Spirit of Grace

Sunday 12 January 2020
Baptism of the Lord

Matthew 3:13-17

Today we celebrate the holiday called Baptism of the Lord. It’s based on one of the key stories of the life and ministry of Jesus. It’s one of the few stories that is alluded to in all four of the gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John don’t agree on much, but they all agree that Jesus was baptized, and they’re all pretty sure that it was John who did it. But the details, and the relationship between John and Jesus are different in each gospel.

In Matthew’s gospel it goes like this: Jesus has already been introduced in the first two chapters. We know that he was born by his mother Mary and that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. We know that his earthly father, Joseph, is descended from King David. We know that he and his family were from Bethlehem. They actually lived there—they didn’t travel there for a census. We know that they were visited by wise men from Iran within two years of Jesus’s birth. We know that they left their home in Bethlehem and fled as refugees to Egypt when they heard that King Herod was trying to find him and kill him. And we know that when Herod died, they came back, but they didn’t stay in their old home in Bethlehem, they moved to a different region, Galilee, and to a new town, Nazareth. But we haven’t heard anything else about Jesus. He hasn’t had any lines yet. We haven’t seen him grow up. We only know him as a child who was moved from place to place by his parents.

John, though, we have heard a bit more about. Matthew hasn’t told us anything about his parents or his childhood. There is no indication in Matthew that he has any previous relationship with Jesus. But John has at least gotten some lines. He appears in the story, fully formed, out in the wilderness near the Jordan River, preaching a fire-and-brimstone message and baptizing the masses. “Repent,” he says, “because the Reign of God is near!” And when the religious authorities, the Saddudees and Pharisees, come out to be baptized by him, he he does not welcome them. He gives them quite the dressing down. He calls them snake spawn, and he preaches about axes chopping down trees and chaff being burnt with unquenchable fire. He says that a new way is come, a new leadership is coming, and their old ways will be destroyed. He might say that he’s putting the fear of God into them.

With very little introduction, the adult Jesus appears on the scene for the first time. He travels down from Galilee, like many others who were attracted by John’s rebellious message, and he wants to be baptized. Only Matthew has the next detail, that John tries to keep Jesus from being baptized, that John tells Jesus their places should be reversed, that Jesus should be baptizing John. We aren’t told how he knows this. According to Matthew, they’ve never met before. No one knows who Jesus is. He hasn’t done anything remarkable in the story yet. At this point, he still hasn’t even spoken. But that is about to change. His first words in the Gospel of Matthew are, “Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.” My lectionary group spent quite a bit of time talking about this verse, verse 15. It’s kind of hard to translate. We finally settled on “Jesus answered, ‘Let me be baptized now to fulfill all righteousness.’ And John let it be.” Though I’ve always associated Let It Be more with Paul than with John.

So John finally agrees to baptize Jesus. He lets it be. But when Jesus is coming up out of the water, that’s when the real miracle happens. Jesus emerges from the water, he looks up at the sky, and he sees something extraordinary. The heavens have opened up. The sky has been torn apart. The ancients had quite a different conception of how the universe was ordered, so it’s hard to say what they imagined when they heard this detail read. Did it look like a lightning storm? Could Jesus see angels flying around up in the divine realm? Did it just mean that it started raining like when God opened the windows of the heavens during the flood in the time of Noah? The heavens were opened. And Jesus sees the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove and landing on him. We aren’t told that anyone else could see these things, just Jesus.

There is also a voice from heaven. In Mark and Luke, the voice speaks to Jesus. It says “You are my beloved son.” But not in Matthew. In Matthew the voice speaks to the entire crowd, everyone who has been gathering around John. The voice says, “This is my Son whom I dearly love; I find happiness in him.”

It is miracle. A divine voice rumbles out of heaven and tells everyone the truth about Jesus. He is God’s son. He is God’s beloved. It makes Jesus special. It marks him as unique.

