Isaiah 11:1-10
11:1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
11:2 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.
11:3 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;
11:4 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.
11:5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
11:6 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.
11:7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
11:8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
11:9 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.
11:10 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.
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
72:1 Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son.
72:2 May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.
72:3 May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness.
72:4 May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.
72:5 May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.
72:6 May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.
72:7 In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more.
72:18 Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.
72:19 Blessed be his glorious name forever; may his glory fill the whole earth. Amen and Amen.
Romans 15:4-13
15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.
15:5 May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus,
15:6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15:7 Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
15:8 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs,
15:9 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, "Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name";
15:10 and again he says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people";
15:11 and again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him";
15:12 and again Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope."
15:13 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.
Matthew 3:1-12
In due course John the Baptist appears in the wilderness of Judea, calling out: "Change your ways because Heaven's imperial rule is closing in."
No doubt this is the person described by Isaiah the prophet:
A voice of someone shouting in the wilderness:
"Make the way of the Lord ready;
make his paths straight."
Now this same John wore clothes made of camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist; his diet consisted of locusts and raw honey. Then Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan streamed out to him, admitting their sins.
When he saw that many of the Pharisees and Sadducees were coming for baptism, [John] said to them, "You spawn of Satan! Who warned you to flee from the coming doom? Well then, start producing fruit suitable for a change of heart, and don't even think of saying to yourselves 'We have Abraham as our father.' Let me tell you, God can raise up chidlren for Abraham right out of these rocks. Even now the ax is aimed at the root of the trees. So every tree not producing choice fruit gets cut down and tossed into the fire.
"I baptize you with water to signal a change of heart, but someone more powerful than I will succeed me. I am not fit to carry his sandals. He'll baptize you with holy spirit and fire. His pitchfork is in his hand, and he'll make a clean sweep of his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he'll burn in a fire that can't be put out."
Isaiah, fresh off his vision of the holy mountain, now gives us the vision of the "Peaceable Kingdom." Edward Hicks turned that into Pennsylvania, but we don't have to be as literal as that. It's the idea that counts, not how any one person used it or where we can locate it.
Lots of Isaiah this week. Paul cites him in his letter to the church in Rome; Matthew cites second Isaiah (chapter 40), the opening proclamation of the coming of God uttered as a rallying cry to Israel in the midst of the Exile, when they need hope the most. Context matters; but context doesn’t rule.
So let’s talk about John the Baptist.
First, it’s not at all clear John is who Second Isaiah was talking about. The opening lines of Deutero-Isaiah are aptly quoted, but Isaiah was speaking a word of hope to Israel in exile, not predicting a future individual centuries hence. The way had to be prepared because God, like a king, comes in majesty and the path a king follows is straight, like a highway versus a goat path. A king gets a splendid herald, too, befitting the status of the one coming, the one being heralded. Jesus gets: a man in the wilderness dressed in camel-hair and eating locusts and honey.
So maybe Matthew knows what he's talking about after all. John is an appropriate herald for a God incarnated as the son of two unknowns from a backwater village on the edge of Empire; for a God whose concern is for people, not power and buildings and kingdoms. A God who promises a holy mountain not because it will be the power center of the world, but because it will be the beacon of justice and righteousness and how that actually works for life and prosperity for a nation, for a people, for humanity. A God whose vision of the future is a peaceable kingdom where all animosity is reversed and all predation is ended. Yeah, maybe that God is heralded in the wilderness, the desert, by a man with nothing but a wild conviction.
John embodies reversal. “What did you go to the desert to see?,” Jesus will ask. They went to see what they couldn’t see in the city. What they can’t find there, they find in the wilderness. And what they hear is that "Heaven's imperial rule is closing in."
I like that. I like John's message put that way. Too often John's sermon reads like "pie in the sky by and by." Heaven is coming, but only after you're dead. No heaven for you now. No relief for suffering, poverty, injustice, cruelty, hunger, homelessness, nakedness. Your reward will come. In the sweet by and by.
What an offensive load of crap. If "Heaven's imperial rule is closing in," it isn't because Jesus is coming to tell us to get out of the pool. It's because a new vision is coming, a new way of seeing, a new hope and promise, a new justice. A change of heart; and you'd better get ready to show it, to produce fruit showing it, or you'll be the chaff thrown into the fire, not the grain used to feed others.
See that, there? That metaphor is about taking care of others; providing for them; being yourself of use. Chaff is the waste we don't need; it has served its purpose, and it is nothing more than fuel for the fire. Grain is still useful; it goes on; it feeds. It provides life. It continues life. What do you want to be? Chaff? Or grain?
