Sunday 7th December – Wonder

7-12-2025, Advent 2A, Isaiah 11:1-10, Pastor Adrian Kiston, Wonder

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
²The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him –
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord –
³and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
    or decide by what he hears with his ears;
⁴but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
    with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
    with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
⁵Righteousness will be his belt
    and faithfulness the sash round his waist.

⁶The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling^[^a^] together;
    and a little child will lead them.
⁷The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
⁸The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
⁹They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

¹⁰In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting-place will be glorious.

We hear of John the Baptiser again. It must be Advent!

The first words John speaks in public are not his. They come from Isaiah, seven hundred years before John and Jesus were born.

‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
“Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.”’⁽Matthew 3:3 – Isaiah 40:3)

They could tell that John was Isaiah’s old voice bringing to life the promises of God in a world not really ready to receive him.

Is the world ever really ready for John or Jesus? Probably not. We are not seeing a rush on baptisms down at the North Para!

I guess, to the average Aussie, Isaiah’s vision of what The Servant would accomplish for the world is mysterious.

How can a green shoot come from a dead stump?
How will this Servant be able to grow new life in a dying world?
How will he weigh me up by my words not sight?
When will his justice be decisive to right all the wrongs?
Will we ever see foxes lying with chooks and lions lying with lambs?
When will Jesus be the banner everyone rallies behind as he leads us into this new vision of life and planet earth?

So many questions. So much mystery!

What do we do with the mystery of God? What do we do with our many questions? How can we live with confidence when things are often so hard to see. How can we trust God’s promises and enjoy his presence when there is so much else to trust and see and do right in front of our eyes?

Maybe Bonhoeffer can help.

When you are in a prison cell for 2 years, maybe this is when you have time and space and cause to ask those questions and enter this mystery of faith in God.

When you are in that prison cell only able to spend 1 hour per month with the four closest people in your life, including your fiancé, you would spend most of your time waiting.

Thinking and waiting are difficult, but it seems they are essential for the Christian – for the person who finds joy and meaning in God.

Bonhoeffer learns that rather than getting angry or timid or indifferent to this mystery of God and these many questions we have in our lives, we are better to acknowledge that God is bigger than us; to respect his mystery and even enjoy it.

Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of your own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over the hidden qualities and those of others and the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation.

So, this man in prison calls you to get beyond just calculations and exploiting things and people and God. He wants to call us to the full joy beyond our calculations and our relentless drive to get and gain from people and God so we find God where he chooses to be found – God in the manger.

How do we get beyond just getting things from people or God and maintaining control over our day? How do we know God more fully and enjoy him even if we cannot understand everything about him or our life?

Isaiah paints his visual pictures to help – a dead stump and green shoots, lambs and lions resting together in green grass…. Bonhoeffer points us to more ‘now’ kind of things: Children and a couple in love

“… children have open, wideawake eyes, because they know they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery (of ourselves, other people, God and God’s world), as we do….

The greatest mystery is not the most distant star; on the contrary, the closer something comes to us and the better know it, then the more mysterious it becomes for us. The mystery [is that] in their closeness they become more and more mysterious [like] when two people come so close to each other that they love each other… knowledge about each other does not remove the mystery but rather makes it more profound.

So, knowing God in the manger is still a great mystery, but closeness to him makes it all the more profound and life-shaping and joy-filled – ‘wonder-ful’.

But do we really want to get close to God in this mystery beyond calculations and exploiting?

There is reason why we find it hard to get beyond exploiting God and calculating our own way through life:

God travels wonderful ways with human beings, but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people. God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather, he is way beyond all comprehension, free and self-determined beyond all proof”

God refuses to be exploited, controlled or total understood by us. In fact, as we ponder that baby in a cow shed as God our calculations, logic, reason and will to get things from God are severely challenged.

“Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our pity anxiously keeps us away; that is precisely where God loves to be”

Why? Because;

There he confounds the reason of the reasonable; there he aggravates our nature, our piety – that is where he wants to be…

He does wonders where people despair, he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvellous… And the wonder of wonders? God loves the lowly….God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings.

God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonder where one would least expect them (from a child?)

God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.

Isaiah is his largely unwelcomed instrument to God’s people:

Would you want to hear Isaiah speaking words of imminent doom and gloom coming to the nation at the hands of various superpowers so that God can do his renewing, rebuilding, resurrecting work? No! Just give me the resurrection life, thanks God, without the doom and gloom. Then I can understand and then I can march on with my merry little life!

John is another one of God’s mostly unwelcomed instruments. Would you want to go out the Jordan and see this camel-skin clad wiry locust and honey fed man telling you to get serious; repent; turn away from all you know so far and wait for the new things God will do very soon, and even now? Probably not. Give me a seminar in a nice hotel with good food and kind voices please!

And so are we because of this lowly God in the manger.

We are the lowly; the lost, the found; the neglected now attended, the unseemly now clean; the excluded now in community; the weak and the broken now strong in faith and forever being healed.

Bonhoeffer goes to Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:9, which is Paul going to guess who? – Isaiah:

‘What no eye has seen,

what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived’ –
the things God has prepared for those who love him –

This green shoot from death, this banner for all the world’s joy; this Jesus, this God in the manger,

¹⁰ … are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

If we get close to God in the manger we will all be better for it.

Bonhoeffer captures the worder of this Christian life for us – a child-like wonder; and openness to God’s word and people around us.

He says to his fiancé, Marie (December 19, 1943)

All that Christmas originates in heaven and comes from there to us all, to you and me alike, and forms a stronger bond between us than we could ever forge by ourselves

Being close to our God in human flesh this Christmas will make set you free from having to calculate everything all the time, exploit everything to your advantage and make your bonds of love stronger with Jesus and with others.

Receiving him in all his disturbing mystery will get us closer to where the late Brennan Manning, the ex-Franciscan monk and Catholic writer got:

The kingdom belongs to people who aren’t trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves. Worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behaviour. Twenty centuries later, Jesus speaks pointedly to the preening ascetic trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, to those of us caught up in boasting about our victories in the vineyard, to those of us fretting and flapping about our human weakness and character defects. The child doesn’t have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn’t have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his ways to Jesus; he doesn’t have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn’t have to achieve and state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. All he has to do is happily accept the cookies; the gifts of the kingdom (God is in the Manger, Chapter Two Day Four, Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel)

Friend, accept the cookies as you wait for his wonder; “the wonders of his love” this Christmas.

MORE REFLECTION

Opening Question

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “a shoot from a stump”?
How does this image speak to hope in seemingly hopeless situations?

Read the Passage: Isaiah 11:1-10

Observe the contrasts:
- Dead stump → new shoot
- Predator → peace with prey
- Child → leader of harmony

Discussion Points
God’s Surprising Ways

How does God bring life from death?
Why does God choose lowliness and weakness to reveal His glory?

Living with Mystery

Bonhoeffer reminds us: “Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of your own life…”
How do we respond when we cannot understand God’s timing or methods?

Advent Waiting

John the Baptist calls us to prepare: “Prepare the way for the Lord…” (Matthew 3:3)
What does waiting look like for you this Advent season?

Application

Where do you see “dead stumps” in your life or community?
How can you cultivate childlike wonder and openness to God’s work?

Closing Reflection

Brennan Manning: “The kingdom belongs to people who aren’t trying to look good or impress anybody… All he has to do is happily accept the cookies; the gifts of the kingdom.”
What does it mean for you to “accept the cookies” this Christmas?