The Root (Isaiah 11:1-10)
Rev. Peter Heckert
12/04/22

+ Grace to you, and peace, from God our heavenly Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. + Amen.

The text for our meditation on second Sunday of Advent is our Old Testament lesson, where Isaiah prophesies, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”
Here ends our text; my dear Christian friends …

It needed to come down. It was too dangerous to keep up; the problem was, it was also incredibly dangerous to take down. I’m talking about the big maple tree in my parents’ backyard – that sucker had to be at least 40 years old at the time, and it had grown massive, easily 50 feet tall. The problem was, it was dying, and worse, it was surrounded by utility lines, including telephone and electric. Taking it down wouldn’t be easy, but as my dad rightly pointed out, it needed to be done. Thus, he scaled the heights of the tree with rope in hand in order to tie it around various branches or larger sections of the trunk. Meanwhile, I remained on the ground, on the other end of the rope, ready to pull the limb or trunk in a safe direction as dad used the chainsaw. 

I cannot imagine how many OSHA regulations we violated, but hey, all’s well that ends well, since dad and I are still alive. Albeit slowly and methodically, we got the tree down. Now, all that remains is a large, grey, ground-level stump at the crest of the hill in the backyard. That maple tree is no more; once large and lofty, with incredible leaf changes in the fall to the most beautiful fiery red … now reduced to this food and fodder for insects and moss. Cut down. Rotting. Dead. Gone.

Trees can certainly be fickle and touchy like that. All it takes is the introduction of a disease, a blight, a bug, and the tree will begin dying and needs to be cut down. It’s no surprise, then, that God uses arboreal terms to refer to His people Israel. The time at which Isaiah was prophesying in our text was before the fall of Judah to the Babylonians, but make no mistake: Israel, once high and mighty, beautiful and majestic, was rotten inside. His chosen people, the people from whom the promised Seed of woman would come to crush the head of the serpent, had caved, time and again over the generations, to adultery and idolatry, greed and corruption. They mingled the blood of their sacrifices to one true God with the detestable sacrifices of their children to Moloch. They trampled on the poor, mocked the weak, abused the faithful, indulged in decadence and pleasure and iniquity. They were a stiff-necked people, knowing the truth, yet abandoning it for a lie. Mighty, yes, but rotten, and in dire need of being cut down and destroyed.

YHWH tells Isaiah as much upon the prophet’s commissioning in chapter six. Isaiah asks the Lord how long he must prophesy to the people; YHWH’s answer is, “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The mighty and rotten tree of Israel needed to be taken down, and taken down it was. The northern kingdom fell first to the Assyrians in 722 BC, and the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians nearly a century and a half later. The people were either killed, carted off into exile and slavery, or left in squalor to eke out a miserable existence from the dust and the ashes. The people of Israel, the people from whom the Messiah was promised to come … were cut down to a mere remnant, a stump.

Such devastation seems so final, so complete, as though nothing could bring Israel out of the dustbin of history. YHWH, however, had different plans. Even as He allowed the pagan nations to lay waste to His holy city and temple, He had already given a promise to His people: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.” The King of Creation is faithful to His promises, and that means that the stump of Jesse’s tree was not entirely dead. No, from this devastated and humbled and dead people would come the promised Seed of woman, the shoot and branch, very much alive, which would bear abundant fruit.

YHWH tells what to expect of this shoot from the root of Jesse: the Spirit of the Lord would be upon Him, with wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord, in whom is His delight. He would judge rightly and righteously, meting out punishment with the rod of His wrath and slaying the wicked with a breath. He would be righteous and faithful in a way never before seen. As a result of this shoot out of Jesse’s stump, creation would be restored to its primordial tranquility and peace: wolves dwelling with lambs, leopards with young goats, calf and lion, and a little child to lead this blissful menagerie. “They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.”

There is only One in history who fits this perfectly. It wasn’t Hezekiah, Josiah, or any of the rare kings of Judah who actually “did good in the eyes of YHWH.” The Babe of Bethlehem, whose birth we will celebrate in a matter of weeks, grew into the man baptized in the river Jordan, on whom the Holy Spirit descended and rested. He wouldn’t judge based on appearances, but He knew the hearts of all with whom He interacted. His righteousness was unparalleled – He knew no sin … until He became sin. His faithfulness was complete and unmoved – He was faithful unto death, “even death on a cross.” This Jesus, this Immanuel, God with us, would receive Himself the rod of the Father’s wrath, taking the punishment that humanity deserves, and dying … only to be received back to life three days later.

But what of the rest of the prophecy? The harmony and peace in creation, the perfect service of creation by Man? The earth being full of the knowledge of the Lord? The Root of Jesse being the signal for all peoples and nations? These things seem about as far from reality as one can get. It’s true; at present, predators and prey are still in a death struggle, and humanity is at odds with all of creation. Yes, comparatively speaking, there are few who know the one true God as He is, few who call upon Him at all. Yes, peoples and nations are still divided, even ones which claim Jesus as their Lord. But like the faithful remnant of Israel, in faith, we wait upon YHWH. We aren’t waiting for Him to send the Messiah, to save His people from their sins. We wait for the Babe of Bethlehem, the crucified and resurrected Son of God, to return, in triumph and glory, in judgment and restoration, to fulfill these words that Isaiah spoke so many centuries ago. We wait in eager expectation for the blessed Day when He defeats the final enemy, death; when He restores His creation to eternal perfection; when, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” In faith, the remnant of Israel waited for the Lord’s Anointed. In faith, we wait for the blessed Day when our faith becomes sight, a day which will be here … soon, and very soon.

+ In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. + Amen.