Year A. Second Sunday in Advent December 9th, 2001
Title: “For God to be God, the leader-king-lord in our lives, requires our acquiescence and requires it every minute of our lives.” FIRST READING: ISAIAH 11:1-10
A shoot shall come out from the stump 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. His 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; but 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. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The 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. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They 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. On 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.
(Here ends the first reading)
This prophecy is a reflection, giving the divine interpretation to the human situation, upon the period following the takeover of the northern kingdom, Israel, by the Assyrians in 722BC. The Davidic dynasty, now two hundred years old, in the south, Judah, is clearly in danger. What will happen if it becomes extinct, if the Assyrians kill off all the members of the royal family as is their custom when taking over a country?
The prophecy assures the people that the royal dynasty will not only survive, but will thrive, if, and only if, the king starts taking God’s interpretation of reality seriously. When the king is anointed as such he receives God’s Spirit. If he ignores that reality he leads the people into disaster. As was the case in the north so will it be in the south. Because God is faithful to his word, his promises, he will raise up a strong and faithful king who will establish justice and peace. Of course, what is true of the king is also true of the king’s subjects. Like the king, they must look beyond the surface of things and connect with the Spirit, stop being deaf, dumb and blind to the word of God, stop depending on human resources and advice, and behave as the king’s good servants yes, but God’s servants first. The result of this, right behavior, righteousness, will be not only social and political peace but total peace, a peace which includes the natural environment as well, idyllic peace, paradisal peace.
This text is one of the best known descriptions of the ideal king and kingdom, of the future whom later Judaism and Christianity call “Messiah,” Anointed One, “Christ.”.
In verse one, a shoot from the stump of Jesse: Looking back over three centuries of morally bankrupt kings and being without a Davidic king at present, the prophet sees God’s fidelity to his word in a new shoot rising from what to human eyes was a dead tree, the Davidic dynasty. There will be a new king, but not one who rules like human kings, especially like the Davidic kings of old. Jesse was David’s father. So, the prophecy reaches behind David to Jesse, the root, the source. Micah 5:1 will also reach behind Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the root of David’s birth and glory. “Stump” describes the broken, cut-off dynasty, a fact of history by the time of this writing, in terms of the revival of an apparently dead tree. The dynasty did continue beyond the Assyrian crisis of the eighth century. The Babylonian crisis of the sixth century, however, was another story. Only a “stump,” remained. Like the dead bones of Ezekiel, this “stump” will have new life breathed into it by the Spirit of God.
In verse two, the spirit of the Lord: “Spirit,” means “breath, life-force, wind, energy”. When used in reference to God’s spirit it endows a person with extraordinary power to accomplish a task requiring more-than-human ability. The skills specified in the rest of this prophecy give the “offshoots,” of the Spirit, how the Spirit “incarnates” himself in and through a human agent. There are six of these in the Hebrew text; the Greek LXX has “reverence,” Greek eusebeia, instead of “fear of the Lord,” Greek phobos theou. To that is added the “fear of the Lord,” in the next verse to get the traditional seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The spiritual endowments of this ideal king, enabling him to do the humanly impossible, are seen by Christians as passed on through the Messiah King to all his, Christian, descendants.
Spirit of wisdom: The historical kings the prophet has in mind here are Ahaz and Hezekiah, 735-701, who took bad advice from human counselors, which led to disaster. This ideal future king will have God’s Spirit as his counselor and so will not go wrong. Wisdom is the eternal, or timeless, in those days, perspective, giving one the ability to interpret the human situation in light of divine truth.
Understanding: This is a corollary of Wisdom, the ability to see beneath the surface, to see the connectedness of things, which, on the surface seem disconnected and unrelated.
Spirit of Counsel: In the historical context this would refer to skill in political diplomacy. The prophet means that the ideal king will not need to rely solely, or mainly, on human counselors.
Spirit of might: Historically, this would mean firmness in negotiations rather than physical strength. More generally, it means the power to put wisdom, insight, into effect, incarnation.
Spirit of Knowledge: This is not intellectual knowledge but personal knowledge of God, a sense of “how would God view and react to this?”
Fear of the Lord: This is not cowering but awe, reverent humility, taking God’s purpose into account, what the Greek LXX means by eusebeia.