Or does it? According to all four gospels, Jesus never performs a baptism. Not once does he baptize someone else. But he does receive baptism. And so do we. Jesus commands that all of his followers be baptized. But what does it mean?

The baptisms John performed were generally considered to be a sign a repentance, a sign of the forgiveness of sin. But is that what baptism is for Jesus? Don’t we generally think of Jesus as being free of sin? So why does Jesus need to be baptized? That seems to be the same question that John is asking.

Well, for Matthew at least, Jesus’s baptism has something to do with his identity as son of God.  It serves to make that identity clear, not only to Jesus himself, but to everyone who witnesses Jesus’s baptism. “This is my son,” says the voice from heaven.

What we don’t always admit, though, is what happens in our baptism. If our baptism were just for the forgiveness of sins, then we wouldn’t baptize babies. Presumably they haven’t done anything that they need to be cleansed. Certainly, most of the sinning days lie ahead of them, not behind. In early Christianity, sometimes people would wait to be baptized until they were near death so that they wouldn’t have a chance after their baptism of getting all dirty with sin again. But, of course, that’s not how we do it. We regularly baptize babies, children, and youth, and we don’t worry about the possibility that they might sin afterward. We know that they will. Cleansing from sin isn’t the main thing that’s happening in baptism, nor is baptism the once and only means of cleansing sin.

So what happens when we are baptized? It might seem a bit strange, but baptism for you and me may not be that different from what happens when Jesus is baptized. We may not hear a voice from heaven. But even if we don’t hear it, we know that when one of us is baptized, God says, “This is my beloved daughter, this is my beloved son, in whom I take delight.”

Baptism is a symbol and sign to us that we are part of God’s family. It is the sign of our adoption. It is the covenant and proof that we are children of the living God.

And as God’s children, we are called to behave accordingly. We are called to reject the spiritual forces of wickedness in our world. We are called to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. We are called to put, not just some, but all of our trust in God. We are called to serve as Christ’s own representatives in the world, to be Christ’s own hands and feet, doing good to all. This is the obligation of our baptismal covenant.  This is the call that is laid upon us as children of God, who have symbolically died with Christ and then been raised with Christ, our brother and forbear in the faith.

And today, as is our tradition each year on this holiday, we will reaffirm the covenant that was made at our baptism. We will say again the holy words, make again the promises. We will remember through words and signs who we are… and whose we are. We are God’s children, beloved and chosen, and we belong to God.

Sunday 29 December 2019
The Fifth Day of Christmas, The First Sunday of Christmas

Matthew 2:13-23

The reading from Matthew that we have this morning comes at a bit of a strange time. Next week, on January 6th, we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, when we remember how the magi came from the east to find Jesus, whom they understood to be the newborn King of the Jews. But even though we haven’t gotten to that reading yet, this week, we have the section of Matthew that comes right after it. The magi have already met with Herod and told him of their search for a newborn king. They have already learned from Herod’s scholars that the messiah should be born in Bethlehem. They have already followed the star to find Jesus. They have already worshiped him and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They have already heard the warning of the angel and returned to their homes by another way, leaving King Herod to wonder what has happened to them and what to make of their story of a child who is a rival to his power. It is in the aftermath of all of those things that we get the story assigned to us this morning.

It’s King Herod the Great that we’re talking about. From 37 BCE until 4 BCE he ruled the entire Jewish homeland on behalf of the Romans: Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Idumea, the Decapolis, Transjordan. His official title, granted to him by the Senate of Rome, was “King of the Jews.”

In Herod’s lifetime, Judea had gone from being an independent kingdom to civil war to Roman control. Then his immediate predecessor as King of the Jews, Antigonus II, had led a successful revolution against the Romans and become king under the protection of the Parthian Empire, Rome’s greatest enemy at the time. Herod came to power by leading a Roman army to retake Judea for the Romans. Upon his victory, he handed Antigonus over to the Romans for execution.

