A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 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.

    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; 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. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

    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. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. 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.

    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.

    Advent is a time to renew our hope, and a time to remember who is the one reliable source of our hope.

    When the prophet Isaiah wrote the words we read above, hope was a scarce commodity. The nation of Israel that had risen to such power and splendor with the reign of King David and his son Solomon was by then just a shadow of what it had been. The nation had been split into two far less significant kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south, because of internal quarrels. The weakened halves were subjected to invasions and foreign domination. Isaiah lived to see Israel completely destroyed and her surviving people scattered. He began his public ministry just about the time that Judah, where he lived, was beginning to loose her independence as well. David’s royal family line, though it still reigned in Judah, was no longer the powerful force it once was. The prophet’s reference to the "stump of Jesse" is an allusion to this decline. (Jesse was David’s father.) The once mighty tree was now indeed just a decaying stump!

    But Isaiah knew that appearances are deceiving and despair is not the final answer. There is hope. There is hope because humanity’s future does not rest in politics or military power. Rulers and nations may come and go, but God is still in charge. Isaiah knew that God is able to raise up a new order from the decay. God would cause a new shoot to grow from the barren stump; someone from David’s line who would transform the world completely.

    This new ruler, filled with the Spirit of God, would bring peace from strife. He would rule with wisdom. Evil would be judged and destroyed. He would at last bring justice and protection to those to whom it had been denied. Peace would reign. Even nature would reflect this new order, with predators and prey living at peace with one another. Children, the most vulnerable of humanity, would play in safety among what were once dangerous creatures. This new order would come, as Isaiah says in language of great beauty, because at last the earth would be as filled with the knowledge of God as the sea is filled with water.

    Christians understand this lyrical passage as foretelling Jesus; the One who came to turn the world upside down, to reorder values, and ultimately to judge evil and bring lasting peace and joy to God’s faithful ones. Indeed it is a vision from Isaiah’s tradition that Jesus tells us in Luke 4 that he fulfills. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

    This is an Advent season where we too dream of peace. Hope is harder to find than it was even a few months ago. There seems no end of strife in the ancient land where Isaiah lived. Again blood runs in Jerusalem’s streets. Like the people of ancient Judah, we too have seen our sense of security and safety erode. We have seen terrible things in our own land that we would never have dreamed we would see. We see human hearts filled with incomprehensible hatred. Before all is said and done, we may see more things as bad or worse in our nation and in our world.

    But despite it all, this season is still about hope; about remembering that God is still in charge and still able to bring new order from violence and decay. The promise of the peaceable kingdom to come is still real. We can still trust that the One born in Bethlehem so long ago will bring it about in time. Pray hard and often that the knowledge of God will soon fill the earth as water fills the sea.

Disciple C