Advent Peace Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-10 Rev. Meredith Loftis December 4, 2016

Hear now these words from Matthew 3:1-12: In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” 4 Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” This is the Word of the Lord. There is a tree in New York City unlike any other tree—a Callery pear tree, sprouted from God’s lands to lift its leaves in worship to the sky, but a tree that also bears scars of burns, torn limbs, and the ravages of destruction unlike what our country had ever seen before. Today it still lifts its arms towards the heavens, sprouting forth new life, new flowers, and new leaves, nursed back to health from the tortured nearly lifeless stump that it had become. It again lives in its old home, but usually surrounded by reverent people, there to witness this small miracle that survived the horrors of September 11 th , 2001 at the World Trade Center. Nearly a month after the terrorist attacks, this Survivor tree was discovered at Ground Zero, snapped roots and burned limbs making it appear lost forever. But with care, it was removed from the rubble and taken to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, where it lived and was rehabilitated back to health for nearly 10 years before being returned to the 9/11 Memorial Plaza in

2010. It now sits in the shadow of the new One World Trade Center, just before the enormous marble memorial fountain, surrounded by other trees, but new trees with smooth limbs and easy histories, for all its brethren were lost. I hope some of you have been able to witness it. It was a holy moment for me when I witnessed this miracle—eyes reverently looking for the new growth sprouting from the obvious scars of the old. I lingered there for quite a while, eager to run my fingers over the new growth from the gnarled branches, just out of reach. The 9/11 Memorial describes the Survivor tree with resurrection words: “New, smooth limbs extended from the gnarled stumps, creating a visible demarcation between the tree’s past and present. Today, the tree stands as a living reminder of resilience, survival and rebirth.” 1 Today, it serves as a symbol for us and for our country, a sign that new life is possible out of chaos and destruction, that a stump is capable of new growth, that the darkness of that day did not snuff it out. Hear Isaiah’s words again, A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. A shoot, a tiny vulnerable green bud, emerges from a stump, eagerly seeking to produce a strength seemingly impossible from an apparently dead tree. A hope emerges, declaring that death is not the final word for it, but that King David’s house that emerged from the line of Jesse shall again see glory; it shall produce a Savior King with God’s authority, knowledge, and righteousness; a king that makes the impossible quite possible, where predator and prey do not hunt or fear each other but live, eat, and sleep together in a peace that can only be of God….”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.” This metaphor of new growth from the stump of Jesse takes us back to the Davidic dynasty. In the book of I Samuel, the Bethlehemite Jesse parades his 7 sons before the prophet Samuel, for God has informed Samuel that the new king to come after Saul comes from Jesse’s line. But it isn’t until Jesse calls in his youngest son, just a boy tending sheep, that Samuel discovers God’s king in David. David’s many feats—defeating Goliath, becoming a war commander that tens of thousands of people revered, and his rise as King—perhaps serve as one of the highest points of Israel’s history, a history that was cut short when generations later the Israelites lost their kingdoms, lost their Temple, and were sent into exile. This is the context in which we find this passage from Isaiah. The Hebrew people beg God for a Savior that will deliver them from the depths of despair and will save them from the encroaching Assyrian armies that will eventually enslave them. This oracle reflects their deep desire