Herod had no previous claim to the throne. He wasn’t a royal. He wasn’t even Jewish; he was Idumean. But with the backing of the Roman state and their legions, Herod became the most powerful king the Jewish people had known in generations. He built new cities. He built new fortresses. He built a technologically state-of-the-art port at Caesarea Philippi. He made a massive remodel of the temple in Jerusalem. He made Judea great again.

And he ruled with an iron fist. He did not hesitate to kill in order to maintain his power. He had one rival claimant to his throne assassinated in 35 BCE. He put down rebellions and riots. He employed a secret police force to monitor the loyalty of his own people. He kept 2,000 soldiers as a personal bodyguard. Shortly before his death, worried that people would not miss him, he ordered that when he died, several prominent Jews should be executed so that there would be greater mourning. Herod achieved a huge amount as king, but he was also capable of incredible violence and cruelty to maintain his rule. Judea was always on the edge of violence, always on the edge of rebellion, but Herod kept things under control. Herod maintained order. He was not a king who was loved; he was a king who was feared.

And toward the end of his reign, Matthew tells us, Herod was confronted with another threat to his authority: a child born in Bethlehem. A child whose birth was predicted by a strange celestial phenomenon. A child who was being sought by religious scholars from Rome’s greatest enemy, the Parthian Empire. A child whom they were calling the newborn King of the Jews.

Herod’s first response was to use these Parthian wizards, these magi, as agents to help him find this potential threat to his power. One way or another, this child would have to be dealt with. The easiest way would be to let these magi lead him to him. But when the magi double-crossed him and his plan failed, Herod decided on another plan. If he could not identify the one child who was a threat to his authority, he would simply eliminate every child who could possibly be the one he was looking for. He would kill every male child in Bethlehem under two years of age. If Jesus poses a threat to empire, then through Herod, the empire strikes back.

This is supposed to remind us of another story, of another child who was born to save his people, of another child who narrowly escaped genocide. In the time of Moses, the Pharaoh of Egypt ordered that all male children born to the Hebrew people be immediately killed, because he feared that the enslaved Hebrew people were becoming too strong to be controlled. However, several women from different social stations conspired together to save the life of baby Moses and have him raised as a prince of Egypt. Moses would later lead his people out of slavery in Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea. He would go on the be the lawgiver for Israel, the greatest of the prophets, the architect of the people of Israel.

In a kind of reverse of the Moses story, Jesus must escape Herod’s kill order on young boys by fleeing to Egypt for safety. An angel visits Joseph in his sleep and warns him about the impending slaughter. Jesus and his family flee political violence in their homeland, like so many others, and become refugees in Egypt. Separated from family, separated from property, separated from their means of livelihood, they have to make a home in a foreign land. They have to learn a new language, adapt to a new culture, and try to find a way of supporting themselves in a new society.

As a United Methodist, I’m familiar with the work of the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) in all sorts of situations of violence, dislocation, and poverty around the world. And I know that services to refugees is a part of the work that UMCOR does. I also know that Lutheran World Relief serves a somewhat similar function for Lutheran churches.

What I didn’t know until recently is the special affinity that many Lutherans have with immigration and refugee services. There is, in fact a separate institution that is devoted completely to that cause. The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service has been operating in the United States for 80 years now. In those 80 years, they have resettled more than 500,000 refugees in the United States.

LIRS was originally formed in 1939 to help with the resettlement of Lutheran refugees from Europe. During and after WWII, a large number of European Lutherans found themselves expelled from or unsafe in their homes. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, LIRS resettled more than 30,000 displaced persons from Germany and Eastern Europe.

