Hilton Head Island, SC – Dec. 8, 2019
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 11:1-10
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. – Isaiah 11:1
During Advent, we are studying various messianic passages from the prophecy of Isaiah. Today we are looking at two verses from the eleventh chapter of Isaiah which talk about the Messiah as “a shoot from the stump of Jesse” (11:1) and as “the root of Jesse” (11:10).
Who, you might ask, was Jesse? Jesse was the father of King David, and David was considered the greatest of the Israelite kings by most Jews throughout most of history. During biblical times, it was believed that whoever The Messiah would be (“The Anointed One” of Israel), he would have to be a descendant of David. In their minds, that was a messianic “given.”
Thus Isaiah began the eleventh chapter of his prophecy with the well-known verse, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The poetic imagery of a shoot coming forth from a stump was also used by other prophets in other times.
Next week we will consider the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, virtually all scholars of the Hebrew Bible believed that all sixty-six chapters of the prophecy of Isaiah were written by one man who lived in the eighth century BCE. Since then, most non-fundamentalists have accepted the fact that the prophecy of Isaiah was written by at least two, and maybe even three or four, men. Of those who believe that more than one man contributed to this prophetic book, on the basis of the writing style it is claimed that Second Isaiah begins at Chapter 40, and continues to Chapter 55, and perhaps all the way to the end.
According to this theory, Second Isaiah was with the Israelites who had been taken captive to Babylon after the Babylonians defeated the Judeans in 587 BCE. If the dating of Isaiah 40 and following is correct, it means that the prophet was telling Israel that it should not lose hope because of their captivity. And why? Because, as it said in First Isaiah 11:1, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”
“The root of Jesse” is a powerful messianic idea. It is like a tree that is cut down. Instead of dying though , in its greatly weakened condition it sends out shoots from the stump or roots underground, botanical runners which await rain falling onto the earth above them. In Isaiah 53:vs. 1 & 2, it says, “Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew before him like a young plant, and like a shoot out of dry ground; he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should look at him.”
Isaiah 40 and v53, as Isaiah 11, are all believed to be messianic prophecies.
When they are cut down, most species of trees cannot and do not re-propagate themselves from the stump that is left. A few species do, however. Some species of maples do. Aspens, birches, and poplars do. Eventually new green shoots will spring up out of the severed stump. Some species send up new saplings from underground roots which may have been dormant for several years. Nature is very inventive in its reproductive practices.
That is the poetic imagery of the “root of Jesse.” Jesse’s son David and his son Solomon were long gone, but Isaiah was certain that God would produce another messianic son of David at some point in the future. The Messiah would usher in a new and glorious chapter in the history of God’s people Israel, bringing God’s people new life after it appeared they were doomed by their defeat at the hands of their enemies.
Many Jews feel an advantage over Christians. Probably most of the Jews of biblical times truly believed that they were a people especially loved by God. After all, God had made them the Chosen People - - - hadn’t He? And if you are convinced that God chose you for reasons known only to Himself, you live differently than if you think your ethnic group or nationality are just one of hundreds of such groups.
There are millions of American Christians today who honestly believe that God has chosen them and the United States of America for a special purpose for these times. They place extraordinary confidence in certain kinds of politicians or political figures, and they disdain certain other politicians. Most of the rest of us who are American Christians do not perceive reality in that light at all, but these people do, and it gives them great comfort as well as assurance.
Both Isaiahs, the first one and the second one, believed that God had especially chosen Israel. He would not allow Israel to be ultimately vanquished. Inevitably God would send the Messiah. A shoot would spring forth from the apparently destroyed stump of Jesse, and a new and powerful king would be born who would establish a powerful messianic dynasty.
When Jesus came into the world, he was not born in a royal palace. One of the two sparse accounts of his birth tells us that he was born in a stable. The newborn baby was not carefully placed into a regal feather bed; instead he was put into a manger, a feeding trough for livestock. When he was grown and he began his public ministry at about age thirty (it is Luke and only Luke who tells us that), Jesus never acted like a king. He acted like a prophet, a latter-day Isaiah, or even more like an Amos or Hosea or especially a Jeremiah. Jesus could be very peaceable and comforting, but he also threw prophetic thunderbolts and haymakers.
When I started seminary in 1961, many mainline Protestant New Testament scholars were engaged in a spirited debate about whether or not Jesus had what then was described as “messianic self-awareness.” Did Jesus perceive himself to be God’s Messiah, or not? If so, did he always see himself in that light, even from childhood? Or did that awareness come to him only gradually as he lived through the three years of his public ministry? Jesus must have been thinking thoughts about himself as a teenager and young adult; after all, all of us do that that to one degree or another. But what, specifically, was he thinking?
The only honest answer to that question is that no one can definitively know exactly or even conclusively what Jesus thought about himself. The four Gospels give us hints, many hints, but those suggestions are not all of one piece, and in many ways they conflict.
Did Jesus have messianic self-awareness? Ever? Always? When?
Perhaps you never thought about that. Unless you had the privilege, or in one sense the burden, of going to seminary, you would not be likely even to consider such a question. But this Advent, in 2019, and these are the kinds of things I am asking you to ponder during these four Sundays.
Our first scripture reading today was Matthew’s account of the Palm Sunday processional. Matthew records that the crowds which accompanied Jesus into Jerusalem that day shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (21:9)
It is debatable whether that is an accurate description of what happened on Palm Sunday or if it is what the Gospel writer thought the crowd should have shouted, what he imagined them to have said.
Regardless of what the crowd thought, what did Jesus think? Did he always have messianic self-awareness, or had he at least acquired messianic self-awareness by the beginning of Holy Week?
Traditionally, most Christians have probably implicitly assumed that Jesus always perceived himself to be the Messiah. Had I not gone to seminary, and chosen a profession other than ordained ministry, I likely would always have been active in a church wherever I lived, but almost certainly the “messianic self-awareness of Jesus” never would have crossed my mind, as it very likely has never crossed yours.
Because I did graduate from seminary, and because I admired the scholarship and integrity of my professors and some of the books they assigned, although inevitably to varying degrees, I came to accept the thinking of many of them that Jesus did not begin his ministry believing he was the Messiah. Furthermore, as some of them said, he may slowly have realized he was the Messiah only toward the very end of his life. A few of my professors, and a number of scholarly writers whom I have read in the nearly sixty years since I graduated from seminary, claim that Jesus may never have been convinced that he was indeed God’s Messiah, although almost all of them hint that Jesus may at least have wondered about it.
Whether Jesus of Nazareth was the shoot of Jesse or the root of Jesse or the Messiah cannot be determined by a careful study of the objective history concerning Jesus. Such a history is impossible to find, nor could it ever be found. For that matter, an objective history of anything is impossible. History is an interpretation of what happened; it is not a record of what happened. “What happened” is determined by agreeing on the meaning of what happened, and never by the mere telling of what happened.
Jesus becomes the Messiah to anyone only by faith, and belief, and trust. Does our faith and belief and trust convince us that Jesus is the Messiah, or doesn’t it?
What I think is merely what I think. On the basis of a fairly long lifetime of ruminating on the life, death, and purported resurrection of Jesus, I am led to believe that Jesus was who the Church has steadfastly claimed he was, and that indeed (in deeds and words and carefully chosen actions), He is Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah.
But the really important question for this morning is not what I think. Rather it is this: What do you think?