Sermon Sunday December 7, 2025
Second Sunday of Advent
As we continue in our Advent series, Advent journey, the church invites us in a special way to reflect on the theme of peace. As I mentioned before, I mention again, I find Advent to be an opportunity to um to get back to the basics.
You know, every once in a while, I go through my collection of books and I have so many wonderful books that most of the time I don’t even remember what I have. We can get lost in the amount of treasure we possess as human beings, as Christians. And so these opportunities from time to time to step back and say, “What are the basics?” Get back to the basics. Lest we become overwhelmed by the amount of teachings and spiritual treasures that have been handed on to us and we don’t even know what is it all for anyway. Advent is getting back to basics. You could call it Christianity 101. An introductory course in what it means to be a follower of Jesus. what it means to be a human being fully alive. And one of the themes that comes central in our advent journey is the theme of peace.
I have come to bring peace. Jesus as the king of peace. The proclamation of Jesus’s coming by Isaiah clearly speaking of this new found peace where there was no more life visible. Notice in the first reading for today from Isaiah it says a shoot ute shall
come from the stump of Jesse. There is so much that could be said about those few words. Who was Jesse in the Old Testament? If you go on my YouTube channel, you can take my scripture course. When you get to Jesse, you get to the father of King David. Remember that beautiful episode where they’re looking for the new
king. And Jesse had all these sons and all of them were very impressive. David
was the least impressive of all. And he wasn’t even there when Samuel the prophet was to choose the next king. And finally they call him in from the fields because that’s all he could do. He was the youngest. He wasn’t fit for anything great. He could be a shepherd though. And they call him in and Samuel says yes. This is the one the least likely to become the chosen one of God, the great King David. And then afterwards, what happened to the lineage of great kings chosen by the prophets in the Old Testament? They all failed.
They became worldly kings. They followed power and prestige, all kinds of worldly allurements. Even in the time of Jesus, who was it that threatened the life of a very baby
Jesus? It was the king from the lineage of Jesse, the successor of King David. And yet it says a shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse. Where is the hope? Where is the peace coming from? It’s coming from the very unlikely place where there was so much damage, so much disobedience towards God. It’s from the lineage of those bad kings that the king of all kings will come, Jesus.
My dad had a small tree in the backyard and one year he said, “Let’s cut it down. It looks like it’s dead anyway.” And so we cut it down all the way to the ground and we say we said, “We’ll take
the stump out later.” Cuz you know, taking the stump out is a big job. We left it one more season and just about when we were to take the stump out, we began to see little shoots coming out. New life from from where we thought there was death. There was
nothing left. I think of it when I hear these words, a shoot ute shall come from the stump of Jesse.
God doesn’t reject the chosen people even though so many times they’ve rejected God. But God continues to plant on the very soil, the very stump that God founded. I think a source of peace comes from the fact that God remains faithful. God is the one who never gives up. Even when even when we’ve given up, our leaders have given up. Maybe even our church leaders have given up. God doesn’t say, “Well, I’ll start somewhere else. I’ll start with someone else. I’ll do something else.” No. God says, “Even from here, where there is presumable darkness and death and lack of faithfulness, I will bring new life.”
New life, the gift of peace. Now, how do we find the source of peace in our life today? The answer to that question I propose from the gospel reading for today in which John the Baptist the most unlikely of all characters in the scriptures to proclaim the coming of Jesus is the one who says peace will come from where? From repentance. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is
near. Bear fruit worthy of repentance. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced repentance in your daily lives. I know I have. Sometimes the word trips us up a little bit. The word repentance. What is repentance? It’s simply trying to make peace, isn’t it?
When I when I was a little boy, I had a very strong personality. And I remember my parents still tell me the story to this day. I wanted my dad’s hat. I wanted to play with it, but it was an expensive hat. And so my parents didn’t want me to play with it. So I kept bugging my parents over and over and over again to get that hat
until finally they said, “No, you can’t have the hat.” I went to my room and I cried and I cried and I cried and finally I settled down and I stopped crying and I came out of my room and my mom said, “Are you feeling better now?” And I said, “Yes.” And then I said, “Can I have the hat?” There is that stubborn streak in us. But
when the time comes when we know we’ve done something that has damaged our relationships with each other, what is it that we try to do? We try to make peace. We try to move forward. That’s really the heart of repentance of saying, you know what, I was wrong. I was wrong and I need to make a make amendments,
heal something. acknowledge that I’m not the person who always knows everything.
I’ve been told once and I know it from my personal experience that it’s always good to go through life by allowing for the possibility that I also may be wrong sometimes because our tendency is to allow for the possibility that someone else is wrong. So whenever we engage in any kind of dialogue or discussion, it’s often and pay attention. If you pay attention, you will see it in yourself that it’s hard for us to listen allowing for the possibility that maybe I am wrong here and I need to listen attentively to what the other
person is saying, allowing for the possibility that I have something to learn, that I have something to change in me, that I am not
perfect in all things, and yet God is here.
Repent, says John the Baptist, if you want peace in your life, if you want peace in your heart, if you want peace in your communities, it must begin with bearing fruit worthy of repentance, walking through life with this spirit of humility, acknowledging that I am primarily a student, the one who continues to be open to the possibilities set before me by God, by people, by the church, by all
kinds of circumstances. Yes, peace is at the heart of Christianity 101 at the season of Advent where we are beginning to see possibilities created by God and possibilities allow that allow us to
change through repentance, through hope, through change.
Jesus is the one, the ultimate one, the only one who can bring about salvation. But we can have a part in it only when we accept him humbly and honestly and reverently each day.
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Father Wojtek Kuzma