It originally started as a program to help fellow Lutherans, but it quickly expanded to include others. In 1956, LIRS resettled Hungarian refugees following a failed uprising against the Communist government in Budapest. In 1959, they assisted in the welcome of Cuban refugees on the ascension of Castro. In 1972, LIRS started welcoming Ugandan refugees who were fleeing the dictatorial government of Idi Amin. After the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, LIRS resettled 16,000 refugees from Southeast Asia. In the 1990’s, LIRS welcomed refugees from Bosnia and Albania. In the first decade of this century, LIRS has been involved in resettling refugees from Sudan, Burma, Tibet, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Thailand.1

Currently, LIRS is working to put pressure on the US government to increase the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the United States each year. It’s the President who determines this cap, with consultation from Congress. “On average, since 1980, the annual Presidential Determination number has exceeded 95,000 persons. Since the year 2000, Presidential determinations have ranged from a low of 27,131 (in the year after the 9/11 attacks) to a high of 110,000 refugees. Although President Obama authorized 110,000 admissions for Fiscal Year 2017, President Trump later decreased that number to 50,000. Ultimately over 53,700 refugees were admitted in fiscal year 2017. For Fiscal Year 2018, President Trump authorized 45,000 refugee admissions. As of August 1, however, only 18,214 refugees had actually been admitted, and it is likely that the final admissions numbers will be no more than 20,000 persons–the lowest number ever in the history of the refugee program.” LIRS is lobbying for the ceiling to be raised to 95,000, which is the average ceiling over the last three decades.

LIRS states: “Aside from the obvious moral implications of closing our doors to refugees who have fled persecution and fear for their lives, the consequences of decreasing the refugee ceiling will directly impact America – economically, culturally, and geo-politically. With refugee arrivals at an unprecedented low, the communities and organizations that have formed around welcoming new Americans are feeling the repercussions. Economically, many small towns in America have come to rely on refugees as a key component of the local workforce; socially-speaking, cities and universities are missing out on the vibrant cultural contributions of refugees; and politically, U.S. allies are beginning to question our shared commitment to addressing international humanitarian crises.”

LIRS also notes that refugees have historically not posed a security risk to the US: “Refugees are subject to intensive screening and review before they are admitted to the United States. Each refugee is hand-selected by the Department of Homeland Security and screened by security agencies in an exhaustive process that involves DHS, FBI, DoD, DoS, HHS, and the US intelligence community. At the end of 2017, most refugees waited at least two years from the time of initial identification to arrival in the United States; that time has now stretched to 3 to 5 years because of new levels of processing and vetting requirements. There is no evidence that this extended time period has helped protect the United States and many experts believe it is unnecessarily exposing individuals to harm, separating families, and undermining U.S. interests abroad. Even before the high level of vetting that exists today, the refugee program has historically been a low-risk admissions program. In fact, a Cato Institute study assessing risks associated with immigrants and terrorism found that no refugees admitted to the United States after passage of the 1980 Refugee Act have committed a lethal terror attack on U.S. soil.”2

What is more, refugees often contribute significantly to the communities where they find a new home. “While there are some upfront costs associated with resettling refugees, numerous studies have found that refugees quickly begin to contribute more to the local economy than they receive in short-term federal assistance. In Cleveland, Ohio, for example, a long-term study of the impact of refugee resettlement in the area found positive economic contributions through consumer spending, payment of state and local taxes, entrepreneurship, home purchases, and job creation. A 2017 study by the Partnership for a New American Economy found that refugee households earned 77.2 billion dollars in 2015, resulting in 6.4 billion dollars in state and local taxes and 14.5 billion dollars in federal taxes. Big cities and small towns alike have often made refugee resettlement a priority as part of their plans for economic development because the investment in welcoming refugees nets a positive return in revenue, human capital, and cultural diversity.”

But in addition to all of this, we must remember that Jesus himself was a refugee of state violence. Jesus was an immigrant. He and Mary and Joseph certainly did not have legal permission from Egypt to enter their borders. Jesus, the one we call Lord of Life, Christ, Messiah, Son of God, was found among the most vulnerable people anywhere, among the refugees.

