The Root of Jesse

 

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.