Second Sunday of Advent 2025

James explores the Advent call to repentance — not as guilt-inducing self-flagellation but as a liberating reorientation toward God. To repent is to turn from whatever diminishes us toward the one who makes us fully and lastingly alive.

Transcript

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So, Heavenly Father, as we come now to reflect on your word, fill us by your Holy Spirit that we might be transformed into the image of your Son. We pray for your glory's sake. Amen. Please do take a seat. I have a three-year-old boy called George, and uh he's just old enough to really start understanding and enjoying Christmas. This amazing season, intoxicating experience of lights and sweets, and magic and sparkle. He's uh he's really getting to grips with it, and it's just delightful to watch him enjoy the season and kind of work out what's going on. We uh we told him that the little lights that he could see everywhere were called fairy lights, and so he's convinced himself that the fairies put the lights up around the Christmas tree, and every time we go into the the mouth, he looks down the street and points at the lights above the street and says, Did the fairies put those lights up? And I think to myself, I'm not sure the lads at the council would appreciate being called fairies, but I know what you mean, George. We all love that feeling, the fuzziness of this fee of this season, the joy of darkened rooms and candles and singing beautiful carols. And seeing it through George's eyes is intoxicating, which is why I and I suspect we need to remember that that is actually not what this season is about. Advent is not pre-Christmas. Advent, as I've said before, is a time of wide-eyed prophets pointing to the destruction and recreation of all things. The prophets we read in our scriptures, John the Baptist of Advent is trying to take us by the shoulders and shake us awake with their symbolism and their rhetoric. Let's turn to Isaiah chapter 11 and look at these opening words. A shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse. Now, if you've been in church for any length of time, you'll know that the shoot in question is Jesus. And that's what Paul is trying to talk about in Romans chapter 15, although we don't have time to get into it here. Jesus is the root of Jesse who will rise to rule the Gentiles. And so we instinctively see these opening lines as a message of hope. I'm sure in the next 10 days, all of us will hear those words in some sort of carol concert or service and feel the warm, fuzzy feelings that those carol services are supposed to invoke, as we sing O come, O come Emmanuel holding a candle in our hands. We love the shoot that will come. But before we get there, I want us to talk about the stump. Because the first ten chapters of Isaiah, the stuff that we haven't read that is in the background of our reading this morning, is a brutal critique of the nation of Israel. Israel is in rebellion against God and judgment is coming. Their community was supposed to be a place of righteousness, and it festers with idolatry and injustice. They were meant to be a people who were a fruitful vineyard. And God turns up and finds nothing but wild and rotten grapes. And so God says, through the prophet Isaiah, I am going to chop down the tree that I have planted. How would this have felt for the people of Israel however many years ago? Let me suggest that it would have felt similar to the way we all felt as a nation when the tree in the sycamore gap tree was felled in Northumberland in 2023. This beautiful, iconic, 120-year-old tree was cut down in that case for absolutely no reason. But we as a nation rightfully mourned that something so ancient and had beautiful had been reduced to a stump. Those are the emotions that Isaiah is trying to activate in us when he declares a similar judgment on the people of Israel, who because of their sin will be reduced to a stump. Merry Christmas. Let's go to the Gospel reading. Maybe there's better news there. You know what they say? The Old Testament's all judgment, the New Testament's all uh joy and hope. Let's see what happens. Enter John the Baptist, the prophet of Advent season. Camel hair, locusts, wild honey. And what does John the Baptist say to us today? The prophet of Advent is not the sort of person you would want round your Christmas table this year. Imagine passing him the sprouts, and this is how he responds. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our ancestor, for I tell you, God can get his children from the stones if he needs to. Even now, an axe is lying at the foot of the tree, ready to chop. Any tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Here we have another axe felling another tree. You think you have some claim on your salvation because of who your parents were or because of your standing in society? You think that because this is a cathedral, you have some sort of special privilege? Flee from the wrath that is to come. You must bear fruit worthy of repentance. This is why it is doubly important that you and I remember Advent is not pre-Christmas. It is not a time of fuzzy feelings. It is for wide-eyed prophets, pointing to the destruction and recreation of all things. And friends, the moment you leave this building, you will be bombarded by adverts inviting you to indulge this Christmas. Oh, it's just a little bit of sin. Take that chocolate. Oh, it's just a bit of fun. We must resist the narrative of self-comfort and take time in this season for self-examination. So, what do I mean by fruit worthy of repentance? Let me offer you a list from Galatians. This is what St. Paul's calls the fruit of the Spirit love, joy, the peace, the patience, the kindness, the goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Nowhere on that list is beautiful robes or fancy music or a beautiful building. God does not care about those things. He cares about the fruit of repentance, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Are those the characteristics of your life? Are those the characteristics of this community? Merry Christmas. Sorry, it's not a very fluffy Merry Christmas message. So where do we go from here? What do we do? Now, maybe that we've spent some time reflecting on God's judgment, we're ready to return to the words of Isaiah. Although, of course, the temptation is always to run from the call to repent as quickly as possible. I would not be doing my job as a Christian preacher if we didn't turn to the words of hope. So let's read Isaiah 11 again. Maybe we're ready now. A shoot shall come from the stock of Jesse, and a branch will grow out of its roots. This is good news. The stump of Israel is not the end of the story. The acts of judgment in Isaiah and in the mouth of John the Baptist is only the first half of the story. There is a shoot coming, friends. There will be a branch from the roots of that stump. Jesus is his name. When we talk about the stump of Jesse, we're saying David's father. In other words, what looks like a dead royal line, out of that dead royal line, God will raise up a new king. Who is this king? Well, the spirit of the Lord will rest on him. He will govern with wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, and the fear and knowledge of the Lord will be with him. This is the shoot that Isaiah sees and that John the Baptist points to. The shoot of Jesse is Jesus. Now I've put an image in your orders of service. It's an image of that same sycamore tree gap, uh sycamore tree in the gap that two years ago was felled. And uh it made recent headlines uh in the news because new shoots have started to grow out of the stump. And there's hope now that decades later a new tree might be able to grow where the old stump has been left. But when I looked at that photo, when I heard the good news, I was struck by how tender and how fragile those shoots are. Two years that stump has lent dormant, and now we get a glimmer of light, a bit of hope. But anyone could climb over that fence and rip those shoots out. Isn't that terrifying? Doesn't that make you think again about Jesus in a manger? The king born around whom nations and empires will fall? And yet we come to celebrate his birth, tender and fragile. Sometimes the glimmer of hope is a speck of light in the darkness. Jesus is the shoot of Jesse that is coming from the stump of Israel after the axe of judgment has done its work. Jesus in his birth is a sign of life and hope in the sight of death and destruction. But there's one last thing to note before we go any farther, because even John the Baptist missed something. John the Baptist, the greatest of the old covenant prophets, saw Jesus coming and still he missed this. Because he believed, from the words that we have that he expected Jesus to turn up as the shoot of David from the stump of Jesse and bring more judgment. His winnering fork, his fire. And what does Jesus do? He takes himself to the cross, and the axe of judgment falls upon him. He experiences that axe so that you don't have to, so that I don't have to. Jesus ultimately becomes the tree that was felled for you and for me, and we receive his mercy, the mercy that we don't deserve, while he takes our judgment. So, friends, we must bear the fruit of the kingdom of the Spirit. Please spend some time this Advent in repentance and always do it looking to our Savior, who has always taken our punishment and given us his righteousness. That is the hope of Advent. Repent.