It is easy to dehumanize people who we don’t know personally. It is easy to paint immigrants and refugees as dangerous, risky, strange, other, foreign. The Gospel of Matthew reminds us that Jesus was a refugee, Jesus was an immigrant, and that we should see the face of Jesus in every refugee and immigrant. Because, as we are reminded in Jesus’s parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, wherever we encounter the hungry, the thirsty, the immigrant, the unclothed, the homeless, the sick, the prisoner, it is there that we encounter Christ: “When you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.”

Welcome for the stranger is a part of our DNA as Christians. It finds a particularly strong voice in our heritage as Lutherans. Immigration is essential to the story of our nation. Even more, it is essential to the story of our faith. It is essential to the story of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so, when we encounter the refugee, the immigrant, the sojourner, let us remember that it is then that we encounter the Christ.

Sunday 22 December 2019
The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 7:10-16, Matthew 1:18-25

“A young woman is pregnant and is about to give birth to a son, and she will name him Immanual.” These are famous words of the Prophet Isaiah, made famous largely because they are quoted by the Gospel of Matthew in relation to the birth of Jesus. For Matthew, it’s about the virgin birth of Jesus and Jesus’s status as God-with-Us. But these words were around long before Matthew, 800 years before, in fact. And before they were ever applied to Jesus, they meant something else.

The context for this pronouncement is given in the first part of chapter 7 of Isaiah. The dominant force at the time is the Assyrian Empire, headquartered in what is now the Kurdish territory of northern Iraq, not far from Mosel. The Hebrew people are divided into two different kingdoms: the Kingdom of Israel in the north with its capital in Samaria and the Kingdom of Judah in the south with its capital in Jerusalem. Both, to one degree or another, are under the influence of the Assyrian Empire. The northern Kingdom of Israel has made an alliance with the neighboring Kingdom of Aram, headquartered in Damascus in modern Syria. These two kingdoms want to launch a rebellion against the Assyrian Empire, but they don’t think they can succeed without the help of the Kingdom of Judah. However, King Ahaz of Judah does not want to join the rebellion, so the rebel alliance of Israel and Aram decide to attack Judah first, kill King Ahaz, and put someone else on the throne of Judah, someone who will go along with their rebellion.

King Ahaz is afraid. He does not think that his little kingdom can stand up to the combined military power of his two neighbors. And he is afraid for himself, that he will be deposed or killed and his kingdom taken away from him. Because he thinks that his kingdom cannot stand on its own, he is contemplating asking for help from a much larger entity. He is contemplating inviting the Assyrian Empire to come in and protect him from Israel and Aram. But, of course, this is a tremendous risk. Ahaz’s potential ally could be much more dangerous to him than his enemies. Asking Assyria to enter the conflict would be like a chicken asking a wolf to come protect it from a goose and a duck.

Isaiah advises patience and faith. Do not be afraid, he says. Have faith in God. Don’t put your trust in Assyria. God has promised to protect you, and God will fulfill that promise. Be calm. Face your enemies without fear, because God will be at your side. But King Ahaz is still afraid. He still thinks he needs to reach out to a powerful empire in order to protect himself.

At the beginning of our passage from Isaiah, Ahaz is preparing for the attack on Judah, and the Prophet Isaiah goes to King Ahaz of Judah in order to reassure him. God speaks to King Ahaz and says, “Ask for a sign from YHWH your God. Make it as deep as the underworld or as high as the heavens.” That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it? God offers to give Ahaz any sign that he wants. There are no limits to what God is willing to do to prove God’s point to Ahaz.

Imagine that for a moment. Have you ever had a situation where you asked God for a sign? You were trying to make a difficult decision or to face a truth that you didn’t want to face, and you asked God to give you a sign about it. I’m usually happy to get a beautiful sunset, or a bird in a tree, or just a certain sense of a feeling. Many times I don’t really get anything. Here God directly offers to give Ahaz any sign that he asks for, no limits.

Ahaz responds, “I won’t ask; I won’t test the Lord.” It sounds like it might be a very pious answer. It sounds a lot like what Jesus says to the devil when he is being tested in the wilderness. Ahaz doesn’t wanted to put God to the test. However, that’s probably not what is happening here. Ahaz isn’t too pious to ask God for a sign. Rather, Ahaz does not want to hear what God has to say. If he doesn’t get a sign, then he won’t have proof of what God is saying.

