Isaiah 11.1-10; Romans 15.4-13; Matthew 3.1-12

Christmas trees have begun to spring up everywhere, particularly in institutions - schools, hospitals, nursing homes etc. I’ve not yet seen one in a home but no doubt they will turn up soon. And I’ve had several conversations with people who have talked to me about wanting to get their tree early this year.

I wonder what your tree will be like. Is your family one who brings out the same decorations year by year and enjoys the feeling of security and nostalgia for particular objects? Perhaps you’re people who go over the top and put everything you possibly can on the branches from the bell shape covered in glitter that your 40-year-old daughter made when she was at playgroup to a surfeit of Cadbury’s chocolate tree decorations.
Or are you terribly civilised and have a smart and upmarket tree with a co-ordinated theme that changes every year depending on the latest fashion?

God’s tree is somewhat different from our highly prized and decorated trees. God’s tree is a shoot that comes from an old stump - a stump that looks barren and bare, but which, by the grace of God is still alive on the inside, though it looks dead on the outside. Today’s first words in our Old Testament reading build on what Isaiah has previously said - It will be like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains standing when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump.”

From that seed of a stump will come a shoot and a branch. It will have its roots in Jesse - the father of King David - making clear that this shoot will be of David’s line. What transforms this dead-looking stump and gives it life is the Spirit of God.

At the time of Isaiah, God’s people were in many ways like a dead stump - their kings and leaders were corrupt and unfaithful, justice and following God’s ways had lost their importance; it was as if the people were dead.

But God had always kept a remnant alive and faithful, and from this remnant would come life again. God’s spirit would endow this person with kingly attributes - wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and fear of God. This king will be a just and righteous king, who will judge the poor not by the condition of their clothes or status but with equity, treating them the same as any person would be treated, with fairness, for all are created with equal worth in the sight of God.

The guiding principles of this king will be righteousness and faithfulness to God’s ways, two things that are lacking in the leaders of God’s people at the time of Isaiah.
I love the picture that follows - the wolf and the lamb at peace with each other, the leopard and the kid, the calf, lion and fatling. Of course, it’s an image that goes back to the picture in Genesis of the Garden of Eden before the Fall, when all living creatures lived together in harmony and at peace.

The mention of the nursing and weaned children and the asp and the adder’s den also goes back to Genesis - it’s a restoration, a return to the time before sin. Remember that one of the curses that God calls down in the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the horticultural paradise was that the woman and her offspring would be enemies with the snakes who crawl on the ground on their bellies. So this picture in Isaiah will provoke in the minds of people the idea of a reversed situation, a return.

What is evident in this picture is that the vulnerable are restored to safety - the lamb, the kid, the child. It is the powerful who have to change most. It is the powerful who have given up their desire for power in order to lay side-by-side with the vulnerable.

And this is important. It is what the Pharisees and Sadducees in our Gospel reading weren’t willing to do. Their power, their misplaced confidence in their ancestry, blinds them to the righteous ways of God, blinds them to the need for repentance.

In God’s eyes all are equal, but, if we look at the example of Jesus, we see that much of his focus is on those whom the world does not treat equally.

First, they are the ones who recognise what Jesus is offering them.

Second, there is something in Jesus that is seeking to restore this balance - think of the passage he quotes from Isaiah that we read about in Luke 4 - the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

In the ways of Jesus, there is always a concern and a care for the poor and vulnerable. It is something that we too are called to. Those of us who do not bear fruit in this area must heed the warning of John to the Pharisees and Sadducees - even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

John’s seems to be implying that they have only come to him for baptism as a safeguard against what is to come - that they see baptism as some kind of talisman, keeping them from harm. But this will not work, it is repentance that must come first. His water baptism without repentance will not keep anyone safe, because his baptism is not a magic trick or potion but sign of repentance.

We too must repent when we don’t treat the poor and vulnerable with care and compassion. I was shocked to read in last week’s Church Times an article about next year’s UN Year of Sanitation that lack of proper sanitation leads each year to the deaths of 1.5million children. 42,000 people die each week from poor sanitary conditions. And, yet, this could all change within two decades, if governments were willing to give less than one per cent of the amount of military spending in 2005.

It is a scandal that billions die from poverty and lack of clean water, access to medicine and so on, while our newspapers are full of statistics about how much food the average British household throws away each week. A government study published last month showed that about a third of the food we buy ends up in the bin. That’s 6.7 million tonnes. Some of that does include things like tea bags and bones that we wouldn’t eat anyway, but most of it could have been eaten.

That is not justice or righteousness. Some of the sterns words of the prophets come to mind when I read statistics like that, about how those who have wealth exploit the poor.

God’s justice is a powerful concept, and we will be judged on how we respond. What we are called to is repentance. Repentance is not just, though, about recognising our wrongdoings, but also about turning our back on them and behaving differently in the future.

It’s not easy to live a life based on God’s justice, but we have a strong and powerful vision of what it means - a time when weak and strong live together side by side, where no one goes without, where all are treated as having worth and value in themselves. Not because of money or intelligence or special giftings but because they are children of God.

John’s call was to repentance. But he had some good news to share too. God’s king was coming near; the kingdom of heaven was no longer so far away, the kingdom of freedom and justice. And God’s king would bring with him a gift for us all. His baptism would not just be of water but would be the Holy Spirit.

It is the Holy Spirit that enables the shoot from the stump to have wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And the great news is that, through Jesus, the gift of God’s Spirit can rest on us too.
It is through the power of God’s Spirit that we can look at our lives, and in opening ourselves to the Spirit’s gentle guiding, we can be brought to a knowledge of those things of which we ought to repent.

The Holy Spirit is not just for the coming king; it is a gift that is offered to us all and which gives life and light to our Christian lives.

It is the Holy Spirit that will lead us into righteousness and justice and hope. It is the Holy Spirit that will lead us towards that place where weak and powerful are equal and all live together in harmony and peace. And, when this comes about, there will also be true joy, joy in the freedom that God gives us.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”