Do you remember, back in September when the Queen died, the
official announcement told us that the King and Queen Consort would
remain at Balmoral that night, and return to London the next
day.
King Charles became King the instant his mother died, and
when the time comes for him to die in his turn, his heir –
presumably
the current Prince of Wales –
will instantly become King in
his turn.
Our Royal Family’s line of succession is
pretty secure just now;
all being well, we know who the next few
Kings will be.
But it hasn’t always been so.
Sometimes,
when a reigning monarch dies without an obvious heir, a more distant
relation is invited to become King, as when the first Elizabeth died
and the then James V of Scotland became also James I of England, thus
moving from the Tudor to the Stuart dynasty.
And after Queen
Anne died, the next available Protestant monarch became George I,
instituting the Hanoverian dynasty.
But what has this to
do with our Bible readings this morning?
Well, the Davidic
dynasty was in extreme danger, when this was being written.
The
Assyrians had already taken over Israel and were threatening Judah,
where the Kings were still descended from David.
The descendents
of Jesse –
you remember, that was the name of David’s father
–
the descendents of Jesse are about to be cut off, the tree
cut down.
All that remains is a stump.
But you have
seen tree stumps, haven’t you?
When they have cut down a tree,
or it has blown down in a storm, leaving nothing but a stump.
And,
often, a shoot grows out of that stump, often many shoots, and
sometimes a whole new tree.
And here, Isaiah sees the stump that
is what the House of Jesse is reduced to, and a shoot coming out.
And
that shoot will grow into a tree, and bear fruit –
a new King,
about whom we are told:
“The Spirit of the Lord will
rest on him –
the Spirit of
wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit
of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of
the knowledge and fear of the Lord –
and he will
delight in the fear of the Lord.”
Christians have,
of course, traditionally seen this passage as referring to Jesus.
It
does, of course, but there was probably a local application, too.
But
I don’t know how the picture of what is often called “the
peaceable kingdom” could have had a local application.
A
picture of a garden, perhaps a second Eden, where predators and prey
were together with no fear, although what the predators could have
eaten escapes me, since most are obligate carnivores and do very
badly on a plant-based diet.
A place where children could play
happily in snake pits, and where there was no hatred or
destruction.
A place filled with the knowledge of the Lord “as
the waters cover the sea”.
I wonder if or when that can
ever come true, or a version of it, this side of Heaven.
After
all, we are in a very dark place in our world just now, what with
war, the energy crisis, prices spiralling out of control.
We
have been there before, of course, and no doubt we will go there
again in future times, but when we have just emerged from a global
pandemic –
and in fact, Covid-19 is still around, although
mostly it’s not nearly as serious as it was two years ago –
when
we are just getting back together, to be hit by the current crises,
the Queen’s death, three Prime Ministers in as many months… where
is our hope in all this?
Well, our hope is where it always
was and always has been, in Jesus Christ.
St Paul reminds us
that Christ came for all, no matter who we are,
no matter what
we have done.
And the outworking of that is that through the
endurance taught in the Scriptures –
for often and often they
had to endure far worse than we do –
the endurance, Paul says,
“through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the
encouragement they provide we might have hope.”
And our
hope, he reminds us, is in Jesus.
And so we must accept
everybody, no matter who they are,
because Christ has accepted
us.
And Paul quotes from Isaiah, that the Root of Jesse will
spring up, and bring hope to the Gentiles.
Jesus is our
hope.
Mind you, when we turn to our Gospel reading for
today,
John seems much more fiery and threatening.
But the
point is, who is he threatening?
It was the religious leaders of
the day, the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Now, you have to remember
that these were good men, holy men, and by and large they really did
try to live as they thought God wanted.
But they were very
exclusive.
They were Children of Abraham, and precious few other
people were.
They reckoned that if you were rich, God had
blessed you, but the poor were quite outside the pale.
As for
people like tax-collectors, who collaborated with the occupying
powers, and who sometimes overcharged people by more than the
necessary amount –
they were not paid, but expected to pay
themselves out of the money they collected;
you can quite see
the temptation to charge far more than absolutely
necessary.
Zaccheus, you remember, promised to repay fourfold
those whom he had defrauded. People like Samaritans, the neighbouring
tribe who had a few theological differences with the Pharisees, they
were out.
People who were eunuchs, like the Ethiopian eunuch we
read about in Acts –
they were out.
As for prostitutes,
well…. Plus you had to be very careful not to go near the Temple if
you were unclean, too, and it was all too easy to become unclean
accidentally.
Anyway, the Pharisees and Sadducees were
convinced that they were better at being God’s people than anybody
else was.
But John says they need to produce fruit in keeping
with repentance.
John’s core message was “Repent and
be baptised”;
we have often interpreted repentance to mean
being sorry for our sins, but what it really means is turn right
round and go God’s way, not yours.
If you own a satnav and you
are driving somewhere and misinterpret the instructions,
that
computer voice is apt to say “Turn around when possible”.
You
are not turning round just to retrace your steps,
but to go the
way you need to go to get to your destination.
When the
children of Israel were in the desert and started worshipping the
Golden Calf, God was angry and threatened to wipe them all out and
raise up a new tribe from Moses, but Moses begged him not to, and, in
the old Authorised version, we are told “God repented” and didn’t
wipe them out.
Well, obviously God has no need to repent in the
sense of being sorry;
it just means he changed his mind up, and
decided not to wipe them out, after all.
But the Pharisees
and Sadducees couldn’t see John’s point at all.
They were
interested in what he had to say,
but it didn’t actually apply
to them, they thought.
But John said that their status as
children of Abraham,
which they thought almost automatically
made them right with God, didn’t make them special.
“God
could raise up children of Abraham from these stones, if he wished!”
And then he speaks of the stump –
but in this
case, the stump would be that of a tree cut down because it ceased to
bear fruit.
Echoes here of Jesus in John’s gospel saying:
“I
am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
He cuts off
every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does
bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more
fruitful.”
And talking of pruning, John the Baptist goes
on to say that the One who will be coming after him, immeasurably
greater, will have
“his winnowing fork in his hand, and he will
clear his threshing-floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and
burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
And
Isaiah, before he gets to his peaceable kingdom, tells us that Jesus
“will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with
the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.”
It’s
worrying, isn’t it?
I don’t know about you, but I find
myself far more apt to feel that I’m not going to measure up.
I
am terrified that I will be one of the branches, if not cut off, then
at least severely pruned.
But, you know what?
I think
I am worrying needlessly.
You see, I can’t –
and nor
can you –
make myself into the person I was created to be.
It
doesn’t matter how much willpower we have, we are never going to be
who we were meant to be –
at least, not without Jesus.
In
the passage I quoted earlier about Jesus being the true vine, he says
that branches that bear no fruit will be pruned, certainly –
but
he goes on to say that “If you remain in me and I in you, you will
bear much fruit;
apart from me you can do nothing. If you
do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and
withers;
such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and
burned.”
Of course, that leads me on to worrying that I
am not remaining in him, but
again, that’s a needless worry.
God has far more invested in
our relationship than I do,
and I do
know, when I think about it,
that he will not let me fall out of the hollow of his hand!
I
seem to have wandered away from the Root of Jesse a bit, but that’s
okay.
The Root is still there.
It is still producing its
shoots, the main branch being Jesus,
and our hope is still in
Jesus.
What better words to end with than Paul’s
benediction at the end of the passage from Romans that we heard
read:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and
peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the
power of the Holy Spirit.”
Hope.
Joy.
Peace.
May
God fill each and every one of us with all of those!
Amen.
