Loving God, you call us to turn to you and invite us into your vision of justice and peace.  Continue to renew us by the power of your Spirit, that we might be filled with resurrection hope; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    Do any of you start to feel a little bit frazzled this time of year? ... How many of you are working on some sort of a “to do” list – a list of all of the things you would like to get done before Christmas? ... And so, in the midst of all of these things that need to be done, how does it make you feel to hear John the Baptist proclaiming “Repent!” and “Prepare the way of the Lord!”? (responses)

    At least one commentator suggests that it’s hard to hear John the Baptist at the best of times, but that it is particularly difficult during Advent (workingpreacher.org).  It is almost like we are adding a burden of guilt on top of everything else that’s going on.  My suspicion is that when most people hear the word “repent,” they think about being sorry for your sins and confessing them to God.  While this is certainly part of repentance, there is more to the word than simply turning away from sin.

    Repentance has the sense of turning around, or changing direction, or re-orienting oneself.  It’s kind of like using a compass when you’re out in the woods.  You discover that you’ve been heading in the wrong direction, and you use the compass to reorient yourself and to get yourself headed in the right direction.  Or, if you’re using GPS, it would be more like “re-calculating”!  And so, when we think about John the Baptist, he was not just trying to get people to turn away from sin, but also to turn toward God – to re-orient themselves in order to be able to see God at work.

    What if we were to do a similar kind of re-orientation with our preparations for Christmas?  What if we were to start with all of our hopes and dreams for Christmas and work our way backwards?  What I mean is this: Picture, for just a moment, the kind of Christmas that you would like to have.  What would make it a good Christmas?  What are the things that you would like to see as part of your Christmas celebration?  Start with your hopes and dreams for Christmas, and work your way back to all of the items on your “to do” list (and you might even want to do this on paper when you get home).  As you think about your “to do” list, ask yourselves which items on that list will help those hopes and dreams that you have to actually happen.  It is a means of prioritizing the things that might be on your list, and it is a means of re-orienting yourselves from simply doing one thing after another to working towards a goal.

    At the same time, as we’re thinking about this re-orienting, there are some startling images in our reading from Isaiah today that also serve to re-orient our thinking.  These images move from despair to hope, from death to life, and from war to peace.  Some explanation is probably needed, however, in order to get the full impact of what Isaiah is saying.

    This passage starts out by talking about “the stump of Jesse” (Isa. 11:1).  First of all, do you have any idea who Jesse is? (responses) He’s actually David’s father – and that would be King David – the same David who was promised that one of his descendants would rule in Israel forever (2 Sam. 7).  The other thing that you might want to know is that rulers in the Ancient Near East were often depicted as a tree of life (Sundays & Seasons).  And so, when we think about the “stump of Jesse,” it is as if David’s entire family tree has been hacked down with an axe.  The last king who was a descendant of David was carried off to Babylon and died there, and so the people are feeling as if all hope has been lost and as if God has forgotten his promise to David.

    However, this passage from Isaiah reorients everybody’s attention to a shoot that is growing out of the stump.  The stump is not dead, as you might have thought at first.  God can bring life from death and hope out of despair.  At the same time, this is not just any shoot that is growing out of the stump of Jesse.  This new king from the line of David will be God’s ideal ruler.  The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, and he will judge with justice and righteousness, especially when it comes to the poor and the humble.  Does this sound like any king that you have ever heard about?  (Maybe Jesus?)

    Certainly many people believe that this prophecy from Isaiah was fulfilled hundreds of years later when Jesus was born.  And so we continue to use these same words when we pray for the Holy Spirit at baptism or at confirmation: “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord”, [the spirit of joy in God’s presence] (Isa. 11:2-3).  It is only the last spirit where the wording gets changed slightly.

    Of course, one of the other startling images from Isaiah is often referred to as the peaceful kingdom – the wolf and the lamb together; the cow and the bear; and little children playing near poisonous snakes and not getting hurt.  This scene with all of the animals together and young children playing among them is sometimes described as an illustration of the peace and harmony of paradise (HarperCollins Study Bible) – the same kind of peace and harmony that will mark the rule of this ideal king.  Could it be that this is how animals will relate to one another in heaven?

    It is also interesting to note that a number of novels that have been written picture Jesus as a young boy being perfectly at home among wild animals and relating quite peacefully to them.  In the gospels, we really only get a hint of this relationship to the animals in one verse.  In the Gospel of Mark, as Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is described, there is this one little phrase, “and he was with the wild beasts” (Mk. 1:13).  Could it be that these few words from Mark seek to connect Jesus with the ideal ruler described by Isaiah?

    Once again, this vision of the peaceful kingdom sought to reorient people’s thinking from the rubble around Jerusalem where the wild animals were able to roam to a vision of God’s shalom – of God’s peace.  It sought to reorient their vision from destruction and war and despair to a future filled with hope – a future where God would reign and where God’s justice and God’s righteousness would be carried out.

    In the same way, we are being invited to reorient our vision today.  It is relatively easy to look around us and see everything that’s wrong.  It is relatively easy to simply become overwhelmed by the busy-ness of the season, and all of the noise and lights, and the rush to finish up one thing and get on to the next.  And so, in the midst of all this we hear the call to repent – to change direction – to reorient ourselves so that we can see God at work.

    Do things look hopeless?  Remember that God can bring life from death and hope in the midst of despair.  Does there seem to be too much conflict and fighting?  Remember that the reign of God is a reign of peace, and that God can bring peace in the midst of conflict, even now.  Do all the things that you need to attend to feel like a burden?  Be aware of your hopes and dreams for Christmas, and figure out from there which things are actually important.

    And “may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13).  Amen.

Advent 2(A)                                    Isaiah 11:1-10
December 8, 2013                                Romans 15:4-13
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church                        Matthew 3:1-12
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2013 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved