Bible reading: Jeremiah 33:1-9, 14-16.

Message.

This, of course, was no ordinary tree. It had been planted in the late 1800s by the landowner John Clayton. It was a favourite of both walkers and photographers. It had featured in the film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” although it was many miles from Sherwood Forest. It was the setting for marriage proposals, sentimental moments and the scattering of ashes. And in 2016 the Woodland Trust named it “English Tree of the Year”. You might say that this tree was iconic – and now it was gone. People felt bewildered and bereaved as they contemplated the loss of an old friend: how could anyone have perpetrated such a senseless act? The Police and the National Trust began investigations and two men accused of committing it are due to stand trial this week. I’ll return to this story later.

The prophet Jeremiah was not in a good place. His city of Jerusalem was under siege by the Babylonians; its people would have been getting more and more hungry, more and more desperate, more and more hopeless.  It seemed that they were destined to lose everything that had given meaning to their lives: their homes, their family, their livelihoods, their Temple and their king. And Jeremiah himself was in an even worse situation, in fact locked up in prison (not for the first time) by king Zedekiah for having dared to speak the truth. As we read in 2 Chronicles (which isn’t a part of the Bible we often visit): “He sinned against the Lord and did not listen to the prophet Jeremiah … He stubbornly refused to repent and return to the Lord, the God of Israel … He [and the nation’s leaders] made fun of God’s messengers, ignoring their words and laughing at them, until at last the Lord’s anger against his people was so great that there was no escape”.

But – as would happen to the Apostle Paul centuries later – it was in prison that Jeremiah heard God’s word. After gruesomely declaring that not just Jerusalem’s houses but even its royal palace would be torn down and filled with corpses, God tells Jeremiah that, ultimately, he will heal the city and its people and restore them to health, he will give them peace and security, he will make Israel prosperous, in fact he will rebuild the nation as it had been before: “Every nation in the world will fear and tremble when they hear about the good things that I do”. In the darkest of days that was an amazing and, most of us would have said, totally unrealistic promise to have made. Did Jeremiah actually believe it? I don’t know; but he did pass the message on.

And then comes the climax of this section of Jeremiah’s prophecy: “At that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness’.” What does this prophecy mean? For its original Jewish readers it meant that Israel will once again become a monarchy, that a member of the Davidic line would emerge, take the throne, and “execute justice and righteousness in the land”. My understanding (and I’m no expert) is that, over the years, this belief has morphed into the expectation of a heavenly Messiah rather than another ordinary earthly ruler – an expectation which, of course, Christianity has taken up.

That phrase, the “righteous branch” is actually rather odd. What we need to picture in our minds, I think, is a tree stump – in this case the end of Israel’s royal line – which is, if you look carefully, just beginning to put out a few tiny shoots. As yet, they are tender and fragile: a passing animal could nibble them off, a too-cold winter or too-dry summer might be their death. But, for now, they are there and, slowly, they are growing and so offer the process of renewal and regeneration. That’s what’s happening at Sycamore Gap: last August, a National Park Ranger noticed twelve tiny shoots growing from the base of the stump, which has been carefully fenced. However regrowth will take over 150 years and, even then, the tree will be different to what it was before. But there is definite promise, albeit one we won’t see fulfilled in our generation or even the next. We heard, too, this week of 49 seedlings from the tree which have been given to charities.

Our phrase has a parallel in Isaiah: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit”. This is significant because of the words which follow: “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him: the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord. And he will delight in the fear of the Lord”. Although we know that he was quoting another text, did Jesus also have these words in his mind when he declared: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me”? Certainly the Gospel writers are at pains to present Jesus as a man directly descended from David, which is why Matthew and Luke give us their lengthy genealogies; they are also happy to declare him as “the Lord’s anointed one”, the promised Messiah. But Jesus completely rejects any notion of being an earthly ruler – much to the disappointment to some of his followers.

Last week I spoke about the troubles of our world and our belief that they will be banished on the day when Jesus returns to earth in glory. That is very much the hope which we repeat, probably with more than a hint of doubt or despair, on Advent Sunday every year; it’s a hope which keeps us going. We know, of course, that those troubles haven’t gone away: even though there has been a ceasefire of sorts in Lebanon (and don’t our hearts weep as we see innocent people returning to their homes only to find them shattered), the war in Gaza continues, as done the conflict in Ukraine. We have been made aware, too, of the largely unreported humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Sudan where more than 25 million people are suffering from severe hunger, including 755,000 facing famine – we were moved by the Ethiopian famine in 1984 but these scenes no longer seem to touch us. That’s before we mention our more local, but still traumatic, events such as the flooding in Pontypridd and Northampton. What’s so hard to take – as I heard Tom Fletcher, the new United Nations chief of humanitarian affairs say on the radio this week – is that so much suffering in the world has a human cause; we can’t blame nature for it, nor God.

I have no response to these appalling situations. The vague hope of Christ’s return, although welcome, isn’t going to do much for people in Beirut, Khartoum or Gaza City who need help and healing today. But, then, Jeremiah’s prophecy of restoration didn’t help the citizens of Jerusalem; it was 70 years, possibly two or even three generations, before it was fulfilled. Yet somehow the Jewish people of those days managed to hang on to their hope – and so must we. One way of sustaining it is to look, not for large-scale moments when the world seems to be changing for the better (we had one of those at the end of the Cold War, and look where it has got us), but for the little signs of God’s Kingdom, the green shoots which look so fragile but which, over time, may yield a wonderful dividend of health and wholeness. Yes, awful things are happening in our world, and it’s those which grab the headlines. But, as Jesus reminded us, God’s Kingdom is growing, quietly and almost unnoticed, by the little acts, the neighbourly care, the local projects, the small-scale initiatives, which are to be found in every community. Let’s turn our eyes away from our TV screens and laptops, and look for green shoots of hope starting to sprout beside us. Perhaps they can be tangible and positive signs of our Advent hope.