Advent gives us two stark landscapes this morning: a stump in Isaiah, and a wilderness in Matthew. Neither one suggests promise. Neither one suggests comfort. But these are precisely the places where God begins again.

Isaiah speaks into a moment of deep desolation. The once-proud line of David has been cut down, reduced to a stump—silent, lifeless, a reminder of what once flourished and fell. The people know loss. They know disappointment. They know what it feels like when something strong is brought low.

And right into that reality Isaiah dares to say: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.” Life will emerge from desolation. Hope from discouragement. Not because the stump has strength left, but because God refuses to abandon the story.

Isaiah offers what our hymns later call ‘comfort ye, comfort ye my people’—but comfort rooted in truth, not sentimentality. He sees a ruler upon whom the Spirit rests—wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength. He shall not judge by appearances, nor decide by rumor or noise, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

Here the prophet begins to sound very much like our hymn ‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,’ where we sing that the promised One “shall come down like showers” and “help the poor and needy.”

Isaiah’s vision is crystal clear: justice, equity, protection for the vulnerable. That is the fruit of God’s dream for the world. And here, in this sacred vision, in God’s dream for the world is a perfect place for the words of a Lutheran pastor who recently echoed Isaiah’s cry.

When people and families he knew, human beings created in God’s image, were dismissed as ‘garbage,’ The Rev. Paul Graham said: “Christian teaching could not be clearer. My faith teaches that all people, all people, are created in the image of God.” He continued: “In the name of Jesus, I rebuke those hateful words.”

What is that if not Isaiah’s stump sending out a shoot? What is that if not equity for the meek of the earth?

Isaiah’s prophecy is not ancient poetry—it is God’s dream breaking into the world even now.

And the vision only grows sharper. Isaiah imagines the wolf dwelling with the lamb, the leopard lying down with the kid, and a little child leading them. It is the peaceable kingdom, not built on force but on transformed hearts. Not a world we escape to, but a world God calls us to help shape. As another hymn puts it, “the valleys rise to meet him, the hills bow down to greet him”—Prepare the way, O Zion.

And then Matthew drops us not into a palace, not into a temple, but into the wilderness. Because wilderness is often where truth is spoken most clearly.

There’s a voice crying in the wilderness, and it belongs to John the Baptist—hair uncombed, wardrobe questionable, diet eccentric, but heart utterly faithful. John is a prophet in the truest biblical sense.

Biblical prophets were not people who sat with Ouija boards predicting the future. They were not fortune-tellers. When the prophets spoke, they held people accountable to God. They announced God’s fierce love. They reminded the powerful that God’s love includes justice for all whom God loves. And when they pronounced God’s judgment, it was with the ferocity of God’s love for justice.

So when John looks up and sees Pharisees and Sadducees walking toward him—people who have turned repentance into a religious performance—he tells the truth not gently, not politely, but truthfully: “You brood of vipers! Who told you to flee the wrath to come?”

John refuses to let repentance become a performance. He refuses to let anyone hide behind religious identity while others are harmed. He refuses to let faith become a checkbox rather than a transformation.

He says, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor.’”

Today, he might say: “Don’t presume to say you are a Christian if you can refer to another human being—made in the image of God—as garbage. That is not the fruit of a transformed heart.”

The heart of the word repentance, in Greek metanoia, doesn’t mean feeling a little sorry. It means turning around, choosing another direction, beginning again. It’s less about what is wrong with us now and more about what is right—what God is calling us toward. Repentance is realizing that God is pointing in one direction, that we’ve been traveling in another, and choosing to turn because we have encountered God.

So what is that fruit? It is not mysterious. It is not complex. It is quite simple:

• respect for others
• compassion that surrenders self-interest
• generosity that seeks no reward
• good news to the poor—who are not objects of charity, but true children of God
• lives shaped by the compassion of Christ and not the idolatry of ego.

Repentance often begins in small, hidden places. I held a grudge for years—decades, really. I could recite who showed up when my mother died and who did not. It took too much energy to keep carrying that, and with God’s help I finally set it down. Most of us have something like that tucked away. Repentance often begins right there—releasing what tightens the heart so God can grow something new.

Repentance is not punishment. Repentance is transformation—letting God make something new out of what felt like a stump.

And that brings us back to Isaiah’s stump and John’s wilderness. Two places where life seems unlikely. Yet Scripture insists these are holy ground.

Advent does not ask us to pretend those places are easy. It asks us to trust that those places are where God meets us first.

Because Jesus who is coming does not wait for perfect conditions. He comes into poverty, into danger, into vulnerability. Jesus baptizes not only with water, but with the Holy Spirit and fire—fire that burns away what harms us and refines what is true. Jesus brings justice for the meek, equity for the poor, hope where there was only a stump. Jesus invites us to bear fruit—worthy of repentance, worthy of grace, worthy of the world Isaiah says is possible.

And it is Jesus for whom we prepare the way.

Advent is our season of making room—slowing down, listening, turning again toward the One who comes. It is the season when we remember that God enters our lives and our history, taking on our vulnerability so that we might find hope. Repentance is simply clearing space for that hope to take root.

God incarnate. God-with-us. Which means God everywhere—at all times, in every place.

The Kingdom is coming through the wilderness. It is nearer than we imagined.

Prepare the way.

Make straight the path.

Are we willing? Are we ready?

Amen.