Isaiah 11:1-10
A shoot shall come out from the
stock 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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From Agitation to Patience
The Rev. Connie Frierson
Once upon a time in front of
my childhood home, there was a magnificent maple tree. It was broad and tall. I had a swing hanging from its
branches. The great trunk was so
thick that I couldn’t reach around it. In fact, three children, hand to hand, couldn’t reach
around it. But about ten years
ago, it grew too old, and too damaged and ultimately had to be cut down. The day the maple was cut down was
black day in our family’s life. My sister’s took off from work to be there the
day it was cut. The tree went from a magnificent giant to firewood and brush
and then just a stump. The cutting
down of the big maple was a family tragedy. We all knew we would never see that great tree again.
I
am thinking about that tree as I read this passage from Isaiah 11 on this
Sunday, the second Sunday in Advent. Our passage starts out with the image of
new life springing from a dead old stump.
“A shoot shall grow out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow
out of his roots.” Our modern ears
need a little explanation. Who the heck is Jesse and what does it mean that a
branch shall grow out of that root? Jesse was the father of David, the famous
David, who became King David. King David’s reign was a time of unification of
all of Israel. This was in many ways the golden age. The shoot of Jesse is
talking about the house and descendants of King David. So a shoot out of the
stock of Jesse is more than just a son or descendant but is a great hope, a
messianic figure, a savior of a nation and the soul of a people.
The
current reality for the writer of Isaiah was quite different from this hopeful
rebirth and the coming of a peaceable kingdom. What this writer saw from his
window or walls was that the mighty and cruel Assyrian army was threatening
Jerusalem. A great swarm of an
army was about to over run the southern kingdom of Judea just as it had overrun
the northern kingdom. The writer
could just look a little to the north and see Damascus and Samaria cut down,
defeated, and in ruins. The
kingdom built on King David, Jesse’s famous son, had been axed. When this
prophesy and poem was written the stump of that big tree of David was pretty
fresh and raw. War was at the gates. The idea that a branch is ever going to
rise from that old tree was unlikely.
Completely in contrast to the eminent disaster, our passage goes on to
foretell a time of great and lasting peace. When wolves and lambs lay down
together and leopards cuddle up to baby goats, and lions and cows are chummy
and babies play with the snakes. This vision is extraordinary and unbelievable
in the midst of war.
If
we look at this passage with both eyes open we see a vision that doesn’t make
sense to us. Out of one eye we see
the reality of destruction. But the writer also wants us to look with the other
eye and see God’s hope and God’s future.
This reminds me of those old View Master stereoscopes. This was the hottest gift item for
Christmas of 1958. It was a devise where you look through and both eyes look at
the same picture and you get a 3-D image.
The picture came to life. What was a flat picture suddenly had
depth. I loved the View Master as
a kid. They jumped out at me like
a lively dimensional figure. This
was the super 3-D of the ancient world of the 1950’s and 60’s. Suddenly there was DEPTH. I think this is what the prophet Isaiah
wanted for us too, depth. Holding
both the reality of suffering and the reality of God’s promises in tension
helps us to grow in depth. We need
to live and see this world clearly. Yet we need to hope and breath in the blessings
of God’s love. Without both of
these dimensions we are flat and dull 2-D people. Without depth of soul, we are
flat as a newspaper pessimists, or we are silly Polly Ann pancakes.
Our problem is that if we put the two
visions, together it doesn’t make sense. Even in Isaiah’s age, it didn’t make
sense. And if we look at the cruel world and God’s promise of a peaceable
kingdom from our time it doesn’t make sense. It is like this picture above. In one lens the tree is down
and the stump is bare, but the other lens there is new growth and new
possibilities. Or the view is that
the world is war torn, but the other viewfinder shows a peaceable land. Or the
view is that we are a predator prey kind of world not the God’s eye view that
shows a world of harmonious grazers. We can’t seem to hold both of these views
at the same time. Yet what this
passage is saying to us is that faithful people trust in God’s promises and
hold both visions simultaneously.
We need to spiritually grow a View Master, a God-a-scope. This View
Master/God-scope is a radical change. The God-a-scope is calling us to an
alternative reality.
