Sun, Dec 4, 2016: St. Peter’s
Sermon second Advent:
Last week I announced that I intended to preach on the Isaiah passage each of these weeks through Advent. Week by week we will hear from the prophet Isaiah. Each of the passages is famously associated with Christmas – going back centuries. A great danger for us, I believe, is to become more and more immune to hearing the true power of the message. My hope is to help in hearing the message of the gospel.
Today we hear from (ch. 11 of Isaiah) – stump of Jesse – the peaceable kingdom, the wolf and the lamb lie down together.
- Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you (Rom)
- Rom refers to Isaiah
- John the Baptist appears
Broad influence of Isaiah
When we listen to Handel’s Messiah passage after passage is taken from the prophet. It has been called “the Fifth Gospel”, and its influence extends beyond Christianity to English literature and to Western culture itself.
gathering of commentaries: (mostly old, open-source, Christian http://biblehub.com/commentaries/isaiah/11-1.htm
Who Isaiah talking to?
While it is widely accepted that Isaiah the prophet did not write the entire book, there are good reasons to see parts of chapters 1–39 as stemming from the historic Isaiah ben Amoz, who lived in the Kingdom of Judah during the reigns of four kings from the mid to late 8th century BCE. During this period, Assyria was expanding westward from its origins in modern-day northern Iraq towards the Mediterranean, destroying first Aram (modern Syria) in 734–732 BCE, then the Kingdom of Israel in 722–721, and finally subjugating Judah in 701. (Wikipedia) historical setting
- In the previous chapter Isaiah refers to the Assyrian king threatening the nation of Israel – that he would soon to fade away.
You Who Legislate Evil
10 1-4 Doom to you who legislate evil,
who make laws that make victims—
Laws that make misery for the poor,
that rob my destitute people of dignity,
Exploiting defenseless widows,
taking advantage of homeless children.
What will you have to say on Judgment Day,
when Doomsday arrives out of the blue?
Who will you get to help you?
What good will your money do you?
A sorry sight you’ll be then, huddled with the prisoners,
or just some corpses stacked in the street.
Even after all this, God is still angry,
his fist still raised, ready to hit them again.
Doom to Assyria!
5-11 “Doom to Assyria, weapon of my anger.
My wrath is a cudgel in his hands!
I send him against a godless nation,
against the people I’m angry with. (The Message)
At the same time Isaiah would live during the time of one of only 2 great and righteous kings in Israel and Judah – Hezekiah. And yet, the vision Isaiah has of a time to come goes beyond this righteous king. He is looking to some “time to come” – olam ha ba in the Hebrew.
Peaceable Kingdom
For myself, every time I encounter this passage, I think of the painting - Peaceable Kingdom by Edward HIcks. Edward Hicks (over 100 versions) Edward Hicks (April 4, 1780 – August 23, 1849) was an American folk painter and distinguished religious minister of the Society of Friends. He became a Quaker icon because of his paintings. (Wikipedia)
He portrayed an image of calm, breaking down the barriers, a new age of peace that fit his faith as a Quaker. Though I have never been to a Quaker meeting I have a deep sense of having experienced their waiting on the Spirit to speak. I know that the silence that we allow into our lives can often be life-changing and full of the Word of God. (Jim Kelsey and “High Church Quaker”)
It was clearly a deeply felt, personal image for him. It no doubt spoke to him of a vision of peace that was not at all present in the world around him – either in the church he believed in or the country he lived in. That would seem not to get in the way of it speaking equally powerfully to us – living in a very different age.
Isaiah, like Hicks, gives us a Messianic vision in the context of a message of hope for the world in which he lived.
The Messianic Age is a theological term referring to a future time of universal peace and brotherhood on the earth, without crime, war and poverty. Not just Christians, but Judaism before and Islam after believe that there will be such an age; some refer to it as the consummate “kingdom of God”, “paradise”, Peaceable Kingdom, or the “world to come”.
We might well say that Isaiah here is going beyond hope in political solutions and placing hope – our hope – in a Messianic time to come. But his hope is well-grounded in the time in which he lived.
Importance of spiritual empowerment of leader
What we can hear from Isaiah’s message – in the 8th c. bce directed at a a series of foreign leaders and corrupt and unjust leaders among his own people – is the vital nature of the leader of the people. The characteristics of the leader clearly make a difference whether God will unleash punishment or protection to the people.
Clearly he preached in the context of a culture that accepted a close relationship between the political leaders and the religious leaders. We do not share that presupposition. The whole combined message of the prophets of the Bible – Old Testament or New – is that the justice or righteousness of the political leaders mattered to the life of the nation and the people. “Where the shepherds are unjust, the people themselves will suffer.”
What shall we do with that message in our very different circumstances? Is this a message for our leaders? For the response that we ought to make to things happening in our nation?
Often the way the text is interpreted is that it anticipates a messianic age that was ushered in by Jesus of Nazareth. Christians, then, are the inheritors of the peaceable kingdom. Because we can see so clearly that this peaceful age has not been ushered in – I think we often don’t know what to do with it.
If we hear it rather as a message of hope to a world that strains under the weight of injustice and corruption as did ancient Israel – I think we must listen, pay attention, claim it The text begins to have power in every age. Not just the 8th c. bce – not just the 1st c. ce – not just in our own day. But indeed in our day.
Paul quoting from our passage
- playing with the word for “nations” or “gentiles” in his argument about the spread of the Gospel to non-Jews
- sending the over-riding message of hope
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Choose to Hope
Marty Haugen
Hope is born when we choose to believe
that love is stronger than hate.
Hope is born when our hearts learn to see
That every person is sacred
In the times of darkness, in times of fear,
Choose to hope, choose to love,
Emmanuel is near.
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