Isaiah 11:1-10
Second Sunday of Advent: December 5, 2010
Last week I talked about the theological theme of Advent – that Advent is a time of two-fold waiting: waiting to celebrate the incarnation, the birth of Jesus, and waiting for the world we know Jesus longed for and worked for in his lifetime. In focusing on Isaiah this Advent, we’re focusing on the 2nd waiting – the waiting for the world to be as all the great prophets – including Jesus – imagined it would be when God’s realm would come in full. So that’s the theme of Advent: waiting. But what does this waiting look like?
We know there are different kinds of waiting. There are times when we’re waiting for something and there isn’t much to do in the meantime – like standing on a corner waiting for a bus. If we’re particularly industrious, we might make a call or read the newspaper, but for the most part all we can do is wait. But the more common kind of waiting is an active waiting. We are waiting for something – like visiting family to arrive, for example – but the time spent between now and their arrival is full of preparation and action. We ready the house, maybe prepare some food, get toys out for grandkids, not to mention go about our daily lives. Their expected arrival impacts what we choose to do, but it doesn’t render us passive in our waiting. If they’re not coming for hours or days, we don’t just sit home on the couch staring at the door until they arrive.
Advent summons us to this latter kind of waiting. We don’t just sit back and wait for this arrival of a new world – God’s realm. Knowing it’s coming impacts what we do in the meantime, but we do act in the meantim. We prepare and ready things. We have in mind what things will be like when the day arrives – what things can be like – and in the meantime we do what we can to help create that reality.
Unfortunately, there are a number of ways to read Isaiah that invites us to a passive waiting. First, we can read it as prediction of the future, rather than the vision for which we strive – as if it’s set in stone and there’s nothing we can or should do in the meantime. Predictions are immutable; visions are shapeable, malleable, shifting and changing with our imaginations. When we read the prophets as predictors, all we will see is a one dimensional picture of both the future and the present. It’s deterministic and determinism invites passivity. Everything is already decided, so all we can do is sit back and wait for it to happen.
Second, we can read passages like the one today and dismiss them because they are utopian and we are savvy enough to know utopia is not achievable. We might long for a world that reflects Isaiah’s visions, but we might not feel like there’s any purpose or intention for us to actively seek what we are waiting for because it’s a fool’s errand. Look at today’s passage: It’s like a child’s scene, isn’t it? All these animals and children together, happily hanging out…it reminds me of how the stuffed animals are arranged in Lydia’s room: horses and bears next to each other; bunnies and snakes; lions with baby dolls. One of the most famous paintings based on this passage, “Endless peace,” by Edward Hicks, looks like a children’s book illustration. The animals border on cartoon-like, their eyes are purposely big and innocent. It calls to mind the naïve question: “can’t we all just get along?” And because, as any adult knows, the answer to that is “no”, and for very legitimate reasons, it’s tempting to treat this image in Isaiah as we would a children’s book – as a fantasy not a possible future.
But it’s not a children’s image. Isaiah knows it’s not as easy as all of us just getting along. These are real reasons why all of God’s creatures don’t live in stuffed animal-like peace with each other. The predators need to eat and stay alive, there is a natural order that depends on enmity between some species, and humans have legitimate, serious differences that can’t be settled with a smile and a hug. Isaiah’s image is, of course, a metaphor – it’s not a prediction and not a literal idea of what the world can look like. We are waiting for the world that reflects this metaphor because it’s what we long for – but it’s not a determined future or a child’s utopia – it’s an idea about how we should be in relationship to one another as God’s children. And that idea – that ideal – impacts us in the present. It suggests things we can be doing in meantime.
This metaphor of predators and prey is about how power affects relationships and what power should look like in God’s realm. Remember that Isaiah is prophesying to kings. This passage is about how Yahweh expects those in power to act. While not everyone agrees on exactly when this passage from Isaiah was written, there is agreement that the cut-down stump of Jesse refers in some way to the failure of the royal leaders. They have not lived up to their covenant with God as leaders of God’s people. They have become like wolves preying on the lambs. The leaders of Jesse’s lineage, David’s descendents, were to possess qualities like wisdom and understanding, but instead power had corrupted kings and queens and the people were suffering.
This passage challenges those leaders, acknowledges how broken the system is and how hurtful the relationships are, and then offers a possibility/a hope: a new shoot is growing out of the stump. It is hope for those in power and for those suffering under the current system. The hope we see in the wolves and lamb, children and asps, calves and lions, is for reconciliation. But this is not reconciliation in the sense of making up with someone you are angry with or at odds with. This is reconciliation between enemies, between people and groups suffering from power imbalances – between predators and prey, the oppressors and the oppressed, the mighty and the weak. Reconciliation is envisioned by Isaiah as righteousness – right relationships of justice and equality. Relationships in which the powerless lead and the powerful abdicate their thrones of oppression.
We are not royalty, nor are we Hebrew peasants living under the thumb of the crown. But we can still place ourselves in this metaphor. This is about reconciliation between the powerful and the vulnerable, and we all know there are times we are the powerful ones and times we are the vulnerable ones in systems of injustice and oppression – times we are the wolf and times we are the lamb.
For those of us comfortably in the middle or upper class, we can easily hear Isaiah’s words for the king as words directed at us. In a world – a country – where resources are not distributed evenly, most of us have choices about what to do with our wealth. Many of us, by virtue of our jobs, have choices about how to structure organizations and institutions. We have choices about who to include, who to help, who to turn away, who to hold over the fire, and who to set free. In all of those choices, we can display the traits Isaiah lists for the hoped-for ruler: righteousness, justice, wisdom, understanding and fear of God. Or we can be predators – seeking out and consuming the week in order to meet our needs and desires. In each of our lives, in many ways, we are a part of the powerful class in a world that is often unjust. Isaiah is talking to us.
