Worship

I love The Lord of the Rings trilogy. One of the first movies Rhiannon and I saw as a couple was The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. My favorite movie of the three is The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. In The Two Towers, the people of Rohan are facing what feels like certain doom. Their homes have been burned, their army scattered, and they are fleeing to the fortress of Helm’s Deep with nothing left but fear. Everything looks hopeless. As they travel, panic spreads through the group.

With the antagonist Sauraman’s army on the doorstep of Helm’s Deep, a young boy tells the main character Aragorn, “They say our army will not last the night, they say it is hopeless.” Later, Legolas also begins to despair. He looks at the overwhelming forces surrounding them and says quietly “They cannot win this fight.” In other words: There is no hope. But Aragorn refuses to accept that. He turns to Legolas, and the boy, weary and wounded himself, yet says firmly and with conviction: “There is always hope!” It’s not optimism. It’s not denial. It’s a deep belief that the story isn’t over. And that hope becomes the turning point. They ride out one last time into what looks like certain defeat — and at dawn, Gandalf arrives with reinforcements. Light pours over the mountains. What felt like the end becomes the beginning of victory. The Hope of Advent works the same way. Isaiah 11 shows us a world that looks like a chopped-down stump — lifeless, finished. But God says, “Watch the stump… a shoot is coming.” Christian hope is the refusal to let sin have the last word. It is believing that, even when we see no path forward, God is already preparing a way forward, with Jesus leading the way! Like Aragorn, we say by faith: “There is always hope.” That is what I want to talk about today. What is our hope as believers, not just during Advent, but for all time?

There is a lot in this text, so before we examine our hope, let’s unpack what is going on in Isaiah. Isaiah’s early chapters unfold during a time when Judah faced a political crisis, caught between the rising power of Assyria and the temptation to rely on unfaithful alliances for protection. Spiritually, the nation was marked by idolatry, injustice, and empty worship. Talk about a crisis! Can you relate to this? What lasting hope does Isaiah offer when we face a threat we cannot control?

Our hope as believers should make us resilient: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”-Isaiah 11:1-2. To be resilient is to cope well with a crisis. I remember when I was a teacher/coach at Palestine Westwood dealing with a parent. We had a productive two weeks getting kids in game shape and ready to go. Our first game, we were in a tight game with Mexia, and all of the sudden, I noticed one of our athletes go into the game and take another one out, and I didn’t think anything of it. I figured our other Coach had subbed him in. We played hard as a team, and won the game. As we shook hands, got kids on a knee, talked with them, and sent them off to the locker room. As I was walking away, a parent approached me with his son, and he was mad. In front of other parents, and students trying to get in the game, he was yelling, and wanted to know why we never played his kid the whole game. Come to find out, it was the same athlete who had been taken off the field by another kid. We never put the athlete who was subbed on the field back on the field to play! In a crisis for this kid and parent, and also keeping my own emotions in check, I asked the athlete “Did Coach Ellerbe or myself ask you to come out?” He said “one of my teammates subbed me in.” A kid put himself in the game!! The point is, in a moment of anger, choosing to cope with that anger by finding the facts, changed the Dad’s attitude. He looked at his son and said “Son, don’t ever come out unless a coach tells you to.” Now friends, a parent who is angry about playing time may seem silly to some, but for me in the moment, I was tired, hungry, and ready to visit with the kids and get them out of the lockeroom. When people get tired, the ability to listen decreases dramatically. I needed to cope with what i was hearing, quickly! I am grateful I coped with the crisis of a parent that day, and didn’t match anger with anger. I believed in his son, and I also believed in what God was doing at Westwood that year. I wanted to see his success, and the success of the school continue!! The kid who didn’t play, ended up being one of our best players on the field. No one likes a crisis, I am grateful for mine that day, so I could develop thick skin, lean on the hope of what God was doing, and learn what it means to be resilient.

Throughout the Old and New Testaments, God forms a resilient hope in His people by pointing them to the coming Messiah—a hope that bounces back from judgment, suffering, and even death. In the Old Testament, our text promises that even when Israel is cut down, “a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse” (Isaiah 11:1), and that God will raise a righteous King from David’s line who brings justice and peace (2 Samuel 7; Isaiah 9:6–7). This hope is fulfilled in Christ in the New Testament, brings good news to the poor, freedom to the captive, and sight to the blind (Luke 4:18). Even when hope seems lost at the cross, God raises Jesus from the dead (Luke 24), proving that in Christ our hope is strong beyond measure. This strong, resilient hope would inspire Paul to boldly proclaim the promise to the Roman church that, because of Jesus, “nothing… will be able to separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8:39).

That was never more true then during World War I, on Christmas Eve 1914, when the famous “Christmas Truce” broke out along parts of the Western Front. British and German soldiers—who had been firing at each other just hours before—slowly climbed out of their trenches and met in the space between the lines. As they gathered in the cold, muddy darkness, the German soldiers began singing the old carol “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” — “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.” Its words, some attribute to the German theologian Martin Luther, speak about Jesus as a tender flower growing out of a dead, winter stump — a sign of life in a time of strife. A British soldier later wrote in his diary: “As the enemy sang, it was as though hope itself moved across the battlefield.” The fighting had taken everything from both sides of the conflict — friends, peace, and a sense of normal life. But when they heard that hymn about Jesus coming as a Rose blossoming out of winter’s cold, something awakened in them. Men who had lost nearly all hope suddenly felt the presence of Christ’s peace. After the hymn, both sides exchanged small gifts, helped bury each other’s dead, and even prayed together. For a short time, the hope of Jesus gave resiliency to mortal enemies through the words of hymns written centuries earlier. A British chaplain who witnessed it said afterward: “That night, the Rose bloomed for us. Jesus came into the trenches.”

I have an invitation for you to consider this week. Remember Jesus, through His birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection, there is always hope for you and me. The nations Isaiah speaks of in our text are doing good things, but also doing bad things. In our nation today, in our church today, there are people doing good things, and bad things, thats why we are here! The Good News of Advent is: because of the coming Christ, there is hope for us. Let God be the one to grow what we are doing right and cut out what we are doing wrong, while we remain faithful to Christ. We cannot control how other people act, we can and are called to respond to good and bad situations like Jesus would.

Don’t give up. There is always hope, and all things work out in Christ. Isn’t that the kind of resiliency you and I need at Advent? In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.