We all have roots: a grounding in the soil of history and personality. If you asked me about my roots, I’d tell you about my grandparents’ house on the St. John’s River. From a boy’s perspective, you would hear about the screened porch angled to catch the afternoon breeze, and about the rabbit warren of azalea bushes around the house, suitable for hiding in. You might also hear about the dark pantry off the kitchen, or about the bamboo forest at the backdoor.
Though I don’t remember her, my great-grandmother was still alive when I was born, and there’s a picture taken in that house that proves it. She built a successful hotel business in the early twentieth century: remarkable. Years later I served on a not for profit board with a man who remembered her daughter, my grandmother, and going to parties at that same house in Jacksonville in the days right before the outbreak of the Second World War. My mother, for her part, remembered ships torpedoed by German submarines, burning off the Atlantic coast of Florida, when she was growing up. I could go on.
We all have roots, the places and people who have helped to make us who we are. There are things we remember and pass on; but a good deal of the shaping that happens is unconscious, and so formative that we may not even be aware of it. The Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz made the point in one of his poems that, because of his long life, the memory of people from his boyhood may be the only living trace of them that remains. In any case, remembered or not, the stamp these people and places put upon us is significant.
The vision of the prophet Isaiah this morning gives us a shoot coming out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch growing out of his roots. Jesse was the father of David, the king of Israel, and the prophetic image that we have today is of the People of Israel, ravaged and reduced to a mere stump of a tree, but still containing within themselves the seeds of new life, and the capacity of growth. From this stump will come a new branch (according to the prophet) a new offshoot of the house of David, to rule and govern the People.
Isaiah’s prophecy prepares the way for the coming of Jesus Christ, the final offshoot of the stump of Jesse. This is the image of the Jesse tree, in which the different branches display the genealogy of Jesus, the ancestors of the Son of God. Crowning the tree is Jesus himself. You can find these genealogies in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Some of his forebears that make up the branches are simply names, all other trace having vanished; you might say that the Church’s memory of them is all that remains. But what a blessed memory the bare list of names is! It’s from these strong branches that the Church stretches out to the future. Our roots are deep in the loam of Israel. Through these people and their patient waiting, expectation grew and hope was passed on.
Hope is what grows out of memory: hope for the future. St. Paul is our second reading makes hope the main point of Isaiah’s prophecy. St. Paul’s version of the prophecy reads, “The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope” (Rom. 15:12). The branch of Jesse’s stem will turn into a tree with branches that include all the peoples of the earth. The deep roots of the Church will bring forth a riot of growth, including the Gentiles, and a future that Jesse himself could not imagine..
The point of remembering for Christians is always to inculcate hope, the expectation that God will act powerfully in the future. We look back, remembering the action of God in the past, which kindles our hope for what lies ahead. It is radical hope because it looks to the roots. God has been trustworthy and true, and will remain so. Hope, for Christians, is rooted in God’s raising Jesus Christ from the dead, which ushers in a whole new world of possibility.
It’s this hope that inspires the rest of Isaiah’s vision. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid… They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:6, 9). Now that’s a radical hope, undimmed in spite of all the news to the contrary. Prophets and Apostles have prepared the way, and increased our expectation. The earth is ripe with that radical hope, firmly rooted, stretching forward into the future in Jesus Christ.
