyria anyway. The result was the Northern kingdom was destroyed never to re-emerge. Judah survived, but at a heavy price. Much of the country, apart from Jerusalem was destroyed. What was left pretty much became a puppet from Assyria and was weakened right through to the Babylonian exile about 120-130 years later.
For Isaiah to speak of a stump of Jesse would have been quite a shocking image. Jesse was the father of King David. The kings of Judah for over 300 years were descended from that line. Isaiah was saying it was about to come crashing down.
We catch a glimpse of Isaiah’s reasoning in this morning’s passage. He presents his picture of the ‘ideal leader’, who was not partial or open to bribery, who cared for the vulnerable and acted justly. He does this to highlight that this was everything the nation was currently lacking. We might say their current government was not fit for purpose. Isaiah’s message was that God wanted them to thrive and flourish. But if that was to happen, all this needed to be stripped away.
If Isaiah had left the story there it would have been a tragic one. But that’s not where he leaves it. Israel and Judah were harsh dry climates. For a tree to survive it reached deep down into the earth, developing very deep roots. If it did not it would just wither. But those trees which did develop roots deep down into the earth had the capacity to survive in the harshest of conditions. Even felled, you could not guarantee that was the end of the story. There was still life.
That’s the kind of image of which Isaiah is drawing on here. A shocking image, yes, but one filled with hope. His message was that God was not finished with them yet. It’s an image inspired by a belief that God is faithfully, and persistently, in good and bad, in every circumstance taking his purposes forward. The tree is felled, it looks as dead as it can be, yet suddenly there are signs of life. Things can be different. Out of the stump is coming the shoot. It looked as dead as it can be, but new life is emerging.
It’s fantastic poetic imagery for much of the rest of the passage. Admittedly, at one level it reads like a childminder’s worst nightmare. The NIV puts it like this ‘Infants will play near the hole of the cobra, young children will put their hands into the viper’s nest.’ We have teams and policies to ensure this doesn’t happen on our watch. Infants are helpless in the face of danger. Toddlers go blundering into it. But in Isaiah’s vision even they are completely safe. In a hostile climate where life was tough and dangerous it was an image of world not destroyed, nor consigned to some sort of cosmic dustbin, but restored, renewed, secure, old emnities set aside.
The shoot might not look like much. Initially it could be easily overlooked. But Isaiah says the impact of that shoot will be immense. In time the new life it brings changes everything. But the sense we get from Isaiah is that for this to happen, for new life to be possible, the tree has to go.
Which kind of brings me to John the Baptist. John almost takes us to the image of the stump. He’s just one step away. He speaks of the axe laid to the foot of the tree. In John’s case it sounds, or reads, very much like a threat. To be fair it’s possible, probable even, that John meant and used it in that kind of way.
But that may not be how our Gospel writers intend us to hear John. John the Baptist stands at the entrance to all four Gospels. Each time the same passage from Isaiah is used to describe him. John’s Gospel puts it on the lips of John the Baptist himself. Matthew, Mark or Luke simply cite it. In today’s reading we find it on verse 3.
‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness
Prepare the way for the Lord
Make straight paths for him’
They’re lifted from Isaiah 40. But the verses leading up to that interest me.
‘Comfort, comfort my people’ says your God
‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem
And proclaim to her
That her hard service has been completed
That her sin has been paid for
That she has received from the LORD’s hand
Double for all her sins.’
Then it goes on to say ‘a voice of one calling….’ In Isaiah 40 there’s a sense that however it seems right now, God is about to do something new. Then he wonders if we are ready to see it? Are we ready to receive it?
The Gospel writers deliberately place John the Baptist in the context not of judgment but comfort. To a bunch of beleaguered, disheartened folk, who fear that the story is over, John announces ‘it doesn’t have to be like that.’ God was not finished with them yet. However it seems to them right now, new life, new beginnings are possible. John invites them to be baptised as a sign of their repentance. Repentance prepares them, makes them ready to receive the newness that Gods wants to bring to them.
When you view it from that perspective it’s still possible and reasonable to see the axe at the foot of the tree as signs of judgment. But another way of understanding it becomes possible. In a sense it becomes voluntary. In offering baptism John is saying ‘you don’t have to cling to the stuff that keeps you from receiving the newness that God longs to bring to you. It doesn’t have to own you or define you. You’re better than that. The axe is at the foot of the tree. But it’s in your hands. You can cut it away.’
You can lose all the deadness that stops productive growth in your life. It may not be easy. It may even be painful. It might seem that to take the risk you’ll be left with nothing but the stump of the life you already have. But that needn’t be the end of the story. For from that stump new life can emerge. You can create the light, space and air in which the new life God wants to bring to you can develop.
For John that begins with one thing – repentance. In some ways repentance has become a somewhat cheapened word. It’s got tangled up with confession. They are linked, but they’re not the same thing. Repentance is about realising that one way is not working, so you turn around and move away from it. It’s a change of mind which leads to a change in the way we live. It involves cutting away what keeps us from the life God created us to live. It’s as Hebrews puts it ‘throwing off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.’ Repentance creates the environment for the new life to begin to grow and develop and work in us. It creates the environment from which the shoot can begin to emerge from the stump.
