Advent 2022: Isaiah

What kind of Christmas tree do you have? If you have ever bought a real Christmas tree, you might have wondered what happens to the stump when the tree is cut down.

…But then perhaps talk of Christmas decorations seems superficial when faced with all that is in the news at the moment. In fact, when we look around at our world today, it seems there seems to be plenty of scope for prophets of doom. Our neighbours in Ukraine are undergoing the devastation of war, our neighbours in East Africa, famine; our planet as a whole is warming and species are becoming extinct. As Greta Thunberg famously said, at the World Economic Forum in Davos: “You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to…”.

The passage in Isaiah 11:1-10 is preceded in its setting in the Book of Isaiah by similar prophecies of doom. Only a chapter earlier, we have read:

“Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees,/ who write oppressive statues,
To turn aside the needy from justice/ and to rob the poor of my people of their right…
What will you do on the day of punishment,/ in the calamity that will come from far away?”

Isaiah 10:1-3

Here, the expected “punishment” refers to the invasion Judah by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. The Davidic line is to be cut down, the Temple destroyed and the leaders of the people taken into exile, i.e. the end of the known world order for the Judeans, with the loss of everything they hold dear.

Yet, a just few lines later in Isaiah 11:1-10, we read one of the most hopeful passages in the Bible, where there is, poetically expressed, a vision for a world in which:

“The wolf shall live with the lamb,/ the leopard shall lie down with the kid…
The nursing child shall play over the hold of the asp,/ and the weaned child shall put its hand in the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy…”

Isaiah 11:1-10

This poem depicts a new Garden of Eden, a paradise.

The text in Isaiah 11 seems to come from the Second Temple period (516 BC onwards), its reference to the “stump of Jesse” probably referring to the Judean monarchy which was formerly cut down. Following the return from exile at the time of the Persian King Cyrus, the Temple is being (or has been) re-built and, despite all that has gone before, there is hope for a future messiah and for a renewed creation, where justice and peace will reign for all.

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How, as Christians, can we speak hope into our contemporary context? Well, perhaps we could learn a few lessons from this text in Isaiah.

Firstly, the reality of the world and of loss is not tinselled over. The “stump” referred to follows squarely in its context from the preceding passage in Isaiah 10:33ff., with its metaphor of the great trees being cut down.

 Secondly, this is a hope is for a new creation, new growth rooted in God; empowered by the “spirit of the Lord” who “hovered above the waters” (Gen 1:2) in the first creation. We are not reliant purely on our own efforts.

Finally – reading this text from a Christian perspective – our hope in Christ is an ultimate, eschatological hope, that despite current appearances, God’s “end” for the world will prevail. Held in creation by all-powerful, all-loving God, in the words of Julian of Norwich, we can trust that “All shall be well”. (And yes, it turns out that trees can grow again from stumps. A stump can actually grow back into a full-sized tree. Because it is still rooted).

Despite current appearances, God’s “end” for the world will prevail.
A stump can actually grow back into a full-sized tree.
Because it is still rooted.

Published 4 December 2022