St Martin's Voices
Commissioned by the Church of England for Advent 2025
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.
Here is a piece from a decade ago, posted by The Episcopal Church, note that a somewhat different translation of the antiphon is used here.
The third of The Great “O” Antiphons highlights Jesus’ lineage from Jesse, David’s father. The antiphons are seven brief prayers that are traditionally chanted or sung on successive evenings starting on December 17.
O Root of Jesse, you stand as an ensign to the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths, and nations bow in worship: Come and deliver us, and tarry not.
“A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” ~ Isaiah 11:1-2
A Jesse Tree, a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, represents the family tree of Jesus. Beginning on the first day of Advent, a Bible story is read relating to God’s people and Jesus’ family, starting with Creation and ending with the Birth of Christ. An ornament is placed on a Jesse Tree after each day’s story.
Maggy Keet, Manager of Donor Relations and Special Events in the Development Office, shares her remembrances and reflection on her family’s Jesse Tree tradition:
Much to my disappointment, the holidays of my childhood started not with an oversized, light-draped Douglas fir in the living room, but with a lean, bare branch beside our kitchen table. The day after Thanksgiving, while friends were out joyfully selecting O Tannenbaum, my Dad was traipsing into the late autumn woods in search of the barren branch that would become our Jesse Tree. This old Advent tradition, based on the messianic prophecy of Isaiah, “A shoot shall come forth from the stump of Jesse,” was a sign of hope in small beginnings.
Throughout December, our family had a simple after-dinner ritual. We would light the candles in the Advent wreath and my sister and I would color the minimalist line drawing ornaments of biblical scenes—John the Baptist decked out in camel hair, Elizabeth and Mary sharing pregnancy stories—while Mom or Dad read the scripture passage for the day. We’d recite a short, page-long litany followed by a few verses of “O come, O come Emmanuel” before cutting out our ornaments and hanging them on the tree.
If Advent is about readying ourselves to receive something, we need to be leave space for it to enter. The quiet pause each evening was good for a family with demanding jobs, homework, school projects, piano lessons, youth group, holiday parties, and pageants. There was plenty to keep us busy, but little to slow us down. We had every excuse to scurry off as soon as our plates were clean, but the ritual held us together and kept our evenings calm, even if only for thirty minutes.
Postponing the Christmas commotion wasn’t easy, but the days of waiting weren’t empty. The naked Jesse Tree filled Advent with meaning and purpose: each night a new ornament to color, a new passage to read, which often sparked questions (“What’s a virgin?”) and conversations (“How did two of every animal in the world fit on Noah’s Ark?”). The Bible stories, the songs, the litany all taught us—even as young children—that the birth of Christ was not a sentimental nursery story, but a powerful sign of God’s presence in the midst of suffering and of God’s fierce insistence on universal love, justice and mercy. Each Sunday, as we lit another candle, the room got a little brighter.
Though we didn’t get a tree until days before Christmas, my parents weren’t completely austere. We ended the evening ritual by opening our Advent calendar, not the ‘cardboard with stale chocolate’ variety, but a large quilted tree with twenty-five pockets thoughtfully filled with all sorts of confections—small, sweet breadcrumbs leading us to the big day. These treats, along with our Jesse Tree, taught us that good things come from the thrill of hope—and expectation.
It took a few years for my sister and me to understand why we couldn’t “just deck the halls already!” But once we got it, we looked forward to Advent more than Christmas. We continued that tradition long after we had outgrown it. Each year Dad would copy the ornaments and litany, each year’s photocopy of a photocopy more faded than the last. But we held on to that fading ritual even after we weren’t little girls any more because the Jesse Tree had taught us that there was more joy from the branch than there was from the tree.
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As a political blogger during the despotism of Trump, I have to point out that this presents Jesus as someone who will shut up kings, of the kind that the United States now has, by Roberts Court made law, for the first time in its history. But we have to understand how we got here during this most libertarian of all periods since the supposed end of legal slavery.
I think if the nation had bowed down to worship, honoring the commandments given by Jesus, not least of all to honor the truth over lies, we would never have gotten to this place in our history. That is the sign to the People that will either determine our future or we will never get out of this. The importance of the truth in this is that we will either stop the lies and favor the truth over them or that sign is ignored and we will continue on the wrong way. And it's clear that the civil law of the United States, yes, even the idol of the First Amendment is inadequate to that. The exact same thing can be said of Britain which is being led, right now, by the same kind of "civil rights lawyer" of the kind who did so much to destroy the truth in the United States, going so far as to invent a "right to lie" in the mass media.
Christianity is THAT KIND of political religion not what the word generally is used for today. And Christianity, if it is to mean anything in life is inescapably political in the highest sense of that word.
Anything proclaimed to be Christianity that points us away from the signs of Jesus, among the foremost of those ample provision for the least among us, the alien among us, those who are in prison, those who are sick and telling the truth is not Christianity and is a call to ignore the sign that Jesus is. We have that from the Gospel which such false Christians claim to hold as the Word of God. Here in Luke 7:
18 When John's disciples told him about all these things, he called two of them 19 and sent them to the Lord to ask him, “Are you the one John said was going to come, or should we expect someone else?”
20 When they came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to ask if you are the one he said was going to come, or should we expect someone else?”
21 At that very time Jesus healed many people from their sicknesses, diseases, and evil spirits, and gave sight to many blind people. 22 He answered John's messengers, “Go back and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind can see, the lame can walk, those who suffer from dreaded skin diseases are made clean, the deaf can hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is preached to the poor. 23 How happy are those who have no doubts about me!”
24 After John's messengers had left, Jesus began to speak about him to the crowds: “When you went out to John in the desert, what did you expect to see? A blade of grass bending in the wind? 25 What did you go out to see? A man dressed up in fancy clothes? People who dress like that and live in luxury are found in palaces! 26 Tell me, what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes indeed, but you saw much more than a prophet. 27 For John is the one of whom the scripture says: ‘God said, I will send my messenger ahead of you to open the way for you.’ 28 I tell you,” Jesus added, “John is greater than anyone who has ever lived. But the one who is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than John.”
29 All the people heard him; they and especially the tax collectors were the ones who had obeyed God's righteous demands and had been baptized by John. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law rejected God's purpose for themselves and refused to be baptized by John.
Notice what Jesus gave as the sign he was to the disciples of John. Notice who listened and who didn't. Who listens now and who doesn't.
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