Text: Isaiah 10:33-11:10

Not so long ago and not so far away, there was a land that had been overrun by a rich and powerful neighbor. Theirs had been a grand and glorious kingdom. Once they had ranked among the superpowers of the earth. Now they were reduced to being a second-rate, have-not people. Much of the land had been laid waste and they were barely able to eke out a subsistence living. They were very resentful toward their conquerors and spent a lot of time plotting vengeance. Of course, they had neither the weapons nor the resources to destroy their enemies the way they wanted to, so they wasted time and energy they could have used rebuilding their own land trying to figure out how to get back at their neighbors.

One day a girl, wandered into a village in this decimated land. She was tired and hungry. She had been wandering for some time since her own village had been destroyed and her family wiped out. In her wandering, she had seen much and had learned a lot. She had become clever and resourceful because her life depended on it. Amazingly, though, her heart had not hardened. Perhaps it was because she carried in it such a strong memory of her mother, who had nurtured her lovingly and taught her to walk the way of peace, to love and to forgive no matter what. Perhaps it was because she had already seen enough destruction and cruelty to last her whole life through. Perhaps it was because she somehow knew she was a child of God. It's difficult to say for certain, but she was as gentle and loving as she was clever and resourceful. She yearned for a day when everyone could just get a long and not practice war and destruction, violence and vengeance, a day in which all could come to share in that way her mother had taught her.

But I digress. Our little girl, let's call her Wanda June, wandered into a particular village on a frosty day. She was ragged and dirty, obviously in need, but the people were cold and unfriendly, anxious around strangers, even a small child, and protective of their own meager resources. They had become so mean-spirited in their obsession with their enemies and their work of revenge, that they had even come to distrust one another. They had lost faith in God and were suspicious of their own community. They were so caught up in scarcity thinking that they now believed that there wasn't enough of anything to go around, even love. Their hearts and their homes had grown cold and mean and ugly; hope for anything different had grown quite dim.

As I said earlier, Wanda June was tired and hungry. With a child's simplicity, she stopped at the first house she came to to ask for something to eat. For her, sharing was the most natural thing in the world, but she was met with a cold, hard stare and quick, vicious, "Be gone, child. There is not enough here for me and mine. There is certainly nothing for you." Wanda June was struck by a deep sadness. As she wandered through the village, rebuffed at one door and then the next, she began to feel a compassion for these love-starved folk, as deep as her own hunger for food. What was she to do?

Well, being the clever and resourceful girl I said she was, Wanda June came up with a plan to help her hunger and benefit the village at the same time. She saw laying in front of her a round, smooth stone. She picked it up and walked to the village square, where she mustered her courage to address the villagers. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began, “you are fortunate that I have come to your village. I have here a very special stone that will help you make it through the long hard days ahead. This is a magic rock. With it you can make stone soup.”

You can imagine they all looked at her suspiciously. “Stone soup?” an old man muttered. “I’ve never heard of stone soup.”

“The wonder of stone soup,” Wanda June continued, “is that it not only feeds hungry people, it helps bring people together.” Before anyone could utter another word, she asked who had a large, empty kettle. The curiosity of the suspicious villagers got the better of them and before long a large iron kettle was delivered in a wheelbarrow.

“The kettle is hardly big enough,” the clever girl opined, “but it will have to do. Now we must fill it with water and start a fire.” Eager hands carried firewood and buckets of water. Soon the kettle was placed over a roaring fire and, as the water began to boil, Wanda June held the magic stone over her head, dropping it dramatically into the pot.

“That stone looks just like the stones in our yard,” a little boy whispered to his mother. His mother picked him up, reassuring him that “You can’t always tell if something is magic by looking at its outside.”

“Stone soup needs salt and pepper,” announced Wanda June, and two children ran off to find salt and pepper. After it had boiled for a few minutes, our clever heroine sipped some broth and mused, “This stone makes excellent soup, but it would be better if we had just a few carrots.”

“Well, I have a few that I might be willing to share,” one farmer responded. Immediately his daughter ran home to return with her apron full of carrots.

“It’s too bad the devastation of the land has been so complete,” said Wanda June. “Stone soup is always better with a cabbage or two.”

“I think I know where I can lay my hands on a cabbage,” a young mother shouted over her shoulder, as she headed for home. She returned carrying three large cabbages.

As Wanda June and the villagers cut the carrots and cabbages and added them to the boiling pot, she mused aloud that “the last time I made stone soup was at the castle of a duke and he had a few potatoes and a bit of beef to add.”

Several people put their heads together and whispered, “A bit of beef and we can eat like royalty!” They scurried off, returning not only with beef and potatoes, but also milk, onions and barley.

By the time the soup was ready, it was almost dark. The folk of the village brought out large tables and bowls and bread and cider. It was the most delicious soup any of them had ever had smelled, and to think, it all came from a magic stone!

After everyone had eaten their fill, musicians brought out their fiddles and they danced, forgetting not only the scarcity in the land but also their thoughts of revenge. They danced and sang until the wee hours of the night. Never had the people experienced such a wonderful party.