Which explains why Isaiah hits him with such a snide response: “Is it not enough for you to be tiresome for people that you must also be tiresome for my God?” Isaiah isn’t going to take it. God has offered to give the sign of Ahaz’s choosing, and he’s not going to get out of hearing God’s word just by refusing to name a sign. The king is going to get a sign anyway.

“Look! The young woman is pregnant and is about to give birth to a son, and she will name him Immanuel. He will eat curds and honey, and learn to reject evil and choose good. Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned.”

So here’s what’s happening. Isaiah is saying that there is already a young woman who is pregnant. The Hebrew doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s a virgin, just that she is young. She’s pregnant. She’s about to give birth to a son. She’s going to name the son Immanuel. It is not explicitly stated, but this young woman is probably Isaiah’s wife, and the son who will be born is his son. Prophets sometimes made a point by giving their children a meaningful name. Isaiah named his first son Shear-jashub, which means “a remnant shall return.” He named his youngest son Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. This must have been a pretty tough name to live with. A lot of people complain about the names that their parents give them, but at least most of them weren’t named Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. It means, “spoil quickly, plunder speedily.” Hopefully he used a nickname.

Isaiah’s middle son, though, he gave the name Immanuel. It’s a compound word. Im means with. Nu is a first-person plural suffix. So Immanu means with us. The last part of the name is the general semitic word for God. It gets used in lots of Hebrew names. Israel, Ishmael, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha. So all together, Immanuel means with-us God. But it can also be translated a little differently. In Hebrew, when you write a sentence without a verb, then the to-be verb is implied. So Immanuel would mean God is with us. Or if we were following the Hebrew word order, it would be “With us God is.”

So Isaiah’s own son, Immanuel, God-is-with-us, is supposed to be a sign for King Ahaz. But what is this sign? What is it supposed to mean? “Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned.” Isaiah means that by the time his about-to-be-born son is able to do basic moral reasoning, the threat to Judah will be over. Both Israel and Aram will be defeated. By the time this child is 2 or 3 years old, Judah will no longer be in danger from its neighboring kingdoms. In other words, King Ahaz should trust God. Ahaz should trust that God is in fact with him, and with all of the people of Judah. He does not need to seek protection from somewhere else. He does not need to ask for help from Assyria or from Egypt. He should let go of his fear and have faith that God will provide, that God will protect. Only two or three more years, and it will all be over. God is with him. God will see him through. Do not be afraid. Trust in God. Do not be led by fear. Have faith in God’s love.

Nearly eight centuries later, the author of the Gospel of Matthew came to this text again and found new meaning in it. He wasn’t reading it in Hebrew, though. He was reading a Greek translation known as the Septuagint. And the Greek translation changed the meaning a bit. Rather than talking about a young woman who is currently pregnant the Septuagint speaks of a virgin who will become pregnant. Matthew saw that and immediately thought of Jesus. “Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, And they will call him, Emmanuel, God-with-us.”

The gift of Jesus as Emmanuel, God-with-us, is a gift of God’s love. God cares so much for us, and for our wellbeing, that God sends Jesus to live among us, to become one of us, to show divine solidarity with us fragile human beings.

And the gift of God’s love in Jesus, our Emmanuel, presents us with the same choice that King Ahaz faced. Will we choose fear, or will we choose faith? Will we live a life that is built on suspicion and anxiety, or will we live a life that is built on trust and compassion?

Where will we look for security? Will we look for it in the endless quest for more money and possessions? Will we look for it in a prejudice that separates us from those we see as enemies and outsiders? Will we look for it through membership in a tribe that promises to be superior to everyone else?

