Isaiah 11:1-10
December 7, 2025
There is a scene in the movie Children
of Men, where the protagonist, Theo, is trying to help a young woman, Kee,
escape from a building that is the center of a fierce battle. But this is not
just another war movie. Kee is the first woman in two decades to give birth to
a baby. This is the heart of the story of both the movie and the book that it
is based on. The premise is that the human species is teetering on the brink of
extinction because of worldwide infertility. The story opens with the news of
the youngest human being, a young man in his early twenties, being killed
outside of a bar. According to the story, the United Kingdom is the last nation
on earth to have any sort of rule-of-law. But that rule-of-law is crumbling as
the government targets immigrants in the country as being anti-government,
anti-law and order, anti-everything. But Kee is a young woman from Africa, and
she has given birth.
Through a series of plot twists and
turns, Theo is trying to help Kee reach the safety of an organization that is
working to reverse infertility and restore the human race. In this battle scene
fierce fighting has broken out between government forces and immigrants. It is
this fighting that Theo and Kee are trying to escape. Theo slowly walks Kee,
with her newborn baby in her arms, down a bullet riddled hall.
The baby is crying, which is a
miraculous sound that no one has heard for at least twenty years. And as they
walk and as the baby continues to cry, people stop and stare in wonder. Women
reach out their hands to the mother and child. Immigrant fighters point their
guns at them but lower them when they hear the baby’s wail. A government
solider is racing up the stairs but when he sees Theo and Kee and hears the
baby’s cries, he calls for a ceasefire. The guns are silent and Theo, Kee, and
the baby make their way slowly out of the building now battleground. Soldiers
lower their weapons. Some kneel and cross themselves. Some almost smile as they
stare down into the blanket wrapped child in her mother’s arms. Just as Theo,
Kee, and the baby move past the line of troops, another shot is fired in the
building and the battle begins again in earnest. But for a moment, for a
beautiful, tender, heart-wrenching moment, guns are lowered, the fighting
stops, and there is a shared, stunned awe at the notes of a newborn’s cry
piercing the sudden quiet.
This movie, and the book that
inspired it, depict a dystopian future, a world falling into despair and chaos.
It is a hopeless world filled with hopeless people. Without the possibility of
a child being born, there seems to be no reason to hope, to believe, to welcome
the future. The world is bleak, and the future, if there is to be one, is
bleaker still. It is a hopeless world filled with hopeless people.
The world that Isaiah prophesied to
in our passage this morning was not quite the same as the world described in Children
of Men – children were still being born, although it may be questionable as
to what kind of world they were being born into – but the despair in Isaiah’s
time was real, very real. I suspect that to Isaiah and his people chaos and
destruction were not seen just as possibilities but as imminent.
It was a time of political turmoil.
Isaiah prophesied from the southern kingdom of Judah, and threats of conquer
from other nations were real and intense. Isaiah read the signs of the times
and called on the people to take heed. In the verse immediately preceding ours,
Isaiah spoke these words,
“Look, the Sovereign, the Lord of
hosts, will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the tallest trees will be cut
down, and the lofty will be brought low. He will hack down the thickets of the
forest with an axe, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.
If I heard only words like this from
the prophet, I would have been tempted to give up and give in completely. If
God has despaired of us, if God has promised to bring us low, to hack down the
tallest of trees, what point is there in hoping for anything? But these words
are not the end. They point to something more. Trees might be hacked to stumps,
but out of the stump will grow a shoot, a tenuous but stubborn shoot. The
promise of God did not end in that dead stump. No, it only made it possible for
a new branch, a new promise, a new life to begin.
Not only does Isaiah speak of a
stubborn shoot growing from that cut down and dead stump, but we also hear
words of promise, words of what the world will look like when that bud, that
branch appears. The world will be a peaceable kingdom. It will be a world where
the wolf will lie with the lamb, the leopard shall lie with the kid, the calf,
the lion and the fatling shall be together. A little child will lead them all. The
cow and the bear will graze in the same pasture. The lion will eat straw as
does the ox. One little child shall play by the hole of the rattlesnake, and
another little child shall safely put his hand into the hold of the adder.
There will be no more prey and no more predator, but all creation will live in
peace.
This image of the peaceable kingdom
has been depicted in art hundreds of times. It is an image that captures our
collective imagination. How wonderful it will be if the picture becomes reality
– a reality where even natural enemies live together in quiet, harmonious
peace!
But this is not a sentimental,
sweetness and light description of God’s kingdom. It is both a foretelling and
a reminder that creation itself will be reordered and re-aligned with God’s
promise and covenant. When this shoot, this branch from the stump of Jesse
appears, everything will be changed. Everything will be new. God’s kingdom will
not only be in our midst, something we see only in fleeting glimpses, but we
will also be in God’s kingdom. No more harm will be done on God’s holy
mountain. No one will be unaware or ignorant of the Lord, because a word from
this King will fill the earth with knowledge of the Lord.
How beautiful are Isaiah’s words!
How I long for them to become reality. Yet, when I hold up our present world
with the world Isaiah’s words convey, I realize how far awy from this peaceable
kingdom we truly are.
Predator and prey are alive and
well, aren’t they? And sometimes it’s hard to make a distinction between them.
Wolves and lambs do not lie down together. Cows and bears do not graze side by
side. And while little children may play by rattlesnakes and put their hands
down the hold of adders and lead these ferocious creatures around like pets, in
the world we inhabit, the little children are often the ones to suffer the most
from the actions of the adults.
Nature is not so peaceable and we
are a part of nature. Strife and hatred and enmity are alive and well here and
around the world. You don’t have to look very far to see the effects of
violence, of anger, of mistrust and ignorance. You don’t have to look very far
to see the pain that lies at the heart of our not so peaceable kingdom.
A quick scan of national and
international news tells me how very far we are from the peaceable kingdom
Isaiah prophesied. The gap between that kingdom and our own reality is wide and
seemingly unbridgeable. But Isaiah did not speak these words for God’s children
to despair at how far away we are from God’s kingdom. These words were given to
Isaiah and spoken to the people in his world and to us so that we might hope.
Even when all seems lost, God’s promise lives on. God’s promise lives in that
stump. God’s covenant lives on in that stubborn shoot. God refuses to give up
on up. God refuses to abandon us to our own sinful devices. God’s promise lives
in that holy stump. God’s promise flourishes in that stubborn shoot. We know
that the chasm between God’s peace and our reality is wide, but our hope in
God’s peace is as persistent as that branch that grows from a stump.
In Children of Men, the cry
of a single baby was powerful enough to bring fighting to an end, if only for a
few minutes. In God’s peaceable kingdom, a little child will lead all creation
in the way of peace. Our hope rests in that promise of peace, in that little
child, in that stubborn shoot.
Let all of God’s tenacious, hopeful,
peaceful children say, “Alleluia!”
Amen.
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