This metaphor invites the powerful to give up their power when the system in which they operate is hurting or destroying creatures in God’s creation. When we are in those places of power in systems that oppress, we need to be the ones to change first in order for reconciliation to happen – in order for right relationships to be restored. The wolf has to deny his own instinct to prey on the lamb, or the lamb will never be safe.
I often wonder what it would be like to be a Muslim in Grinnell. We probably don’t even notice as we go about our day to day business that this is a Christian town – not always explicitly Christian, mind you, but Christianity is undoubtedly the dominant culture here. We, in the Christian churches, are comfortable being who we are because we fit in pretty well. It is not odd to be Christian. But, what would it be like to be Muslim? What would it be like to be Jewish or an atheist?
I remember vividly the first day I walked to work at the church here five years ago. When I got about halfway, bells began to ring loud enough to be heard throughout the downtown area at least. At first I wasn’t really bothered. But then came the Christian hymns. Christian hymns which, I would learn soon, ring out over the town three times a day. I’m guessing most of us don’t think twice about it – and if I had not just moved from Northern California where majorities and minorities look very different, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. But imagine moving to Grinnell and you are a Muslim and you hear Christian hymns playing out all over the town three times a day. Imagine you have been hurt by the church in the past. Imagine you are Jewish. Or any other religious minority. Some folks may not be bothered at all, but I suspect many are. Three times a day there is a blatant reminder that you are a lamb in a wolves’ town.
And it would be hard for someone who is offended or hurt by this to speak up. They would be challenging the dominant culture without knowing how such a challenge would be met. They would run the risk of being hurt further by the response of those who value being a part of the dominant culture and value the affirmation something like the hymns gives them that they are in power. It needs to be Christians who challenge these things because we come from the position of power on this one.
Christians should be the ones to challenge things like Christian activities in the schools that make others feel uncomfortable or left out. We may not be ready to do this. We may not agree on the need for this every time. But if the ones who are being hurt speak up they are more vulnerable and run the risk of being ostracized further. If we come from our place of power and challenge the system, we make it safer to be reconciled to those who are in the minority.
So sometimes we are the wolves – the powerful ones. But there are also times we are like the child or the lamb or calf – times when it would be foolish to put ourselves in proximity to those who could or would hurt us. In this world that is still broken, there are still wolves that seek to destroy the lambs and snakes that would poison the unsuspecting. We don’t have Isaiah’s world yet, so we protect ourselves from those who have the power to hurt us. Some of us have been wounded by a predator – an abusive spouse or parent – some of us have been beaten down by the system. Some of us are poor – living on the edge, dependent on the kindness and generosity of others to stay afloat.
Unfortunately, sometimes our coping mechanisms, our ways of seeking protection, are not as helpful as we might think. Sometimes we retreat not just from the wolf but from the other lambs as well. Sometimes we become afraid of everything, sure that pain and suffering are just around the corner until wholeness and healing become impossible goals. In each of our lives, there are times we are vulnerable and powerless in relationships that are hurting us and those around us. Isaiah’s vision is for us at those times as well – a picture of hope and a path forward. It is the antidote to our unhelpful, sometimes hurtful, coping mechanisms.
Isaiah believed there were people who could be like the wolf in his metaphor – people who look like the powerful ones that hurt, but are instead kind and gentle. True: when our vulnerabilities are exposed, we have to be skilled at discerning the sheep in wolves’ clothing from the wolves’ in sheep’s clothing. But at some point, the lamb in Isaiah’s word picture had to let the wolf get close enough to see if it had, in fact, given up its role as predator.
I think of people who have been abused as children – maybe sexually abused by a father or neighbor. The natural response is to fear men…to fear intimacy…or to not believe intimacy can come without violence. This response is protective at first. This is the lamb running away from approaching wolves and it’s what we expect, it’s what any of us would do; it’s necessary. But Isaiah’s vision calls the abuse victim to ponder whether all men are really predators, even though they look like the wolf. At some point, for reconciliation, wholeness and right relationship to be even a possibility for this person, they have to dare to trust that there is good in others who may at first look dangerous. This is not without risk. This requires some men who set aside their power to intimidate, and slowly approach the lamb with belly exposed, waiting patiently until the lamb comes up to them. It requires courage beyond belief. But, it is possible.
Even while the world is still broken – even while abuse still exists, even while dominant cultures stifle and oppress minorities almost out of habit on a regular basis – Isaiah’s metaphor gives us both something to wait for and to work for. It’s a beautiful image that shows us what is possible, but it’s also a metaphor that gives us the model, the path for creating those possibilities in small ways in the meantime.
Reconciliation happens only when both sides trust each other not to hurt them and not to betray them. In those places where we have power, it can be scary to take steps to be less threatening to others because it usually involves giving something up. But it’s incumbent on us to shed those things that give us power over others so that we are approachable and safe. But in those places and times we are the meek and oppressed, it’s also incumbent on us to take a chance and risk trust with those who look like the predatory wolves.
We are waiting, we are longing for a time when neither our power nor our vulnerability makes us enemies with others. We are waiting for the day when, as Isaiah writes, no one hurts or destroys on God’s holy mountain. In the meantime, may we work to be the wolves and sheep who live together without bloodshed, without pain or domination, without power imbalance. Maybe we be reconciled to one another and so create God’s holy mountain here and now. Amen.