Or will we look for our security in the God who loves us enough to live with us? Will we look for it in the inner peace and assurance that comes from time spent with God in prayer, worship, and devotion? Will we look for it in the community of people in which we live and love and move. Will we look for it in our Emmanuel who crosses social boundaries and calls us to do the same?

That is choice for our lives: fear or faith. If we know that God is with us, if we experience God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, if we find that our lives expand when we choose love, then it is not a question at all. Emmanuel is here. We don’t need to be afraid. God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

Sunday 8 December 2019
The Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10

The passage this morning from Isaiah is one of the best known in Isaiah, and it’s one of the better known passages in the entire bible. It’s often referred to as the peaceable kingdom. The wolf lives with the lamb. The leopard lies down with the goat. The cow and bear eat together. So do the lion and the ox. No one hurts or destroys on God’s holy mountain. It’s an ideal picture of what peace could look like, a metaphor for the ways that the people of the earth could live together in peace and harmony.

It comes from a time when the people of Judah were particularly vulnerable. We don’t know the exact timing. The Book of Isaiah probably contains words and prophecies covering at least a couple of centuries. What we do know is that throughout that time, Judah was caught between a number of competing regional empires. Assyria, which many consider to be the world’s first empire, was centered in what is now northern Iraq, to the Northwest of Judah. Their rivals, and eventual conquerors, were the Babylonians, centered in what is now central Iraq, to the east of Judah. Even farther to the east were the Persians, who eventually conquered the Babylonians, centered in what is now Iran. And to the south of Judah was the Kingdom of Egypt. Judah was just one of many small kingdoms in the area, trying to make their way in the midst of feuding and emerging empires. They were sometimes allied with one empire and sometimes with another, sometimes relatively independent, sometimes entirely subjugated, often finding themselves on the losing side of these large, regional wars.

This meant a great deal of instability for the people of Judah. By this time, the northern Kingdom of Israel had already been utterly devastated by Assyria, many of its people being relocated and never heard from again, the so-called ten lost tribes of Israel. The people of the southern Kingdom of Judah risked the same fate if they found themselves on the wrong side of the wrong opponent. In fact, they would eventually be conquered by the Babylonians, who would deport a large portion of their population.

In the midst of this general unrest—and again, we don’t know exactly when this part of Isaiah might have been written—the prophet has a vision of a new king who will establish a reign that is free of the war and unrest and oppression that the people have been suffering for generations.

“A shoot will grow up from the stump of Jesse; a branch will sprout from his roots.” Jesse was the father of David, generally considered to be the greatest king of Israel and Judah. If Jesse’s tree is now a stump, it means that that line of kings has been cut off, or that that line of kings has become unsatisfactory. If a new shoot is growing up, it means that a new king is coming, still in the Davidic line, but one who is truer to the spirit of King David, one who acts more like David did.

And there are some specific ways that this new king is going to be different. First, he’s going to have the Holy Spirit on his side. “The Lord’s spirit will rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of planning and strength, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.” The Spirit will make him wise. The Spirit will make sure that his decisions are based in a thoughtful humility and a deep grounding in God’s laws.

Isaiah continues: “He won’t judge by appearances, nor decide by hearsay. He will judge the needy with righteousness, and decide with equity for those who suffer in the land.” This is a very important point. This king isn’t just supposed to bring peace. It’s not just about making sure that there isn’t war or open violence. No, Isaiah’s new king has got to do more than that. He has to rule with justice. He will not favor the wealthy and the powerful. He will offer special protection for the needy and the vulnerable. He will, in fact, show favoritism for those at the bottom of society. That is what Isaiah expects from the ideal king. He shouldn’t favor the landowners or the job-creators. Instead, he should favor the day laborers and the unemployed.

Isaiah goes on: “He will strike the violent with the rod of his mouth; by the breath of his lips he will kill the wicked.”  So, here the ideal king is described as using violence, but it is very interesting how that violence is described. In the real world, all rulers employ violence to some degree or another. In order to police the people, some level of violence is generally necessary, if only to prevent a greater violence. That’s the kind of violence that’s described here, a violence that targets only those who use violence to hurt others and exploit the oppressed. But notice how that violence is described. It’s described as the rod of the king’s mouth and the breath of the king’s lips. It’s not the king’s arm. It’s not the king’s sword. It’s not the king’s spear or arrow. The only weapons that this king wields come from his mouth. The only weapons this king wields are words.

