"As the Waters Cover the Sea"

Isaiah 11:1-10 On your school bus, did the bus driver ever yell at you? You know, “stop horsing around”, “stop all that yelling”, “stop throwing thing at each other”, and the basic “sit down”? Things like this happened on my school bus nearly every day, no matter what school or what grade I was in, whether I was in first grade or 12th grade, someone would get out of hand and the bus driver would yell. Sometimes it was such a problem that the bus driver pulled over to the side of the road and wouldn’t move until the messing around completely stopped, and everyone sat down where they were supposed to. On December 1st, 1955, a 42 year old woman riding on a bus did something that caused a bus driver to start yelling. And unlike the kids on my bus, she didn’t stop what she was doing, and finally the bus driver called the police and she was hauled off to jail. Hardly anyone knew who this woman was. She had a job tailoring clothing in a department store, and after she was arrested and put in jail she lost her job. She was a complete nobody, known only to her family and friends, but when she died her body was laid in state in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, an honor usually reserved only for American presidents. On December 1st, 1955, hardly anyone knew this woman, but what she did changed everything and by the end of her life everyone knew about her story, and I bet you know it, too. Her name was Rosa Parks, and the reason she was arrested on December 1st, 1955, fifty five years and four days ago, was not for horsing around on the bus, but because she refused to move to the back of the bus when the bus driver ordered her to do so. The law on the books in Montgomery, Alabama, where this happened, required black passengers had to move to the back of the bus if a white passenger needed a seat. The law was a constant humiliation to the black citizens of Montgomery because it declared them to be second class citizens based on the color of their skin. On December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks had had enough of this humiliation and she refused to leave her seat. The reason I am reminding us of this story is because of Isaiah’s prophecy that we heard a few moments ago. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots”. It’s a wonderful story of something small and insignificant and easily overlooked leading to something so big we can’t even begin to measure it. Rosa Parks was just one woman on one bus, facing a huge tide of injustice, but her valiant stand against an unjust law became the spark that changed everything. After her arrest, Black Church leaders in Montgomery, among them Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,, initiated a bus boycott with the black citizens of Montgomery walking long distances to work every day for more than a year until finally the loss of revenue pressured the white leaders of Montgomery to give in and the law was changed. It was just one law among thousands like it, but changing this one law led to many more laws being changed throughout the southern states, and now, in the present day, there is one set of laws for all citizens, not different laws for different people depending on their skin color. It all began on that day when Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat on the bus. When she died in 2005 her body was placed in the Capitol Rotunda, one of the highest honors in the land. Isaiah begins with something insignificant and overlooked, an old stump. But he notices something that others haven’t seen yet. There was supposed to be a mighty tree in that spot, with deep roots and lofty branches, but it had been cut down leaving just an old stump. Isaiah calls that old stump the “stump of Jesse”, which you might not understand. Not too many of you know who Jesse was. Here’s the explanation: Jesse was the father of David, the young boy who defeated the giant Goliath, with his sling and a few stones. David became widely admired for this courageous feat, and some years later he was proclaimed King of Israel. But in time, long after David, an invading army destroyed the last of the kings, and Israel was a captive nation, and remained that way even until the time of Jesus. What was supposed to be a mighty tree representing the great and glorious kings of Israel was nothing more than an old stump the represented defeat and despair. But Isaiah took a second look, and he notices something growing out of that old stump, a little shoot of green. The tree thought dead would grow again! Israel was still a captive nation, but now there was a sign of hope that the line of Jesse would rise again. Christians read Isaiah’s words about the new shoot growing from the dead stump and understand that it refers to the coming of Jesus, the one who revives the hope and promise of Israel. Out of a forgotten old stump something amazing is about to happen. Out of something insignificant, the birth of a baby, everything changes. The very first chapter of the New Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew, adds to Isaiah’s vision. There you can see Jesse’s name, and then David’s name, and then Solomon’s name, all the way down to the last king when the armies of Babylon brought an end to Israel. But the last king is no longer the end of the story, because now a distant descendant of Jess and David has appeared, a man named Joseph, a carpenter from Nazareth. He is the husband of Mary, and the father of Jesus. A new shoot has come forth! Out of something overlooked and insignificant Isaiah sees the hand of God at work. The prophecy begins with a tiny shoot of green emerging from a dead stump in verse 1, but the scale of the story has grown beyond measure in verse ten, “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea”. It’s easy for us to give all of our attention to the baby in the story of Christmas, but the Isaiah hints at something even greater, the coming of a Messiah, the Anointed One of God. The baby is just the beginning, a small beginning, a new shoot, but as the story is told in full, his significance is more than we can measure, as the waters cover the sea.