The next day as Wanda June looked to be moving on, the villagers said, “Oh, you’re forgetting your magic stone.”

She responded, “In honor of our wonderful evening together, I am leaving the stone with you, as a gift.”

As she walked up the road, the little boy said to his mother, “As long as we have the magic stone, we shall never be hungry.” The mother replied, “Yes, but remember that she also said the stone held other magic. She said the stone also brings people closer together.” At that moment, their eyes met and they knew what they must do. They were off in a second, running together up the road to bring her back to her new home.

Now I know wiser heads than mine would warn against embellishing a fable this way, but the story of stone soup seems to me deeply connected to the themes of vengeance and forgiveness. I want to be clear that easy forgiveness is no more desirable than cheap grace. Damage done is often undoable and hope of healing requires some transformation in all the parties involved. Learning to let go of resentment, to forego vengeance, not to insist on retribution, is hard but necessary work, if we are not to shrivel and die in some deep-seated belief that true love cannot heal all wounds.

Today's ancient text promises that it is a little child who will lead us from the wilderness of violence and vengeance into a peaceable realm in which, amazingly, "the leopard will lie down with the kid and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, the cow and the bear shall graze." What a menagerie God has created? “...and a little child shall lead them.” This is the wisdom of Wanda June, a homeless waif, clever as she is desperate, loving as she is hurt, wise as she is simple and straightforward. Her gift to the village is God's gift to us in Advent. It is such an obvious lesson and still so difficult to grasp: "They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea." Violence and vengeance will be replaced with peace and forgiveness...no more hurt or destruction, no more cold hearts and shut doors, no more war and no more hungry children, no more paranoid hoarding or stockpiling resources. There is enough, enough of everything, because there is enough love to go around, and true love always finds a way.

We added two verses from the tenth chapter of Isaiah to today’s scripture lesson because it puts the great poem of Isaiah 11 into context. In chapter 10, Isaiah prophesies the terrible consequences that will befall his people if they fail to keep their covenant with God and refuse to live righteously according to God’s desires. It is only after God has lopped the boughs with terrifying power, cut down the tallest trees and brought the lofty low, after God has hacked down the thickets of the forest with an ax and felled the majestic trees of Lebanon, that a shoot will appear from the stump of Jesse and a branch from Jesse’s roots. In other words, it is only when the trees of power and might are stripped back to their bare essentials that any new growth can be anticipated. Here in a few short, lyrical verses, Isaiah gives another powerful image of the new life, the new creation that God can and will bring.

The trees that are destroyed represent leaders and people who have not been righteous before God, who have not lived rightly on the earth. So much faith has been invested in power and might, in violence and vengeance, that the earth and its people have lost sight of God’s intent in creation, the harmony and unity that God brought into being when She created the heavens and earth out of chaos. But new leadership is now promised. Simple, faithful leadership filled with the very spirit of God – a spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and fear of God. This is leadership infused with the humility before God that any right living requires. This new leader will not judge by appearances and will be staunch in defending the poor and the meek.

Walter Brueggemann says that “It is impossible to overstate the cruciality of this vision of justice for the coming ideal king, the importance of which is evident in a society like ours, wherein governmental power is largely in the hands of the wealthy and powerful and is operated almost exclusively to their own advantage and benefit. Such an arrangement is a complete contradiction of the biblical vision of government.” He goes on, “…any derivative theory or practice of public power that claims to be ‘biblical’ must attend to issues of economic justice for the vulnerable. This ‘theory of government’ is not primarily concerned to create free space for the ‘working of the market’ in the hands of the powerful or the policing of personal morality, but for the maintenance of economic viability for the all members of society. It is clear,” he says, “that this ‘spirit’ is in the business of making systemic reparations for the poor and the marginalized” (Walter Brueggemann, Westminster Bible Companion, Isaiah 1-39, p. 101.)

God promises one who will lead with righteousness and justice, with peace and love. The kings of ancient Israel had failed utterly to measure up to God’s expectation of leadership, with their greed and their self-serving grabs for power and glory; can we claim anything more for our own leaders? From the decaying stump of dependency on brute power, wealth and privilege, suddenly blossoms a tender shoot that looks radically different in its dependence on the spirit of God that makes all things new. From the tangled roots of those who have attempted to set themselves above God in glory and might, a young branch emerges that grows in humility and the power of love, fed by God’s grace. This may all seem strange, unreal, impossible to us modern sophisticates – reversal of the of natural order, wolves and lambs, leopards and kids, lions and calves, children imparting wisdom, leading their elders to the truth? Still, this is the age-old promise of Advent. Brueggemann says of our text that “The poem is about deep, radical, limitless transformation in which we – like the lion, wolf, leopard – will have no hunger for injury, no need to devour, no yearning for brutal control, no passion for domination.” With the coming of the Messiah, the Promised One, the Righteous Leader, we will also come to know that God indeed provides for our every need. There will be no cause for hoarding, for inhospitality, for violence and vengeance, for enmity or war, for hurt or destruction in all God’s holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea, and the spirit of God shall rest even on us. May it be so – and soon. Amen.