One
way we learn to use this View Master God-scope is with patience. Patience requires us to live with the
dissidence of an unhappy world and a joyous future. We look and see the real
world around us but at the same time we sense God’s loving promises and see the
great possibilities. We live in a
world of clear-cut forests and we wait for the seedlings to take off. We live
in a world of survival of the fittest and we help the weak. We live in a world where snakes bite
babies and we look forward to a day when they are playmates. We live in a world
of natural and eternal enemies, but God wants us to understand those enemies
will be someday be friends. If we are not careful this double vision is going
to drive us cross-eyed. But God
has made a way for us to get our balance by exercising patience.
Patience
and waiting patiently helps us live in balance. Patience helps us keep hope yet help in real time. This
balance is sometimes precarious. We could fall off into cold fatalism and lose
all touch with God. Or we could
fall off the other end, only looking to God’s work, but never sensing God’s
call to for us to work on real problems of the real world. On one side lay the dangers of nihilism,
fatalism or even pride, when we think everything is our doing and our work.
This side of error thinks that life is all about what we do. But Jesus did say, “I am the vine and
you are the branches, Apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) On the
other side is something called quietism.
Quietism takes faith in God but misuses that great love of God to put us
to sleep. When someone has
fallen into quietism, they don’t act, they don’t hear God’s call to change the
way the world is, if only for one person at a time. Mother Teresa once said, “If you can’t feed 100 people, feed
just one.” But a quietist neglects
to feed the one.
Looking
through this God-a-scope with the first two candles of advent helps to put our
vision inside God’s light. If we
look for God’s light in the darkness and if we patiently and actively wait then
we can see Our World and God’s World more clearly. There was a little girl who had one small idea about working
towards a peaceable kingdom. Her
name was Sadako Sasaki. She was born in 1943 and lived in Hiroshima, Japan.
When she was 11, she developed leukemia.
She remembered a story that says the crane is supposed to live 1000
years. If a sick person makes 1000 paper cranes, gods will grant her wish to be
healthy again. So she made cranes and she drew strength from making them. Her wish over time grew to encompass a
wish for a peaceful world. After she made crane number 654 Sadako died. Her
classmates folded the other 356 cranes so she could be buried with 1,000
cranes. Sadako Sasaki’s letters were collected and published in a book that
became known throughout Japan and then the world. A statue of Sadako Sasaki is
in the Hiroshima Peace Park in Japan and another in Seattle, Washington. At the
base of the statue is this, “This is our cry; this is our prayer, peace in our
world.” To
make 1000 paper cranes takes patience and vision. This is doing one small thing that moves us closer to God’s
vision of our future.
As
we wait for Christmas we think of another child who is called the Prince of
Peace. As we wait in patience we need to think of how to wait actively and
dynamically. Do we wait in
passivity or do we wait in prayerful action. I thought we might turn to that
wise elder for children, Fred Rogers, pioneer of children’s television, author,
defender of childhood and imagination and Presbyterian minister. This is a song Mr. Rodgers first sang
in 1982. The title is “Let’s Think of Something To Do While We’re
Waiting.” What a wise thing to do.
Thinking of something to do while waiting is wise for children and it is wise
for grown ups. We are living
between two worlds, the one we walk around in and the Peaceable Kingdom that
the Prince of Peace will bring to us.
Let us wait well. Let us
pray until we sense what we are to do while we wait. Let us work towards the
things God is blessing. Waiting
become easier when you think of what God is calling you to do while you wait.
Remember that huge maple tree at the
farmhouse. It looked like it had
always been there. But it hadn’t.
My dad had planted it when he was ten years old. That tree had taken a lifetime
to grow broad and tall. My dad
might have grown impatient for it to grow. But he lived his life, raising a family, teaching Sunday
school, helping his neighbors and doing good. He might have forgotten that he
was waiting because his life was so full. But when he looked at the huge tree he knew he was
blessed to see it grow. Now all
these years later, the tree is a broad flat stump. But as we gather at the farmhouse that tree stump is a
destination. It is a destination for small children, my grand nieces and
nephews. They are small shoots of hope, these nieces and nephews of the next
generation. As I watch them race
to the big tree stump and stand on top, I know God is at work in the future as
in the past. Meanwhile, with patience, I’ll think of something to do while I’m
waiting.
Amen.
