Before one is ordained as a deacon or priest, one goes to visit a psychologist for a battery of psychometric testing, which includes drawing up a kind of family tree of dysfunction. I was reflecting on that experience this week as I celebrated 16 years of ordained ministry, and I remembered explaining to the friendly shrink that both my grandfathers were alcoholics who abused their wives, probably had post-traumatic stress disorder from their war service and who were both remembered as toxic, aggressive, unkind men with few redeeming features. By contrast, my own Father who this week celebrates 45 years married to Mum, is a gentle and kind man who is beloved by everyone he knows. It is no accident that his two sons are a nurse and a priest (albeit a rather cynical and jaded nurse and priest) and that his grandsons are intelligent, creative, kind and respectful young men. While I’m conscious of the privilege of being white and living in Australia, I’m also conscious that in many families trauma begets trauma from one generation to the next, and I count myself very fortunate that the violence and pain of my forefathers is almost entirely absent from the lives of my nephews.
A new shoot has emerged from the stump, as it were.
The prophet Isaiah was not one to mince words. He had a very firm view of King Ahaz. Ahaz was a treestump. It was just as rude then as it is today. Ahaz was useless and defunct, like a treestump. Thanks to Ahaz, who made a treaty with the Assyrians, the northern kingdom was destroyed. The southern kingdom had to pay tribute to the Assyrians, and Ahaz got religion in an entirely unhelpful way, introducing Assyrian cultic practices. A fancy altar replaced furniture in the temple, and, shockingly, Ahaz allowed human sacrifices, including of his own son. King Ahaz was a disaster. A treestump.
But a shoot is going to grow out of the stump. You’ve seen this happen, right? There’s a marri tree in the Rectory backyard that fell down a couple of months ago, and now there’s shoots coming out of it like nobody’s business. King Hezekiah was the shoot coming out of the stump that was Ahaz.
Hezekiah was a good king. For a start he eliminated the Assyrian practices from the Temple, and brought the Judeans back in line with their obligations in the covenant. He abolished the ‘high places’ where human sacrifices took place and took down the bronze statues of a serpent which were being worshipped. Hezekiah centralised worship on Jerusalem, and ensured that the right festivals and ceremonies were observed. He also did a couple of other useful things – he built walls, towers and a tunnel. The walls and the tower were a perfectly sensible preparation for an inevitable invasion by the Assyrians, but the tunnel – that was a stroke of genius.
To explain the tunnel, I need to drop this week’s useful fact. For those keeping track, this is useful fact number 2. Last week’s useful fact was that the book of Isaiah is written in three parts. This week’s useful fact is about Jerusalem: Jerusalem is on a hill in a hole. Let me explain.
People who’ve never been to Jerusalem, including some artists, imagine Jerusalem to be on a hill on a plain. A bit like Minas Tirith in Lord of the Rings, or Camelot or something – Jerusalem is imagined to be a picturesque city on a hill. So it can come as a rude shock to visit the old city of Jerusalem today, and go up to the highest point at Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, and look out only to discover higher hills surrounding on every side. Jerusalem is on a low outcrop, in the midst of the hilly range running between the desert and the more fertile bit of modern day Israel and Palestine. So why is it here? There are, undoubtedly, other more strategic places within striking distance, not least the place today called Mt Herzl or even the Mount of Olives which is much higher than Jerusalem. The reason for Jerusalem’s location is simple – there is a spring there. There is a reliable source of fresh water which can nourish a city and withstand a siege. Obviously, it is at the bottom of the hill in a hole, and so it could also be accessible to an invading army. The Canaanites had built a defensive tower around the spring, but it was still vulnerable so Hezekiah built a tunnel so that the spring water could run from the spring, underground into the lowest point of the city.
I am a wide man, and I have walked through Hezekiah’s tunnel from outside the walls of the old city all the way to the Pool of Siloam. It is an extraordinary feat of engineering, and a stone plaque (now in Instabul) records the point where the two sets of workers met in the middle of the rock, barely a metre off course.
So Hezekiah, with his wall, tunnel, tower and temple, was the green shoot that sprung forth from the stump that was Ahaz, and Isaiah had high hopes for him. He foretold that Hezekiah would be righteous and wise and knowledgeable and just, that he would bring about a reign of peace where the lion would snuggle with a lamb and a leopard would cuddle a baby goat, and children will play with snakes, and where there would be no more hurt or pain. Hezekiah would be an icon, and all nations would look to him as a hero.
It didn’t turn out that way, of course. By the end, Hezekiah and Isaiah were at odds with one another, and pretty soon the Babylonians would come and wipe the city out.
But for a while there, during the reign of the Treestump King, Isaiah imagined Hezekiah leading the Judean people into a new and better future.
Now tonight at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, we will hear this reading again and it will never be explicitly stated, but it will be heavily implied that the root coming out of the stump is, in fact, Jesus. Jesus, after all, was born in the town of David (Jesse’s son), he is in the line of David and he is, in a sense, the New David, come to free and rule his people. As the early believers sought language to explain the identity of Jesus, they landed on this text and many others from the book of Isaiah, drawing on the language and imagery to paint a picture of Jesus and his coming kingdom. And why wouldn’t they? Isaiah (and the subsequent authors writing in the spirit of Isaiah) may have been speaking to their own context, but they were also speaking words of universal hope for the whole world. Their words were truly prophetic, and in Jesus, his Jewish followers found someone who embodied all that they read and heard from the great prophet in their synagogues.
Isaiah was writing about King Hezekiah. The early Christians took his vision and applied it to Jesus, because they believed that Jesus, crucified and risen, truly represented the leader for which Isaiah had yearned. Inspired by the vision of a holy mountain, on which the poor have dignity and the weak have equality, the early church declared their hope in a New Jerusalem, from which the liberating Christ would rule the whole world in righteousness and faithfulness.
Jerusalem was a hill in a hole, with a king and a spring, and from then until now it has been a vexed place – representing for humanity equal parts aspiration and desperation. But the New Jerusalem in the New Creation will be the green shoot that bursts forth from the munted stump of this broken world.
We are not just looking forward to Christmas this Advent, we are looking forward to the return of Christ in triumph who will rule from the New Jerusalem to judge and heal the earth
The Lord Be With You