Isaiah 11:1-10 Psalm 72:1-7, 18-21 Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12
Two weeks ago, we went on a tour of Trafalgar Square. Today I invite you on another trip; to the Northern most point of England – to Hadrian’s wall.
Hadrian’s Wall was built by the Romans in the 2nd century. It is almost 120 km long and it stretches from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, across the whole of England. It was built as a clear boundary to mark the northern limit of the Roman Empire — and as a defence against the unconquered peoples of Scotland. The wall is an extraordinary work of engineering: up to 6 metres high, with milecastles, gateways, observation towers, and a deep ditch to the north. It has housed thousands of soldiers from all over the empire, creating one of the most multicultural communities in ancient Britain. Today, Hadrian’s Wall is a World Heritage Site, one of the most iconic archaeological landmarks in Britain, and is a place where empire, history, and wild beauty all meet.
Why am I telling you this? Well, because a couple of weeks ago I got a message from my sister back in the UK. She was filming a news story on her phone and sent it to me with the words, “You’ve got to see this.” She was right — and I replied, “This will preach.” I didn’t realise how soon. Because today the story fits perfectly, and it begins with a tree.
For more than a century, a single sycamore stood in a deep fold of land beside Hadrian’s Wall. The Sycamore Gap Tree. Planted in the 1800s, it grew where the land dipped between two hills, and it was breathtaking.
People loved it. Walkers rested beneath it. Couples proposed there. Families scattered ashes. It was probably the most photographed tree in the whole of UK, if not beyond. It became a star of the silver screen when it starred in the movie, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It was everyone’s tree: steadfast, solitary, beautiful in every season. Then, one night in September 2023, someone came along with a chainsaw.
By morning, walkers found it felled — a raw stump where life had stretched so tall, the great trunk lying across the ancient stones like a dead giant. News travelled fast. I had retreated to that section of the wall many times and I was surprised to see how upset I was by the cutting down of this one tree. And I was not alone. People wept. Children left flowers. It felt like desecration, a guttural reaction. Police called it vandalism. Most people simply called it heartbreak.
And yet — as in so many of God’s stories — that wasn’t the end. Rangers and conservationists rushed in. They gathered seeds, took cuttings, lifted tiny pieces of living wood, hoping that life might begin again elsewhere. And it did. From that fallen tree, forty-nine saplings grew — one for every foot of its height. A project called Trees of Hope nurtured them and is now planting them across the UK.
The reason my sister was filming the news story was because the first sapling was planted in Coventry — my hometown — a city that knows about resurrection. Bombed to rubble in the war, and rebuilt around forgiveness and peace. At that replanting, people gathered, holding soil and silence, and grief turned to hope, and with a commitment to peace.
These 49 saplings will spring up across the UK, telling a new story of the tenacity and resilience of God’s great goodness to us in Creation. But even the original stump has sent out new green shoots this spring, nature preaching its own Advent sermon:
What was cut down can rise again. Life finds a way through. God is stubborn.
Isaiah knew this long before. He spoke to a nation stripped bare, its leaders corrupt, its future uncertain, and he dared to say: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse; a branch shall grow out of its roots.” Just you wait and see. Isaiah doesn’t offer optimism; he offers the courage to stare at a stump and still imagine green. Then John the Baptist appears in our Gospel, standing in the wilderness, saying, “Prepare the way.” His urgency isn’t anger — it’s invitation. Make space, he says. Something new is trying to grow.
And this is Advent: a time of preparation, readiness, optimism, belief that something better isn’t just possible, it’s on its way. It’s not pretending all is well, but it is a resilient refusal that darkness has the final word. This is the season of saplings and stumps, and of trusting God is at work…and sometimes it is beneath the surface.
And today we baptise baby India. This new life, entrusted to her parents, Sherry and Claire, is being planted into the soil of God’s love in this community. Baptism is our Sycamore Gap moment — not the felling, but the rising. India is a Tree of Hope. Here we mark her with oil and pour holy water over her head, and in so doing we proclaim God is never done creating, healing, or beginning again. India’s life is a sign that God still believes in beginnings. Her baptism reminds us that the world is not finished, not beyond repair.
Sherry and Claire, today you say yes to raising her in a story where love outlasts destruction, where mercy outgrows fear, where even the hardest stumps can send out new shoots. Your yes is an act of profound hope. Because God’s kingdom doesn’t come like a bulldozer. It comes like a sapling. Like a child.
The whole Christian story is Sycamore Gap:
Love cut down. Love rising again. Love replanted in the world.
So as we welcome India into the life of Christ, may this truth root itself in us:
The final word is never the stump. It is always the shoot. Amen.
Holy Adventures 