It's easy to see that as an apocalyptic metaphor, an analogy to the unquenchable fires of Hell. But those fires are a product of imagination, not the scriptures. Restorative justice is not the rich get theirs when life is over, and the poor get theirs then, too. Restorative justice comes here, comes now; and it comes through us, not in spite of us. God is not going to blow us all down and establish justice and punish the unjust (who would stand?) and make sure we all march to the same drum like some cosmic totalitarian. God is going to show the way, provide the herald and the preacher, and urge us to listen. And if we go to the wilderness to see this man, we aren't going to see a reed shaken by the wind. We are going to hear that we'd better look out, because "The times, they are a-changin' "
Did you ever consider that song was based in Christianity? One line is the clue: "the loser now will be later to win." And: "the first one now will later be last." Oh, and the reference to Noah:
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
Sound familiar? Sound like Jesus just last week? That is not an accident. Dylan's song makes a choice addition to the canon of Advent songs, though it's much too harsh for most people in December. But it suits John the Baptist to a "T". In fact, imagine John today in a ratty t-shirt and faded (from use) blue jeans, and worn sandals, and you have a pretty good picture. He's Luke's shepherds coming to see the Christchild at his birth; the only ones invited in Luke's story. The poorest of the working class, keeping sheep for someone else. Dirty, stinking, quasi-criminals themselves, living on the edge of the wilderness where the law is whoever is strongest or cleverest. Those are the people Luke invites to Mary and Joseph's first night as parents. Matthew's John would fit right in.
"And accept it that soon/you'll be drenched to the bone."
Did you notice what Paul does with Isaiah? Arguably this is where Matthew got the idea, the scriptural reference; because Paul's letter predates Matthew's gospel by at least 3 decades. But listen to how Paul uses it, and then reflect that Matthew brings Gentiles to first recognize the Christchild:
15:8 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs,
15:9 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, "Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name";
15:10 and again he says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people";
15:11 and again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him";
15:12 and again Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope."
15:13 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.
Right there; it's highlighted: verse 12. "The one who rises to rule the Gentiles" is not to be read as "the one who rises to dominate and control the Gentiles," any more than we expect a President who "rules" to dictate to us. This ruler is a servant, just as "Christ has become a servant of the circumcised," so that what is promised by prophets like Isaiah (the "holy mountain") will be a blessing to Gentiles, too. Paul here is referring to what Matthew memorializes in the Magi: Gentiles who read the stars and see signs of the birth of a rule worthy of their homage; and they bring him gifts symbolic of his status.
We'll come back to that by Epiphany. Consider this a foreshadowing of a foreshadowing.
Matthew turns Isaiah's "shoot" from the "stump of Jesse" into Joseph in his genealogy of Jesus. And he clearly intends this as the fulfillment of Isaiah's vision, both the holy mountain (from last week) and the peaceable kingdom from this week. John brings baptism by water purely to signal a change of heart (how that became a sacrament with even more meaning is another subject). John promises Jesus will baptize with fire and holy spirit, which happens at Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles (we're still threading those common threads Biblical theology looked for). Baptism by fire we understand today as a dramatic (or traumatic) experience that creates a changed person. Paul's experience on the road to Damascus would be one. He went from a persecutor of Christians to the creator of Christianity (literally). The baptism of fire John promises is meant to create a new person, one ablaze with the power of Heaven's imperial rule, and dedicated to bringing it by following John's example, and preaching it.
Or perhaps, more realistically, living it. Can you change the world by telling people what to do? If you could, Jesus would have changed the world irrevocably. Can you change the world by showing people that Heaven's imperial rule is real, is here, and can be lived now? Far better than telling them. Talk is cheap, after all. It's action that puts skin in the game. Paul says as much, beginning and ending his message about the vision of God through Isaiah being for all peoples, with his gentle admonition for the members of the church in Rome to live their faith, not just talk to each other about it:
May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
....
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.
"All joy and peace in believing" may sound like it only makes you feel good, but Paul's purpose is that you live as the people on God's Holy Mountain live, so that others will come to live in hope, too. Not hope as unbelievers have, but the "hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
Let me close on this question of hope, and the nature of reversal, which will become a major topic for us soon and very soon in Advent. Consider the Psalm, and what it says about the ruler Paul is talking about, and even John:
Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son.
May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.
May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.
May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.
That is not a plea for justice in the bye and bye. That is not asking for a ruler with an iron rod and a clenched fist. That is the description of a judge who sees righteousness is done, righteousness that yields prosperity for the people. A ruler who defends the cause of the poor, gives deliverence to the needy, and has no room for hte oppressor. A ruler who gives the poor justice. And what is the opposite of poverty, if not justice?
A ruler, in other words, who reverses the ways of the world and the powerful, and rules in God's righteousness for all the people. That, too, is what Advent is all about, Charlie Brown. Of such will be the peaceable kingdom, the imperial rule of Heaven, the rule for the people, and not for the rulers. That will be the great promised reversal, sung for in joy in Mary's Magnificat, when her cousin Elizabeth sees her cousin Mary and knows her first as the mother of the Christchild, even as Elizabeth will be the mother of John the Baptist.
But that's next week....
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