1 https://www.911memorial.org/survivor-tree that God will deliver and restore them, that they shall not linger forever in war or exile, but that God will deliver a peaceable kingdom, reminiscent of the garden of Eden. While these words of scripture anticipated a Savior King, perhaps the 8th century King Hezekiah to redeem their nation, we have adopted these words to describe the Messiah that came as God-flesh to our world. This Savior King, the Christmas baby Jesus, would grow from the unexpected backcountry of Galilee into the Messiah that would disrupt the powers of Herod, of Pharaoh, of those oppressive regimes; he would disrupt the powers of sin, evil and death through subversive and unconventional means, even the Pharisees and scribes would tremble from his authority declares John the Baptist. This Savior king would tame lions and wolves and give voice to sheep and see that not only would Israel be redeemed, but all God’s people would as well. God’s word for us this morning paints a lovely, powerfully hopeful portrait of that peaceable kingdom, where a Savior King, one with God’s own Spirit, is born from the ashes of a dynasty long thought lost; from the stump of a royal house that seemed dead and no more. Isaiah claims that the reign of this king would initiate a period of peace, and so this morning we have lit the Advent candle of peace, remembering the Prince of Peace whose birth we celebrate and whose second coming we anticipate joyfully; but for some of us, especially many of our friends and neighbors in East Tennessee… …talking about peace may seem comical when families are searching for lost ones or seeking new homes after the unprecedented fires in Gatlinburg or tornadoes in Athens… …hope seems elusive when parents mourn the loss and death of their children in that tragic school bus crash in Chattanooga… …this hope and peace we crave seems impossible when the murder of Central High School student, Emma Walker, lingers on our hearts…. Our side of the world has been hit hard this last month with immense tragedy, unprecedented disaster, and loss of too much life and livelihood. And as we have become a grieving people, we must lament these things. But as people of faith and as followers of the Prince of Peace, we recognize that the dark pit of grief does not define us, but that the coming Christ King does. And so it seems especially poignant and appropriate this day that our scripture describes life emerging from the seemingly impossible. It is crucial that we anticipate, that we expect, our God to continue to deliver hope and that God helps us dig out of the ashes, looking for the tiny green shoots of hope that will emerge slowly, that will seem painstakingly slow to see, but a hope that is already seen in the enormous outpouring of donations from hearts that desire to not allow ash to overcome. It is not a hope that is trivialized or just leaves our lips as platitudes or simple well-wishes; it is a radical Advent hope and peace that loves despite all else, a love that pushes, that disrupts the terrors of evil, of Herod, with love, mercy, and justice, and continues to surprise us, as when the lion and cow graze together. It is this anticipation of

a divine coming that we await. This word Advent we throw around during this season, it means we wait for the coming of the impossible, knowing that Christ who came as a human baby, will come again to show us the roots of hope that lie beneath the ash, the roots that grow into the tree of God where all shall eat of its fruit and find relief in its shade. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse …” fragile yet tenacious and stubborn. It would grow like a plant out of dry ground. It would push back the stone from the rock-hard tomb [of death]...It will grow in the hearts of people told over and over that they are nothing. [It will grow in the hearts of those suffering, mourning, waiting for justice.] This plant will grow, writes Union Seminary professor, Barbara Lundblad. She continues, “What if we believe this fragile sign is [despite what we may think] God’s beginning? Perhaps then we will tend the seedling in our hearts, the place where faith longs to break through the hardness of our disbelief, [our doubts, our tendencies to stay buried in the darkness]. Do not wait for the tree to be full grown. God comes to us in this Advent time and invites us to move beyond counting the rings of the past. We may still want to sit on the stump for a while, and God will sit with us [and will mourn with us at loss]. But God will also keep nudging us: ‘Look! Look -- there on the stump. Do you see that green shoot growing?’ ”2 We, the people of God, look to this scripture as the impossible peace and hope that becomes possible. We see the new growth, the impossible growth from the dead stump. We see the impossibility of the wolf and the lamb together, the cow and bear grazing together; we know this and work towards this future, the in-breaking of God’s kingdom because of the God-flesh, Jesus Christ, that new branch from the stump of Jesse, that extends resurrection life out of death, despair, and chaos. It is Christ that allows us and even demands that we seek the peace where all might live together in a new Eden. It is a hope where not only do the lion and the calf live together, perhaps it’s where the lion learns to purr while the calf learns to howl with a new fierce strength. This is what we anticipate each time we come to this season of Advent, waiting for the Christmas child, that enables us to see our world with new eyes that see beyond the ash and darkness and into a world of God’s peace and abundance. We should seek to remember this as we come to the communion table this morning, ready to first seek peace and new growth in ourselves, nourished by Christ, so we can go into God’s world ready to help others seek hope from despair. I will close with this wonderful quote by the poet Ann Weems, a few words that cling to my heart as I prepare for Christmas and as I remember our world around us. She writes, "The Christmas spirit is that hope which tenaciously clings to the hearts of the faithful and announces in the face of any Herod [of any disaster or tragedy or injustice] the world can produce and all the inn doors slammed in our faces and all the dark nights of our souls that with God all things still are possible that even now unto us a Child is born!"

2 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1940