O Root of Jesse

O Radix Jesse- O Root of Jesse

Peaceable Kingdom- John August Swanson

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths, to you the nations will make their prayer: 

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

Radix, is in Latin the origin of both radish and radical.  Advent is a time for us to be radical, to be a sign, to counter the loud voices, to be a voice in the wilderness, to listen to those unheard. We are called to be like radishes, peppery, noticeable and of the earth.

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, 

and a branch shall grow out of his roots - Isaiah 11:1

The shoot that came from a stump, delivers us. The root that was born to a teenage mother, to a carpenter, in a unknown place, over 2000 years ago, today continues, in the midst of the everyday, the mundane, the profane, to remind us of the radical nature of God.

 A God that choose to be known as a child, A God that is present in the stumps and roots of our own families, in our brokenness, our struggles, our hopes and joys. 

Human beings suffer.

They torture one another.

They get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song

Can fully right a wrong

Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols

Beat on their bars together.

A hunger-striker’s father

Stands in the graveyard dumb.

The police widow in veils

Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

Seamus Heaney- The Cure at Troy