Sermon for the 4th of December, 2022 - Advent 2

‘And a little child shall lead them…’

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be
acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.
In today’s well-known and well-loved reading, the prophet Isaiah
describes a vision of the future, a kind of paradise regained, in which
divine order is restored.
Instead of devouring its prey, the predators lie down peaceably: the
wolf with the lamb; the leopard with the kid; the lion with the calf
and the bear with the cow. And, please note, it’s fashionably vegan –
now the lion eats straw alongside the ox!
Also, bear in mind that for those living as herdsmen in the Middle
East in those distant centuries BC, these wild animals were an
everyday threat to their livestock. I remember only a few years ago,
when I visited Ein Gedi, a kibbutz and nature reserve in the Judean
desert, I was warned to stay well within the perimeter fence as a
leopard had been seen padding around outside the night before.
But, in this new Eden, envisioned by Isaiah, even the wily serpent is
rehabilitated; babies and small children can now play safely near the
home of the asp and the adder – a nest of vipers has now become a
safe place for a nursery!
But where are Adam and Eve in this brave new world? Nowhere to
be seen. No, for we hear that ‘a little child shall lead them’ and this is
not just any child but a divine child of royal descent, ‘a shoot from
the stock of Jesse’, this is the new Adam.
This is the Christ child yet to be born, the one we heard proclaimed
by John the Baptist in the Gospel reading, as he quotes Isaiah, and
now the poisonous snakes take on human form, as John castigates
the Pharisees and Sadducees as ‘a brood of vipers’.
But to return, for a moment, to ‘the little child’. If you look at the
cover of your Order of Service you will see my cousin’s grandson,
Oliver, on the beach in Santa Barbara, California, stretching out his
hand to literally catch some rays… a little child leading us toward the

light. But this is not just a sentimental picture from a family album,
not just an ‘Aah, cute!’ image found on Facebook, it is one that I
think embodies a profound truth, and one that Jesus used several
times: ‘Except ye be converted and become as little children, you shall
not enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 18:3).
What is it to become like a little child, to regain innocence, simplicity,
clarity, joy, to have an unclouded vision of real Nature, away from
virtual reality, free of our enslavement to technology, untainted by
the hubris of scientific achievement? Is not Isaiah’s vision as relevant
today as in Israel all those centuries ago? If we truly saw this planet
as ‘God’s holy mountain’, would we despoil its land with chemicals,
pollute its oceans with plastic, clutter up its atmosphere with tons of
space junk, and devote more time to our phones and screens than to
our children?
But before I get all apocalyptic, I want to end on a more positive note
with a reason to be cheerful given to me by another child in my
family. This time it came from my niece’s four-year-old son, Freddie,
an exceptionably bright and highly articulate boy. He had already
endeared himself to me some time ago, as he is the only person who
has ever referred to me as a ‘grown-up’! Now, although, this may not
be entirely true, it did give me hope! But it is not this that I want to
share with you, but something he said on a more recent visit. I had
been invited up to his room (quite an honour) as he wanted to show
me his carnivorous plants (which I pretended to like) and we were
looking out of the window at the garden when he announced, out of
the blue, apropos of nothing: ‘I love life!’ I was momentarily stunned.
I agreed with him and said life was mysterious, never boring, and we
would never really understand what it is. But what Freddie said has
stayed with me and made me ask do I really love and appreciate life?
Or do I take it for granted? ‘I love life’ out of the mouths of babes…’
and ‘a little child shall lead us…’
Amen.