In verses three and four, not by appearance…by hearsay shall he decide: These spiritual gifts will enable the king to avoid the pitfalls of exercising power like the former kings who let externals be the determining factors in what they consider to be truth. He will be able to see inside things to their true nature and state and judge rightly as God sees them, that is, justly.
With the rod of his mouth…breath of his lips: These metaphors refer to the word of God, the kings only effective weapon against injustice. He will not establish right for the poor and afflicted by military conquest or political finesse. He will right the genuine grievances of the poor by using power of a different sort: the words of his mouth expressing the word of God. His breath, “spirit,” in Hebrew and Greek, will be that of the Spirit of God. This is the difference between power as opposed to force, the power of persuasion as opposed to the “persuasion” of power.
In verse five, Righteousness-faithfulness: These divine qualities will become incarnate in the human king, as much a part of him as his clothing, the insignia of his office.
In verses six to nine, the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord: The prophet draws a picture of paradise, utopia, the end result of a king ruling with justice, endowed with the Spirit of God. God’s original intention in creating the world would be fulfilled. The king’s justice would have a profound effect not only on the human environment but on the animal and natural environment as well. Justice would bring peace, harmony, wholeness, togetherness, even between humans and, formerly, wild animals, a condition of friendliness. Throughout the book the author attributes all ills and sins to a lack of knowing the Lord. Here he implies all natural ills are caused by this same lack.
In verse ten, a signal to the peoples: This ideal king will not be for Israel alone. He will be a “signal,” Hebrew nes. The word means “signal pole, standard, banner, sign.” The flag or banner was a rallying point around which people gathered or behind which they marched into war. It would be planted atop a hill as a signal to gather round for some important event. Here, the king himself will be that rallying point. In Numbers 21:8-9 Moses lifted up among the people a bronze serpent set on a pole, Hebrew nes. This rallying point of healing and life became a fitting object-lesson of something greater in the John 3: 14-15, the Son of Man. Only a king endowed with God’s Spirit can faithfully practice justice to the point of accomplishing all this.
Sermon
The prophet’s vision could not be broader or more encompassing for a man of his time. He sees the entire earth living in harmony, humans with God, humans with humans, humans with animals, and humans with the earth and maybe even the sea, verse nine. He did not have benefit of our scientific knowledge, but he had knowledge of the Lord, revelation, which gave him a broad and bright vision of God’s original intention in creating us and the world, a vision, in his inspired eyes, finally coming true.
Like a bird in the sky eyeing a worm on the ground, the prophet moves from this broad vision of reality to a pinpoint focus of something very small, invisible to the ordinary eye. He zooms in on a stump, lifeless to others but a sign of hope and life to him. From this lifeless stump will rise a living shoot, eventually to become the tree of life itself. This one human being will become the center. He will grow and develop according to God’s original design for all human beings. He will show what justice looks like in a single person. He will not do this on his own power or by the advice and help of other human beings. God will be his tutor and God’s Spirit will be his diet. Those divine nutrients will become so much a part of him that one cannot tell the difference between them and him. This single person will become the leader, model, king for others. They will receive God’s Spirit from him and the kingdom of God, in heaven, will start to grow on earth. Eventually, it will encompass all, or virtually all, human beings. Then it will spread to the animal kingdom. The wild instincts in creation, already tamed among humans, will even be tamed among animals. Then, the wild instincts in nature itself will also be tamed. The end result will be total harmony and peace, the result of just one human starting out by living life God’s way unerringly. Christians see Jesus of Nazareth as just this person, a shoot from the stump of his great grandfather, Jesse.
We are, of course, nowhere near the end, of this great, cosmic process. But, we do know that we are in it and we do know what direction it is going towards and that we have a part to play. We know that the disharmony, alienation, ravaging and pillaging of our natural and animal environment is directly contrary to what God intends. We do know that the exploitation of people, essentially, no different from the exploitation of nature, yet far more painful and cruel, is directly contrary to what God intends. We do know that we cannot be our own kings and get away with it for long. We need the Spirit of God to give us what we do not have- wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and reverence for the truly sacred. And we do know that God has become one of us to endow us with his Spirit and enlist us in his army of peace to by power of persuasion convince his creatures of their creatureliness and their need for him.
