A Motley Christmas Tree: O Root of Jesse & O Key of David ~ Isaiah 11:1, 10; 9:7; 22:22-25 (O Coming King series)

Have you ever noticed that there are essentially two kinds of Christmas trees. Both are great (no judgment). The first is the carefully crafted tree, it’s orderly, matching, neat, and intricately beautiful. It has a theme and a well thought out color palette. The second is more my favorite: the motley tree filled with homemade ornaments that do not match, some don’t make

sense, others might be called ugly but all of it made in love and filled with meaning. Toward the end of her life, my grandmother enjoyed making ornaments out of beads. One in particular was lime green with strings of beads sticking out in all directions - affectionately called Sputnik by my dad, after the Russian satellite, which we would fight over – who got to place it on the tree? Where should it go? Well, the ornaments on our Advent tree this Sunday are wild and trippy filled with images and mixed metaphors: a root, shoot, stump, and banner and a key and broken peg. What do these ornaments or titles reveal about Jesus? What do they reveal about what God thinks of us? What do they invite us to do? Last week Bruce Fisk talked about the titles Truth and Lord.

Today, our first ornament or title for Jesus is Root of Jesse found in Isaiah 11:1 and 10.

Here we encounter David’s kingdom imagined as a stump: destroyed, gone, “graveyard dead,” as we would say in Texas. And, it’s not David’s root but the root of Jesse in place of David - an attempt to downplay the pomp and glory of the royal house. It’s a metaphor for Jesus and God’s plan that points to the hidden, the unremarkable, the below the surface.

Root of Jesse as a title for Jesus reminds us that God loves stumps: the small, the insignificant, the hardly worth mentioning, the forgettable. He loves to create royal lines from backwater families and pick the youngest to be the king. Advent is a time when we remember and look at the many struggles and much darkness around us and whisper a simple prayer for God to do something with our stumps. And when you pray – don’t look for the fireworks, don’t run to the cathedral, don’t imagine that it’s bright lights and the smell of pumpkin spice. Think small. For many of us, Isaiah 11 offers a funny corrective - our God is seemingly too big. It’s curious to me that Isaiah’s prophecies about the messiah sound poetically big and brash, awesome and scary. How could we miss it? “He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth.” His breath shall slay the wicked (insert joke of choice here). There is a wolf and a lamb, a leopard and baby goat, a den of adders. It’s like some terrifying, apocalyptic petting zoo.

And yet these are foretellings about an unwed teenage mother, in a backwater part of the world, who offers a simple “yes” and gives birth to a baby whose first crib is a feeding trough. It’s a prophecy about a prophet who dies with less followers than are currently in this room. In the same way, at the end of our Bible, the book of Revelation (5:5) speaks of the Root of Jesse with a loud rock concert of images filled with lights, sound, and theater. Reading Revelation 5 its easy to think that God is easy to see, to be understood. Advent, however, borrowing images that appear in both the Old Testament and book of Revelation, reminds us of a very important spiritual truth – that we still currently live somewhat in the shadow of BC (Before Christ) time – in darkness and pain – waiting. And that God’s coming whether past, present, or future is often teeny, small, easily dismissed, hardly noticed except by those who are willing to humbly look for the roots. It reminds us that, even with Scripture in our hands, it’s possible to be over confident and imagine that you can see and know God so clearly. Advent teaches us that God is always a surprise and loves to be mysterious. And yes, He won’t remain hidden, but to see Him now you’re going to have to get down on all fours, to humble yourself, to think small – baby, backwater, stump and root small. Redemption, the Christian life, God’s work in the world often occurs in hiddenness through small moves, tiny welcomes, little prayers. And the prayer of Advent is one of the simplest: “Come.”

And Chapter 9 of Isaiah’s prophecy will not even allow our own faithfulness or our ability to see to be the metric for God’s work. Verse 9:7 reminds us that salvation, justice, righteousness comes because of God’s zeal, God’s desire, God’s hutzpah, God’s fierce determination to get what God wants. This Advent I invite you to spend time looking through the small places of your life, practicing a small kindness, offering a tiny welcome, exploring a stump, and inviting the root, the One who works below the ground, to come and breathe life again. Join us after worship to make a Christmas gift for someone who’s homeless. Come and see what God might do.

The Second ornament and title for Jesus is a key and a broken peg, Isaiah 22:22-25.

A second prophecy about the coming King that comes from Isaiah also appears in the gospels (Matt. 16) and the book of Revelation (3:7): that the coming messiah will wield a master key. Notice that 22:22 speaks of God placing a key upon his servant’s shoulders – this is quite a burden and big responsibility. Keys are big deals. Think about what takes a key. Shout them out: a home, a car, a lock. Keys connect us to family, to valuables, offer protection. They are not to be taken lightly.

Giving someone a key is a huge sign of trust. It’s literally unfettered access. And you know what Jesus does with keys? He throws open doors, sets prisoners free, locks up demons, unlocks compassion. His words unlock meaning. His actions lock up wickedness. On the one hand, Jesus already has the keys. They are his, Isaiah tells us, and no manner of complaining or disbelief will change that. When I was five years old I discovered how to unlock the bathroom door using a paper clip. I loved harassing my friends and family by unlocking the bathroom door only to hear people scream, “Don’t come in!” It didn’t make me too popular but I was learning to lean into my comedic side. But that’s not Jesus. Jesus doesn’t break in or shame or point and laugh but knocks before he uses his key – to your life, to your valuables, to your hopes, to your dreams. Jesus is often polite – he has

the key but the book of Revelation says that he “stands at the door and knocks” (Rev. 3:20). Why should you open the door? Why should you trust the One who has the key? Well, that’s where the last image comes in.

In 22:22 Isaiah moves from the image of a master key to a peg which becomes “a throne of honor for the house of his father” and a peg which holds people. Everything – we are told – hangs on this peg. And yet, that peg will break for us, the Lord declares through the prophet Isaiah. Why can you trust the One who wields the key? You can

trust Jesus because he agreed to be the peg that would carry us all. He’s the peg on which it all hangs. He’s the one who was took our pain, our brokenness, our guilt, for us, in our stead. He has opened a door that no one can shut but he will not break in. He is the shoot with deep roots from the stump that no one can stop.

So this tiny One, underground Messiah, backwater baby, stump of a man, stands at the door and knocks. He wants to enter and unlock joy, salvation, hope, and life, amidst darkness. And make no mistake, it will come to past both now and in the world to come. And all you need to say is, “Come in.”