Restore Our Peace

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Isaiah 11:1-10

    Are you feeling a bit stumped this holiday season?  Stumped as to what to get those hard to shop for people for Christmas?  Stumped about how to cram all those final Christmas preparation to-dos into just two and a half short weeks? Stumped about why the world is how it is and not how it should be?  Stumped as to why we have a gospel reading where John the Baptist is calling people a brood of vipers in what is supposed to be a time of joy?  
    Our first and second lessons this morning are naming a different kind of “stumped.”  Stumped is a feeling of being cut off, hopeless, dead, with no possibility of a future.  In Isaiah’s time, the kingdom of Judah has been divided from the kingdom of Israel since David’s son, King Solomon, for 12 kings – about 200 years.  The kings are for the most part corrupt and worshipping other gods, leading the people away from God.  As I mentioned last week, they’re caught in the middle of this Syro-Ephraimite war and the Assyrians are looming in.  It is not a hopeful or peaceful time.  The stump of the royal line of David from his father Jesse, and the possibility of a new coming king that would restore justice, faithfulness, and well-being for God’s people seems pretty unlikely.  And yet, the prophet dares to hope in the word of the Lord.  Isaiah promises that a shoot will come out of that stump that looked dead.  A branch shall grow out of his roots.  This new shoot we as Christians recognize as Jesus, branch of Jesse and key of David.  When we hear John the Baptist in our gospel calling us to repentance, to cutting away of trees that are not bearing good fruit, we hear it alongside Isaiah’s and Paul’s promises that new life, new hope, a new possibility of peace is coming in Jesus Christ, no matter what the current stumps of our lives look like!
    Perhaps you are feeling a bit like the people of Judah in Isaiah’s time – worried, afraid, grieving a time of Christmases past or the world as it used to be.  As some of you know, my parents were just here visiting for Thanksgiving.  They are celebrating their 50th anniversary in 2026!  They are both from the same small town in South Dakota, so growing up, we always went to my dad’s childhood home after church on Christmas Eve, and my mom’s side on Christmas Day.  My whole family on both sides was always at Trinity Lutheran Church for their 5pm Christmas Eve Candlelight service where Gerald Moe sang O Holy Night every year as a solo, because my parents grew up in the same church!  So even though my parents were married and had children and lived in Omaha, they NEVER missed a Christmas Eve with their parents until 2020, can you believe that?!  That means, they had never been actually at their own home church at their own church for Christmas until they were in their 60s!  Talk about keeping some family Christmas traditions alive!  I cherish those memories as do they.  We had to make new Christmas traditions – Rich and I when we got married and had children as a pastors’ family, but also my parents when their parents were no longer with us and no family lived in that little town in South Dakota any more. I can only imagine that for my parents, it was a bit like feeling cut off at the roots.
    Many of us have been through this experience, I know, of traditions around the holidays changing when a matriarch or patriarch of the family is no longer with us or can no longer host.  Food, gifts, travel, churches, people can all change.  We may feel stumped --who will hold the family together now? What will this Christmas be like?  “I don’t want any new tradition, I liked it the old way, the familiar and comfortable,” we may think to ourselves.  And yet, even a stump can still grow shoots, if the roots are deep.  A tree grows greater in strength when the dead branches are pruned back – it’s healthier for the tree.  When we feel down, stumped, like all might be lost, our God encourages us that God is doing a new thing.  Christ will restore our hope.
    John the Baptist, in his fiery prophetic preaching in line with the prophets of old, like Isaiah, encourages us that God doing a new thing is a good thing!  God’s faithfulness does not require us to preserve old traditions when they are no longer possible or useful.  When we feel sad about the state of the church, or remember the times when at Christmas Eve we had to set up folding chairs in the aisles and there were three services plus a Christmas Day service and so on and so on, John proclaims that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.  Christ is coming with the Holy Spirit and fire, John proclaims!  The spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord is upon him!  And because of our baptism, these words should sound familiar, because we receive this same spirit and blessing as Christ himself!  No matter what comes our way, no matter how stumped we feel this Christmas, a branch is growing out of the roots of Jesse that cannot be struck down.  His rule is eternal, and his Spirit lives in us.  This Spirit lives in us to bear good fruit, fruit that will last, when we are connected to Jesus who calls himself the vine and we the branches.
    So as we think about and perhaps worry about our preparations for Christmas this year, cherish the traditions that you can continue. Give to God the sadness of what has now past and cannot continue.  Listen to John, who calls us to turn toward Christ for spiritual preparation in the midst of our other preparations.  What new traditions might God be offering us as a shoot coming out of the stump?  What things are we doing in our lives or giving too much attention to that are dead branches we could prune – reducing our doomscrolling or newswatching time and replacing it with a new devotional practice or prayer time, for example.  The repentance John calls us to is toward Christ to lead to our spiritual growth.  We are connected to Jesus the vine, who has deep roots as the branch of Jesse, and from him we can live out those fruits of the Spirit – hope, joy, peace, and love in abundance.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.