Year A, Advent II, Dec. 8, 2019, SMHP
Isaiah 11:1-10
A shoot shall
come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2The 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.
3His delight shall be in the fear
of the Lord. He shall
not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4but with righteousness he shall judge the
poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the
earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill
the wicked. 5Righteousness shall
be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. 6The wolf shall live with the lamb, the
leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling
together, and a little child shall lead them. 7The
cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion
shall eat straw like the ox. 8The
nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall
put its hand on the adder’s den. 9They
will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of
the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
10On that day the root of Jesse shall
stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his
dwelling shall be glorious.
[Slide—one
at a time] Leopards, bears, lions, cheetahs, crocodiles, cobras, asps, and
other vipers. This is just a sampling of
the predatory fauna of the Holy Land. [Slide,
Slide] Because of where Israel sits, on a bridge of land between Eurasia and
Africa, along the Mediterranean Sea…and because of the variety of climate zones
within the country and nearby…The Holy Land is home to an incredibly diverse
array of plants, animals, and poisonous spiders.
So
there are no shortage of images for a prophet to call upon to inspire a sense
of dread and danger, as should be obvious from our lesson today. As all of
these lessons in Advent will do, here we see Isaiah creating a portrait of the
future Messiah with images drawn from the hopes and dreams—and fears—of his
kindred.
Hopes
first: when the Messiah comes, the
prophet declares, he will carry the bloodline of king David and be imbued with
the Spirit of the Lord: “the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of
knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”
If
that language sounded familiar to you it’s because you heard it emanating from
over there at the font when we baptized Sam and Dominic and Jean Marie and
CeCe. You may remember those words being
pronounced over you some time long ago, or not so long ago.
In
the baptismal liturgy, we’re reminded that the attributes of the Messiah aren’t
just spiritual gifts that fell on Jesus and ascended to heaven with him: they are spiritual gifts which confer to
us upon our baptisms.
When
we were baptized, the Spirit of the Lord came upon us too, and we became
children of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and joy in
the presence of the Lord. We have all of
those gifts because of all of that water combined with love from the community
and from our adoption as children of God.
And
it’s a good thing, too, because as Isaiah reminds us…there is so much scary
stuff out there. In Isaiah’s day, a
simple walk down the road could mean an encounter with a lion, a leopard, a
bear—oh my!
For
us, the dangers might be more subtle. Or
just as immediate. Regardless, we all
want a reminder that we are safe, don’t we?
So
when Isaiah wanted to paint a picture of the glorious kingdom which would be
ushered in by the shoot of Jesse, the branch of King David’s tree—God’s
Messiah—Isaiah drew a world in which even little children were safe from the vipers
and the asps hiding under every rock. In
which lambs and wolves set up housekeeping together, lions and bears were no
threat to the cattle, and, most importantly, the ruler over everything was
righteous and just.
Isaiah
was speaking to a people who had been living under the rule of the foolish King
Ahaz, [Slide—rare black and white photo of Ahaz] who became a vassal of the Assyrian Empire—remember
them from last week. The book of Second Kings records that Ahaz “did not do
what was right in the sight of the Lord his God, as his ancestor David had
done,” instead pleading for help from the Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser, and
sending gold and precious artifacts from the temple in Jerusalem to the King in
Damascus.
Ahaz
even went to Damascus to swear allegiance to Tiglath-Pileser, falling down
before the gods of Assyria. According to
Second Kings, Ahaz “even made his son pass through the fire, according to the
abominable practices of the nations.”
Ahaz had an altar built in the temple to match the one he had seen in
Damascus, and moved the altar of the Lord out of the center of the temple. He then commanded that the priests make
offerings to Moloch and the other gods of Assyria daily.
So
it was not a great time for Isaiah’s people—facing dangers all around them, and
being betrayed by their own leaders.
In
times of poor leadership, we must remember God’s promise. We must lean in to a word of hope and
peace. [Slide] Peace is our theme for the second week of
Advent, but like hope, the theme for the first week, the Word of peace casts
its light over every week of Advent, as we are reminded that the Messiah brings
a world in which people, and beasts, live and prosper together without
animosity.
Bad
kings come, and bad kings go. Jesus is
forever. And because Jesus is forever,
and because we have been washed in the waters of baptism and received the same
promise Isaiah laid on his people before the birth of the Messiah—we are people
of peace. When the world around us feels
threatening and unsafe, we wage peace.
We
wage peace! Because we are an Advent
people—a people comfortable in good old Lutheran paradox—and we know the
Messiah has come…and is yet to come. And
in the time between, the time in which we live, the fearful time of uneven
leadership, we must actively seek out peace.
Peace
is not passive. It’s not the absence of
war and conflict. Dr. King said it well,
borrowing most of his quote from Jane Addams:
“true peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence
of justice.”
True
peace comes when we remember that we are led by a little child, sent by God,
born in Bethlehem. Because we are led by
him, we are actively at work in the world waging peace. Calling justice into being.
A
woman was stuck in the airport, having just been told that her flight was
delayed four hours. She was making her
way through security when a voice came over the loudspeaker: “if anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 speaks
Arabic, please come to the gate now.”
She
looked at her boarding pass and realized that A-4 was her gate. When she got there, moments later, she saw an
older woman sitting on the floor, crying uncontrollably. She told the agents she spoke some Arabic,
and she sat down on the floor with the woman.
She discovered that the woman thought their flight was cancelled, and
she was on the way to El Paso for an important medical procedure. She explained that they were just delayed,
and the woman calmed down. They called
the woman’s son, who calmed her even further.
Then
the younger woman called her father, who spoke to the older woman in Arabic for
a while. It turned out they knew some of the same people. Then, just for the
heck of it, she called some poets she knew in Palestine. They spoke on the phone for a while
longer. Then the woman pulled out some mamool
cookies—crumbly cookies stuffed with dates and nuts and covered in powdered
sugar. She offered them to the women at
the gate, and every one accepted a cookie with thanks. The airline brought drinks, and two little
girls waiting for the flight passed them out.
The
afternoon passed quickly, and no one who was there will ever forget it.
Peace
doesn’t just happen. We make it
happen. We act justly, with “wisdom and
understanding, knowledge, and the fear of the Lord.” We sit on the floor and eat the cookies and
recognize the humanity in one another.
And
perhaps you are thinking now, “Well sure, but I don’t speak Arabic, so I
couldn’t be the hero of that story.”
But
only one person in that airport spoke English, and there are a lot of heroes in
the story.
I
am telling you this morning that you will have an opportunity in the next few
days to be a peacemaker, a bringer of justice.
I don’t know what the moment will look like—but you will know when it
appears. And then you will decide. Will I act in fear, or will I wage peace? Will I welcome, bless, affirm another person,
and thus introduce a word of justice.
I
believe you will. Because I know that
you are children of “wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and
joy in the presence of the Lord.” And we
are people of hope and peace. It’s not
just a name.
Amen
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