Brief synopsis of the readings: Speaking for God, Isaiah describes how a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse and a bud will blossom. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him and will provide a spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and fear of the Lord. He will reward the poor and afflicted. But he will strike down the ruthless and wicked. When this happens the wolf will be a guest of the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the kid. On that day the Gentiles will seek him out “for his dwelling shall be glorious.” Matthew’s Gospel describes John the Baptist in the desert. He preached repentance and baptized those gathered in the Jordan River. But when he saw several Pharisees and Sadducees he turned on them and called them a brood of vipers. He told them not to presume they are good because they are descended from Abraham. He then told them that while he baptizes with water another will come who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.

When we see a stump we don’t expect it to do much. It’s clearly a place where there used be a tree but once the tree is cut down the stump is just rotting wood anchored in the ground. Trees, and indeed all plants, need roots to get nutrients from the ground but also leaves to gather energy from the sun. But a tree without leaves still has a chance, still has some stored energy. Think about how much rosebushes are pruned in the winter and yet the bloom in the spring and summer.

And so one day a shoot sprouts from the stump of Jesse. Jesse was King David’s father and David’s reign was seen as the apex of Jewish history. Things began to fall apart after David’s death and by the time of our first reading it looked like the Jewish story might end as they were surrounded by stronger enemies. There was good reason to think the stump was dead and would only rot. But as I spoke about last week, the season of Advent reminds us that cold and darkness aren’t permanent and don’t have the last word. New life can come from places we never would have guessed. Enter John the Baptist.

We know John was Jesus’ cousin and we have reason to believe he belonged to a radical group called the Essenes. Essenes lived pretty radical lives in their interpretation of Scripture and many of them chose to be celibate. Other Jews may have viewed them as strange while others respected their piety. But they did not seek power or leadership in the Jewish community; John the Baptist may have looked like “the lunatic out by the Jordan River.” When the Pharisees and Sadducees went to see him it’s a safe bet they weren’t seeking wisdom and they had no intention of being baptized. They likely came to ridicule them.

As I hope we’re all familiar, those two groups of Jews, while they had little use for each other, were the smartest guys in the room. Their rank and education made them leaders but John called them a brood of vipers. Their problem, for John and for us, was that they thought their intelligence, education and status exempted them from the need for repentance. To go back to the stump analogy, they were the guys with the chainsaw and the tree. They were the ones who decided that they knew the importance of the tree and the uselessness of the stump. The shoot of Jesse would only come from a place they chose and their actions were always righteous. On the other hand we know that repentance gives us the ability for new life, allows us to be that shoot from the stump of Jesse. But that shoot happens only when we recognize our ongoing need for God’s mercy.

There’s nothing wrong with aspiring to intelligence and education. Problem is, it’s easy to achieve a level of status that convinces us that we’ve arrived. When I was a college student I had the good fortune to take several classes from the renowned professor Dr. Peter Kreeft at Boston College. I used to joke that when I left his classroom my brain hurt because it he worked it so hard. He is probably the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. And so I was greatly impressed when I attended his class on Ash Wednesday and saw he had gotten ashes. A man of incredible intellect stood before someone and heard how he was dust and would return to dust. That moved me.

Like intelligence and education, status can be good. We all want to be respected in our circles and we should enjoy being complimented. But there’s no such thing as being smart enough to have completed our discipleship. Advent is not a time for curtain calls, encores or demands that we be treated a certain way. It’s a time to recognize that we are all in need of the salvation that comes only through Jesus.

The good news in this is that the road to salvation is a joyful road. Repentance does indeed recognize our need to confront our shadows but it also allows us to imagine a limitless life for ourselves. The Pharisees and Sadducees were learned in the law but there was only so much they could do, reading and rereading the same texts. But we know that God has great plans for us, lives of love that go beyond simple obedience to the law.

Finally, God promises us lives where enemies become friends and fear disappears. We take for granted the relationships between wolves and lambs, predator and prey. But wolves always live with the fear of starvation while lambs always live with the fear of being eaten by wolves. A place where they can live in harmony challenges our imaginations but it should. So should the idea of living the life God has promised us.

But after all, if we are the shoot, that says a great deal about the stump we come from.