Clapham Village Newsletter, December 2025
If you go to a service of Lessons and Carols, you’re likely to hear that weird seasonal scriptural phrase, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” It comes from the old prophet Isaiah, who had eyes to see what no-one else could: in a place of desolation, signs of new beginnings.
In the Eighth Century BC the Assyrians got busy expanding their empire with extreme ruthlessness. Where once they had used international extortion to spread their kingdom, the new mode of Assyrian conquest was to destroy the very infrastructure of the societies and cultures they invaded. Which is what they did to Israel in 722BC. And in Judah, the weak king Ahaz became a vassal of their dreaded powerful pagan enemy.
Assyrian imperial propaganda proclaimed the supremacy of their god Ashur and declared that the conquered peoples had been abandoned by their gods. And so it seemed to the tribes of Israel, the sons and daughters of King David, the son of Jesse, who were absolutely broken. Their kings had failed them. Their cities were laid waste; like an axed-down tree stump they were cut low.
But along comes Isaiah with a remarkable vision – the vision of a shoot coming out from the stump of Jesse, the promise of a branch growing out of his roots. The promise of one who would create an alternative community of peace in a wounded world. Isaiah described one who, contrary to their occupying rulers, would “judge the poor with righteousness” and “decide with equity for the meek of the earth”; he saw “that one day all would live on God’s holy mountain without fear of hurt and destruction”.
“The wolf shall live with the lamb,” Isaiah writes, “the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” – weird but wonderful images of a world where conflict has given way to concord.
This Advent season gives us permission to open our eyes to a different view of life, to recognise the green shoots of rebirth today. When we do, we find them everywhere. The squaddie who lost a limb in Afghanistan now competing in regional sports; the recovering addict now sponsoring someone starting out on the twelve steps; the community which lost its pub and its post office now running their own; the overworked businessman who, following a stroke, gave up his career to become a full-time foster carer; the estranged family members reconciling; the villagers rebuilding together after the floodwaters have subsided; Southport’s community gardeners winning this year’s Britain in Bloom.
The shoot from the stump, the branch growing from the roots: do we find these images relatable because they are drawn from nature? Ancient Judah’s ordinary people lived close to the land; Jesse was a farmer. Assyrian settlers had sequestrated their land, imposed rents and taxes upon them; Jesse’s son David turned his back on the family’s agrarian life to occupy himself with kingship and empire-building. But within the people’s deep understanding of the natural way of things, lay their intuition that no amount of oppression or devastation could stop the green shoots of goodness seeking a way to re-emerge: slowly, almost imperceptibly, but indefatigably.
Could it be that the Animals and Insects are the AI best suited to guiding us into a better future? I think that our popular services of Lessons and Carols appeal because they are rare occasions allowing us to embrace the deeper realities within this alternative view of life; and to be empowered by them into taking part in its nurture.
“Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting,” writes Rebecca Solnit in Hope in the Dark. But, “Hope is an embrace of the unknown and knowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.”
This is our season of believing that the force which brings life out of the dormant earth, which drives the good shoots to break through from the stump, is alive and active in the world; it is the energy through which we can live, and act, in hope.
Note
Based on my 2016 sermon, The Shoot from the Stump in the Advent of Trump.