The Tree Stump of Jesse: New Life in Unexpected Places

Pastor Joe Skogmo

Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, Lowry, MN

12/08/2013 Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10

 (‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,’ ELW #257, v. 4): 

O come, O Branch of Jesse, free

your own from Satan’s tyranny;

from depths of hell your people save,

and give them vict’ry o’er the grave.

REJOICE! REJOICE! Emmanuel, shall come to you, O Israel.

O come, O Branch of Jesse, free—this line is rooted in the text you read today:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out…the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples…his dwelling shall be glorious. –Isaiah 11:1, 10-

This imagery of a shoot and eventually a branch coming from the lifeless stump of a tree is a profound picture, and might be one of most encapsulating images of Christianity— an image where new life happens in places that seem hopeless and dead.

But before we explore this 11^th chapter of Isaiah and the theme of ‘new life,’ we’ll have to do a little review and background…because stump of Jesse? What?!?

REVIEW: We have to go back a little ways to understand first who Jesse is, and then second, the context from which Isaiah is writing. This way, you’ll understand Jesse and what Isaiah means when he talks about the stump.

So…after 40 years of wilderness wandering, Joshua conquered the Holy Land, and then the tribes of Israel settled and were each governed by Judges, some of these Judges being familiar names like Samson and Gideon (in, you guessed it, the book of Judges). Eventually, and in the books of 1^st & 2^nd Samuel (around 1020BCE) those tribes decided they wanted a single king. Saul becomes the first king of Israel; he was awful, but then…the son of a poor Bethlehem farmer named Jesse…became king. The name of this king was David. He began his rule in 1000BCE. David, the son of Jesse, although imperfect, was Israel’s greatest king, leading his people in relative peace, prosperity, and worship. Your Psalm today, 72, describes how kings should rule, and David was the embodiment of Psalm 72.

Nevertheless, when Isaiah is talking about the stump of Jesse, he is talking about David’s dad, and his ‘family tree.’

But Isaiah is writing hundreds of years after the reign of David, after the kingdom split, and likely right before the Assyrian empire conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Isaiah was prophesying at an intense time and in an ugly place. Assyria was breathing down the neck of both Kingdoms; the future was looking bleak, and ended up that way. Isaiah did a lot of warning, a lot of calling out, a lot of naming the decline and destruction, and a lot of foretelling of future despair and suffering. As to this horrifying context in which Isaiah was preaching, the professor who spoke at my ordination said it best, ‘Just think of it as serving in Wisconsin.”[1]…

So, context is set—you know who Jesse is and from where Isaiah is writing…

Now what is with the image of the stump and the shoot? Here Isaiah was declaring that Israel’s family tree, of Jesse and his son David, had become a stump. What he means is that the tree of Israel’s leadership, which had once been great and faithful, was now a lifeless, unfaithful, weak, and divided stump. Isaiah made this clear through 10 chapters of harsh and ruthless truth-telling. But, astonishingly, in ch. 11, he comes with a profound proclamation of hope…and for us, an Advent hope.

Isaiah proclaimed that although the present and the near future was dire, although the present and near future had about as much life as a tree stump, that “a shoot shall [still] come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out” (Isa 11:1). The family tree of Jesse and David, shall go on. There will be new life, even where there is death. Israel is a stump, but not a stump without hope. And “Hope is not simply feeling better; hope is not simply comfort; [rather,] hope is a sense of [a better] future,”[2] a sense that with God, new life is always possible.

For Isaiah, this hope was in a coming king, a king from the lineage of David, but like none other; one who rules with “righteousness” and “faithfulness” (Isa 11:5). With this king “enters God’s ‘spirit’ (v.2),” and this spirit can “create an utter newness.”[3]

This king will be the shoot from a seemingly lifeless tree stump. According to Isaiah, this King will change everything. In Isaiah’s vision, this king “will…be the kind of [leader] who will attend to the needs of the ‘meek’ and the ‘poor,’” to the sinner, to the ashamed, to the powerless; he will advocate for the politically and the spiritually oppressed, setting them free with God’s love and justice.[4]

This king, says Isaiah, will not wear armor of a warrior king, but rather, “righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,” and his enduring love and “faithfulness the belt around his loins” (11:5).

The love of this king will change reality as we know it; according to Isaiah’s vision, this king will usher in a reality where we will no longer think we need to compete and devour one another, but rather to reconcile. His reign will push us to forgive those whom we thought we’d never forgive, to invite into our homes people we thought we’d never invite, to offer our time and possessions out of feelings of abundance rather than scarcity, to beat our weapons into tools of love, and learn no more war (Isa 2:1-5), and like a wolf living with a lamb (11:6), this king will usher in a reign where we no longer fear the other—the immigrant, the Muslim, the Jew, the Greek, the outcast, the poor, the dirty, the republican, the democrat, the occupier, or the tea partier; rather, together, acknowledging the reign of this loving king, like “the cow and the bear” we might “graze” together (11:7)! As Isaiah says, under the reign of this great king, even “the oldest of enemies—wolf-lamb, leopard-kid, calf-lion, cow-bear, lion-ox—are made friends.”[5]

The love of this king makes us and all things new.

…And this king has come. This king has come, born in a manger.

So whatever your tree stump is, whatever the place is in your life where it seems like all is lost, all is dead, there is no hope for growth or re-growth, reconciliation, or new life…whatever it is, remember the shoot that God grows from the tree stump of Jesse.

With God’s faithfulness and love, new life is possible. May that be your Advent hope. Whatever burden or darkness is around you, may the words of Isaiah move you to hope and believe that it will not overcome you. From terminal illness, to financial uncertainty, to seemingly irreconcilable differences between you and others, let Isaiah’s words move you to have hope and courage that these things will not define you. May these words liberate you from violence, division, shame, guilt, and fear, into new life. It may be painfully slow, but may Advent hope be alive in you as we look to the shoot of Jesse, the King born in a manger who changes everything.

To paraphrase that same professor, as we look at the manger, our reality is no longer merely the stump of the Jesse tree; rather, it is the Christmas tree—a decorated reminder of  the light, life, hope, and joy in the God who makes all things new. Remember that as you gather round the tree this season, remembering the new branch that God grew out of the lifeless tree stump of Israel, and thus the new life that God grows in you.

Let us pray,

O Come, O King of nations, come,

O Cornerstone that binds in one:

refresh the hearts that long for you;

restore the broken, make us new.

REJOICE! REJOICE! Emmanuel, shall come to you, O Israel. 

-‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, v. 7-

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     [1] Rolf Jacobson, Sermon: Service of Ordination – Joe Skogmo, September 29^th, 2013.

     [2] David Lose, Second Sunday of Advent Sermon Brainwave, Podcast #326, http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=458.

     [3] Walter Brueggemann, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV—Year A (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 12.

     [4] Ibid.

     [5] Ibid.