In It’s a Wonderful Life it seemed that with the passing of Peter Bailey, the Building and Loan was finished. The entire board was resigned to the fact it was gone and everyone was going to be left at the hands of Potter. But in the scene we saw this morning, a shoot had emerged from the stump of the building and Loan, indeed from Peter Bailey himself. George saw that it could be different, that there should be hope for the future and breathed new life into the Building and Loan, and continued to transform the town.
Today in our two passages I suppose the messages are similar but with slightly different perspectives. Isaiah is picturing the stump, when what was taken for granted has gone. He was speaking to those who perhaps had already lost hope and offering hope that new life was possible. That a shoot could emerge from the stump.
John is speaking to those who know their way isn’t working. The one barrier to hearing what John was saying was contentment. If you were quite happy with how things are, John had nothing to offer you. But for those who had the yearning for things to be different, John’s message was that new life was possible.
But from whichever angle we approach it, might it be a promise, or an encouragement which some, even all of us need to hear? Might there be some who already can identify with the image of the stump? It feels like stuff that gave you hope, meaning, life has been chopped away from you. Some live with a real sense of loss of what was once there. It was like something within you has just died. You find yourself unable to do the things you once could. You find it hard to have any real sense of hope.
Perhaps you need the news that God is not finished with you yet. Perhaps you need to catch a glimpse of the shoot, the new life emerging from the stump. It might be heard to envisage, hard to recognise. Right now any signs of hope might seem so insignificant. Don’t despise it. You never know how it might develop.
Or perhaps you might identify more with those coming to John the Baptist for baptism. You come with attitudes, mindsets, habits, sins. Stuff you know isn’t working for you. You wish you could be rid of it, to set it aside. But it’s become such a part of who you are you’re not sure how to let it go. Perhaps you’ve yearned to be different, but just when you think you’re making progress you fall back into the same old patterns.
Maybe you need too need to hear the message that as long as you have life and breath God is not finished with you yet. Maybe you need to catch a glimpse of the axe at the foot of the tree and hear the invitation to cut whatever it is away. That’s what repentance is. Turning away from it.
Cling to it and it is all you may ever know. There is no guarantee that change will be easy or painless, but from what remains new life can emerge. In the act of cutting away, you create room for the light of Christ to shine in. You’re allowing space and air in which the new life God wants to bring to you can grow and develop.
But I said there were three images beginning with S. We’ve spoken about the stumps and the shoot. The third thing which pervades both passages, and on which the new life depends is the Spirit. In both our passages the new life which God longs to bring to us is not something we can achieve by ourselves. In each case the new day, the new life is a gift from God. Just as I needed Beny to come in and cut back everything that was stopping something productive in my garden, so we need help to allow the new life to grow and develop within us.
It is the Spirit which fans into being the new life from the stump of the tree in Isaiah. Those coming to John the Baptist might make the step of baptism as a sign of repentance, but it is the Spirit which John says will grow and sustain the new life that God wants to bring to them. It’s the Spirit that empowers us to cut away the deadness in our lives and is the light and the air which brings the new life into being.
The Spirit of which Isaiah and John the Baptist speak is the same Spirit which hovered over the waters and brought creation out of nothingness and chaos. It is the same Spirit which breathed into the nostrils of Adam and a lump of earth was given life. It’s the same Spirit that breathes through the words of scripture taking what effectively are dead words on a page and giving them life and meaning to folk down through generations of thousands of years.
But that same Spirit was the power of God to create life out of nothing. It’s the same Spirit that speaks into our hearts and reminds us that as we said last week this is going somewhere. However it seems right now God is faithfully and persistently taking his purposes forward. He is the One whose skilful fingers and working the various threads of our lives, the good and the bad to create the pattern of our lives. He alone is the One who can make sense of the various strands. The Spirit is the One who can even take our blunders and the dead ends and work them into the pattern. The Spirit is the one who looks on the stumps of our lives and whispers ‘God is not finished with you yet!’ The Spirit is the one who breathes onto that deadness and brings new life, who fans the new shoots into being. On our own the job is too job to big for us, but the Spirit empowers us to do what on our own we could not manage. The Spirit is the One who empowers us to lay hold on the new life Jesus came to bring us.
If we doubt it, it is the same Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead. That’s the power scripture says is at work in all who put their trust in Jesus. At this table we are reminded that when God reached out to us in Christ, he was rejected and cut down. Those who opposed him thought that was the end of the story. They left him as nothing more than a stump. But by the power of Spirit God raised Jesus from the dead. A shoot emerged from the stump and through the Spirit at work in Jesus’ followers, the new life God longs for us to possess is possible for everyone.
At this table we are invited to bring him the deadness of our lives. the stumps of hurt, disappointment, pain, sin, failure, whatever is keeping us from the life God longs to grow within us. We’re invited to allow him to meet with us, to breathe new life into us. All that is required is the yearning for things to be different and a willingness to place what we bring into his hands. To allow him to cut it away and create the light, space and air in which his Spirit can work to bring new life to us. It might take time, but in his hands we are secure and can know he will be faithful to bring it to completion.
The theme and idea of the sermon series I got from a Ministry Matters website. However, aside from the readings, titles and film clips, for a whole variety of reasons, mostly due to scheduling, I basically went off on my own track…. The website is http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/3060/its-a-wonderful-life-sermon-series-with-drama
paper dolls 
Best and an encouraging reflection, thank you