Advent 2 Year A 2025: Isaiah 11:1-10 and Romans 15:4-13

Growing up, the Saturday after Thanksgiving was Christmas decoration day. We’d pull out all of the storage bins from the closet under the basement stairs and bring them upstairs where we’d sort the contents into whatever room they belonged. All of the Christmas-y things, the decorating, the baking, and the music have always been an important part of my Advent preparations. Some of it comes from those family of origin practices, and some from being raised by a musician and being a musician myself. You have to begin preparing your Christmas music during Advent and your Easter music during Lent. So while it is excessive that local radio stations switch from Christmas music back to regular programming at midnight on Christmas Day, I enjoy that secular Christmas helps to create the environment that enhances my Advent preparation. On Sunday evening, when the final miscellaneous knick knacks whose location we couldn’t remember from last year had been placed, we would sit down to the Advent wreath. 

While we have an Advent wreath at St. Matthew’s, we don’t use any special prayers or ceremonial elaboration surrounding the wreath. Liturgists generally agree that we shouldn’t. The Book of Occasional Services, a supplement to the Book of Common Prayer that contains liturgies we use less often than those in the prayer book, has two pages titled “Concerning the Advent Wreath”. The Book of Occasional Services reads, “The Advent Wreath is a visual symbol marking the progress of the season of Advent, originating as a domestic devotion and an opportunity for family prayer. It functions as a simple countdown-timer for the passage of Advent. Attaching symbolic meaning to particular candles is a more recent innovation. It is important to place the wreath in such a way so that it maintains the centrality of the essential symbols for the assembly: Font, Word, and Table. When the Advent Wreath is used in the worshiping community at morning services, the appropriate number of candles on the wreath are lighted, without prayer or ceremony, with the other candles.”

If I were to summarize this, I’d say that it says, “you shouldn’t do anything as a part of corporate worship, but if you must here’s something but don’t you dare let it get in the way of why we’re really here: Font, Word, and Table.” But the Book of Occasional Services goes on to kind of advocate for an Advent wreath’s usage in private homes. It gives ways to use liturgies already in the Book of Common Prayer, gives a short Gospel text for each week, and notes that there are “many resources for devotions produced to include the reading of scriptures suitable for the Advent season.” My family used the same devotional every year. It came with the wreath and contained explanations of the symbolism around the wreath alongside prayers and scripture readings. The very first reading with our Advent wreath on Advent 1 was today’s text from Isaiah 11, of the root coming from the stump of Jesse. So while in the Lectionary calendar, we only read this text from Isaiah on Advent 2 during Year A, in my bones it kicks off Advent because it has every year for as long as I can remember. So much of our faith is shaped not only by what we do on Sundays, but by what we do during the week once we pass that font and carry our baptisms out into the world in the same way as I’ve been shaped more by the warmth I feel wash over me when I hear that Isaiah reading because of the number of times I’ve heard it, cuddled up on the sofa in the living room with my family, with one candle lit.

It’s ironic how this shoot symbolism is only read on a Sunday in Advent, when there are no shoots here. We hear this promise at a time of year where only the heartiest of plants aren’t dormant until the spring. But in the same way that the snow-covered tree without leaves holds the promise of spring, the stump holds the promise of that new shoot of Jesus, which branches into us. That we must keep the root system strong and healthy and we must rely on the root.

The “stump” portrayal in Isaiah probably stems from a postwar period when the Davidic dynasty appeared a mere stump compared to its enemies. Just as the spirit of the Lord once came upon David, so it will be on the new king, equipping him for his royal tasks. The traditional ideal of royal justice involved extraordinary judicial insight (like King Solomon) and harsh justice on oppressors (like in today’s psalm). The king’s reign will be marked by the peace and harmony of paradise, as this poem ends. During the new king’s rule, God will gather and reunite the remnant of Israel and Judah.

The root coming from the stump is vivid imagery. A stump itself is death. But a stump sprout is new growth from the tree’s dormant buds, trying to create leaves to feed the root system after the main trunk is cut. All hope (for the tree) seems lost, and then new life comes from what seemed dead. Typically, a stump sprout is not what you want, if you’ve cut a tree down. Almost all of the research I did on the subject brought up results of how to avoid stump sprouts. And Israel’s enemies definitely would not have wanted stump sprouts. But that is precisely what is being promised by Isaiah, and exactly what Paul sees happening in his interpretation of Isaiah regarding his own mission to the Gentiles.

In the seven letters generally acknowledged as authentically written by Paul, Paul quotes Isaiah 31 times out of approximately 89 Old Testament quotations overall. Furthermore, in Romans he cites Isaiah explicitly by name 5 times, like he does in today’s reading. (25) Paul reads Isaiah as having narrated beforehand the events that have at last been set in motion in Paul’s generation through the death and resurrection of Jesus. These events may be summarized in a handful of ways, one of which contains today’s text as well as three other allusions from Romans, that this is the message that Paul, apostle to the Gentiles, has been called to announce to the nations. Contrary to all expectations, the Gentiles are receiving this news gladly. The Gentile mission is bearing fruit. (45-46)

Isaiah, more clearly than any other Old Testament book, links the promise of the redemption and restoration of Israel to the hope that Israel’s God will also reveal his mercy to the Gentiles and establish sovereignty over the whole earth. Thus, Paul finds in Isaiah a prefiguration of his own distinctive ministry to the Gentiles. (26) Paul sees in Scripture the story of Jesus Christ as the servant who suffers and relinquishes power for the sake of others. The clearest example is found in Rom 15:1-13, where Paul exhorts the strong to accept the weak for the sake of building up the community, in accordance with the example of Christ. The character of Christ’s action is then explained by a quotation of Ps 69:9: “For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me’” (Rom 15:3). Paul goes on to suggest in verses 7-13 that Christ’s welcoming of Jews and Gentiles alike is also prefigured in a string of scriptural passages (Ps 18:49, Deut 32:43, Ps 117:1, and Isa 11:10). In light of this action of Christ, the Christians at Rome are exhorted to “Welcome one another…for the glory of God” (Rom 15:7). (155)

Oftentimes, what the text is telling us to do is complex. Oftentimes it’s hard to separate out our work from God’s work or it’s tempting to take on God’s work as our work. But here, not so much - and Paul does some of the differentiating work for us. We are to find joy, hope, and peace - not to be happy, but to find the state of joy that comes from relationship with Christ. We are to find our inspiration from Christ to be the branch from his new shoot to bring peace and justice in a broken world. We are to welcome and be hospitable to those who are like us and to those who are not. And we are to together glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.