Sermon Preached by Rev Coralie McCluskey
at All Saints Datchworth

Sunday 5 December 2004

Advent 2, 2004

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable unto God our creator, redeemer and sustainer.

 

Sitting at my desk, gazing at this Church I try desperately to avoid looking at my rough pasture, a glorious mix of nettle, bonfire ash and tree roots.  Yet it was from that untidy mass came my inspiration for today’s sermon, because as I sat at my desk yesterday I noticed growing out of the stump of an ash tree were many strong shoots.

 

In our first reading this morning Isaiah foretells that even though the family tree of Jesse, David’s father, is a stump a new shoot will spring - a true king filled with the Sprit and endowed with all the virtues of his ancestors.  The new king, the Messiah will be a champion of the poor and will restore peace – a vision of a new world.

 

 The astronauts were the first people to see the earth from outside.  As they gazed down on the earth from space, they realised as never before that we are one family, the earth our common home. One of them said later: the first day in space we all pointed to our own countries.  The second day we pointed to our continents.  By the third day, we were aware of only one earth.

 

The prophets had the same kind of high and wide vision, a vision of how things could be.  But how real is that vision?  Four weeks ago we were here remembering those who died serving their country in the two world wars and other conflicts down the ages.  So many dead, so much bloodshed, so many fears – sometimes it feels that the light has gone out, hope abandoned.  Yet Isaiah had a vision where: the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them.  A utopian vision far removed from the scenes that will be encountered over the Christmas period in some homes as family members fall out and refuse to talk to one another.

 

So how do we respond to Isaiah’s vision, a vision of peace and harmony, is it just a dream, a fairy tale without the glitter.

I don’t think it is.  This vision and those of other prophets correspond to the deepest longings of the human heart and point to God’s ultimate goal for us.  These visions nurture our souls and our hearts.  They offer us hope when we are close to despair and courage when we are tempted to give up, they give us the energy to overcome great obstacles and painful setbacks.

 

The prophets lived in the real world and were just as dismayed by its injustices and horrors as we are.  Yet they had a dream of a new world, a world free from injustice and through faith in god they were able to rise above their dismay.  The vision of a new Messiah and their sense of our capacity for repentance saved them from despair.  History is not a blind alley.  There is always a way out, through repentance, through turning to God.

 

The vision of the peaceable kingdom, in which people live in loving unity with nature, calls for its realisation in our daily lives.  Instead of being an escapist dream it challenges us to anticipate what it promises.  Every time we forgive a neighbour, every time we make a child smile, every time we show compassion to a suffering person, work towards preventing pollution, work for peace and justice in the world, we are making that vision come true.  At the back of the church today is information from the Welwyn, Hatfield and East Herts Amnesty International Group about this year’s Greetings Card Campaign.   This Christmas send a greetings card to a prisoner of conscience and bring hope and encouragement into their lives.

 

We need to keep the vision before us, then it will give us new energy to live it out, right where we are.  We must open our hearts to the dream which the prophets cherished of a world rid of evil by human effort and the grace of God.  Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God here on earth, we his followers are to dedicate ourselves to building that kingdom.

 

This Advent as we prepare, once more, to celebrate the birth of Christ let us keep Isaiah’s vision before us, let us help to spread the Kingdom of God by our actions, out honesty, our kindness, our generosity of Spirit, our love, let us bring hope and light into the dark places in the lives of our brothers and sisters on this one earth, it may be a struggle but it is a struggle that awakens everything that is best and precious within us. 

: the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them.  the cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.  They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

 

Isaiah’s vision lives on in our midst as a task for today and a promise for tomorrow. Amen.