the Third Tuesday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
New Shoots from Old Roots
Today’s text from Isaiah brings to mind the many tree stumps dotting the perimeter of our home. When we moved here our single acre of land was ringed with overgrown box elder, or Manitoba maple. These trees grow like weeds but have a short lifespan. Wind storms have felled a number of them; the stumps are what remain after we clean up the fallen trees. The ongoing maintenance involves cutting out the shoots that continue to come up every spring from these stumps. Even though by all appearances the tree is dead, cut down, gone, there is still life down in the roots of these stumps.
Isaiah’s prophecy points us toward the deeper reality beneath the surface. What appears to be true is not, in actual fact, all that is true. By all appearances, the line of David is but a stump, a dead tree cut down and carried away. Isaiah sees something else, however: God is not finished with the line of David. There is life under that which appears lifeless. The Spirit of God will bring something new, a Son of David who will not be deceived by appearances, but will be able to judge beyond the senses of sight and hearing to discern the mysterious wisdom of the Kingdom of God.
My problem starts with the next verse. Isaiah prophesies justice for the poor and judgment for the wicked, using great images of impossible feats of peace—apex carnivores turning vegan and cuddling harmlessly with their prey, deadly vipers becoming cute playmates for children, the whole earth filled with the Shalom of God’s rule and reign. I love these images, these promises, but they are so big—so unattainable. The problems of the world, even of my own life sometimes, seem so hopeless to overcome. World peace is something we long for, but is it actually possible when I can’t even seem to dislodge the discontent in my heart? These big stories and big promises seem so far removed from the ordinariness of my life.
There are times my faith seems a lifeless thing, a dead stump left behind after the weariness of life blew down the tree. There are days when the voice of doubt is so loud and overwhelming that I’m tempted to pack it in. The promises of God are too big, the problems of the world too complex. It is in these times that I need the Holy Son of David to help me see the deeper wisdom. This One who Isaiah foresaw teaches us that the kingdom appears among us in smallness; it arrives as mustard seeds and microscopic yeast, a vulnerable babe sheltered in a stable. The new shoots of kingdom growth don’t show up as a fully-formed tree, they begin as a bud and emerge slowly, gaining strength as they grow.
Advent texts bring with them this tension between big promises for big problems and the ordinariness of kingdom life. It is the small things that build the resilience and readiness for the big promises to become real in our lives. Faith cannot grow if we do not do the ordinary practice of attending to the stories, hearing again Isaiah’s prophecy of hope, listening to one another’s experiences of the ways God’s deeper wisdom sprouts into Shalom in our lives. Justice cannot roll like a river if our hearts have not been transformed through the small practices of welcoming the other and making room for difference. Peace cannot fill the earth if my relationships have not been reconciled through daily practices of listening and forgiveness.
It could be that the big promises are there to help us lift our gaze to Jesus, but in my experience Jesus keeps rooting me back in the small, humble ways the kingdom grows among us—those ordinary, regular and local practices of worship and sacrament, hospitality and prayer, and the myriad beautiful ways we can express love to our neighbour.
Maybe this year, as I cut the shoots away from our stumps, I will remember these things and find, as I so often do, that God has been at work under the surface, bringing life into my faith even when it seems a stumpy thing. May it be so, for me and for you.
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