It is truly amazing that God sent himself in the form of Son, Son of God, Son of Man. It is also amazing that people centuries before that actually happened saw it from afar. Like the eagle’s eyeing a tiny worm they saw something, maybe not as clearly as they would like, but they saw it. They spoke it. They and others hoped it and God delivered it. Now, it is for us, centuries later, to continue to be faithful to the Vision, a vision now realized, if yet incomplete in the human sphere. Now that we know in what direction God wants the world to go and roughly what he wants it to be, we have our mission mapped out for us. All the virtues of the Spirit that Jesus had he gives to us. We cannot do it without him and we cannot fail with him.
The prophet’s vision of the ideal world will, of course, be fulfilled in the eternal world. He describes that world in terms of earthly perfection so that we earthlings can understand it. Yet, so long as there is evil in this earthly world the Vision is prevented from becoming a reality. We humans need a divine power to extirpate evil fro earth and from our own lives. We need Christ, the divine/human king, living on earth and in heaven simultaneously. Unless he is our king we have no chance of realizing God’s dream for both humanity and earth. Only he has the power and the wisdom to accomplish it.
Human power alone is not strong enough or pure enough to accomplish God’s goals for humanity and earth.
Unless fueled by the Spirit of God, human power runs out, tires, or defects to the side of evil.
God’s vision and version of reality on earth is one of peace, justice, fecundity and harmony.
The violence and enmity in the animal kingdom should be not be imitated by humans.
The only hope for humanity and earth is a universal leader with divine power exercised in a human and humane way, recognized by all as the one to lead, obey and imitate.
Violence: All power comes from God. However, every use of power is not of God, that is, is not used as God, the giver, intends it to be. Violence is the wrongful use of power. Violence can be either blatant or subtle. Ordinarily, we do not consider harsh words to be the same as violence, but they are from the same root as blatant violence. While harsh speech is not always followed by harmful actions, harmful actions almost always are accompanied by harsh speech. Threats are really verbal violence, intending to inflict fear and harm upon their targets. Animals have their threatening sounds or signs and so do humans. While ours are much more varied than those of the animal kingdom, they are nonetheless just as threatening. It is not merely violence but also the threat of violence that causes so much harm in our world. In verse four, speaking of the ideal leader or king, the prophet says, “He shall strike the ruthless with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.” There is no violence here, no weapons of war, only weapons his mouth or speech and his breath or spirit, of peace. However, if we were able to remove all violence for the planet and all threatening speech, we would not necessarily have peace as the prophet understands it. Violence must be freely and willingly eschewed or else we would end up with a zombie-like humanity, non-violent because it has no alternative, devoid of freedom. So, violence is one of the negative side effects of freedom. It is indeed costly, especially to those who have freely eschewed it as a solution to anything except for self-defense. We see the same thing in the animal kingdom. Most animals are only violent when threatened or actually attacked and a really mostly threatened or attacked by another animal seeking food. At least, they have some sort of “reason’ for doing so, whereas humans can be gratuitously violent. The Vision of peace and harmony painted by the prophet is a fully realizable one, but one that requires the voluntary renunciation of violence in all its forms, except possibly for self-defense. Christians unilaterally renounce violence in the hope that their good example will motivate the other side to do so as well. This is indeed a very tall order and only the example of Christ, along with his indwelling Spirit, is strong enough prevent the Christian from defecting and adopting the tactics of his or her opponent, the tactics of evil.
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Jesus is God incarnate and we can say that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus, becomes incarnate in us when we let his presence dominate our behavior and attitudes. While we cannot really say that the Spirit is Jesus incarnate for “spirit,” is the opposite of “body,” we can say that the Spirit is Jesus Christ become incarnate in us. His “gifts,” are really his “person,” or “personality,” if you will, come alive and become active in a human person, a person who in no way is divine in his or her nature, but becomes God-like thanks to God’s indwelling. With the “person,” of Jesus dwelling within us, comes his perspective and his power. We are able to see and do things as Jesus both did, in the past, and would, in the present if we let him. It is humbling to know that God gives us this power, really the only power we have, namely, to decide whether or not we will let God be our God. God, of course, is always God and we have no say in that whatever. However, for God to be God, the leader-king-lord in our lives, requires our acquiescence and requires it every minute of our lives. We can give God “permission,” to take over our lives, but we can also take it back without prior notice. Allowing the gifts of his Spirit to stay unwrapped and playing with them constantly not only prevents that from happening, it also promotes God’s purposes in the world. Amen.