Finally, Isaiah says of this new king, “Righteousness will be the belt around his hips, and faithfulness the belt around his waist.” These belts are part of the armor of the time. They are righteousness and faithfulness. Righteousness, meaning that the king will be just, that he will do right by his people, that he will set things right. Faithfulness, meaning that he will trust in God and that he will do his duty as king.

Now the prophet Isaiah would probably never have imagined this, but Christians have interpreted this passage as speaking about Jesus. Jesus is the new king who comes from the line of Jesse and David. Jesus is the one who will bring about justice for the people. Jesus is the one who will set things right. Jesus is the king whose only weapons are the words of his mouth.

What this king is ultimately supposed to bring about is the peaceable kingdom, what we described earlier, the ancient equivalent of dogs and cats living together. And that is also the goal for those who seek to live the Jesus way. We should be striving to bring about the peaceable kingdom.

And it’s worth paying attention to just how that peaceable kingdom is described. It’s not “can’t we all just get along.” It’s not about people keeping quiet about their differences or about the ways that they are being slighted by others. In the peaceable kingdom, there is peace, but not everyone is allowed to stay the same.

The peaceable kingdom is described with a number of unlikely pairings of animals. First, “The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat.” These are obviously strange because we would expect the wolf to kill and eat the lamb, and we would expect the leopard to kill and eat the goat. And notice that the animals we would think of as prey are especially vulnerable. They are not even fully grown. It’s not a sheep, it’s a lamb. It’s not a goat, it’s a kid. And yet they remain unharmed by their natural predators. The lamb and the kid don’t change. It’s the wolf and the leopard that have to change. They have to refrain from killing or harming what is an utterly helpless prey.

Isaiah’s vision continues: “The calf and the young lion will feed together, and a little child will lead them.” Here again we have a baby prey animal paired with a predator, this time a calf paired with a lion. This time, though, they don’t just live or lie together, they eat together. And this cannot mean that the calf eats what the lion usually eats. Eat must mean that the lion eats what the calf usually eats. The lion becomes an herbivore.

And thrown into the picture of these unlikely pairs of animals is another vulnerable baby animal: this time a baby human. “A little child will lead them.” Under no circumstances would any decent parent allow a small child to hang out with a wolf, a leopard, and a lion. But in Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom, not only is the small child left unaccompanied with three large carnivores, the child is left in charge of them. It’s not the child that’s asked to change, it is the carnivorous animals that have to change.

In the next part of the poem, this change is made even more explicit. “The cow and the bear will graze. Their young will lie down together, and a lion will eat straw like an ox.” Here we are explicitly told that the bear and the lion have to change their behavior and act like a barnyard animal. They have to graze and eat straw. It’s not the cow and the ox that have to change, it’s the bear and the lion that have to change.

Finally, Isaiah says, “A nursing child will play over the snake’s hole; toddlers will reach right over the serpent’s den.” Again, it is helpless children being paired with deadly predators. It’s not the nursing child or the toddler that have to change, it’s the snake and the serpent that have to change.

The lesson should be very clear. Bringing about the peaceable kingdom is not about changing the behavior of the poor, the vulnerable, and the powerless. Bringing about the peaceable kingdom is about changing the behavior of the rich, the privileged, and the powerful. Peace is not about the poor and oppressed keeping quiet about their situation. Peace is about the privileged changing their behavior so that their actions no longer take advantage of others.

And it’s interesting, because we wouldn’t say that the wolf, the leopard, the lion, the bear, and the snake are mean. They don’t have a deep and abiding hatred for lambs, goats, calves, and oxen. The wolves are just going about doing their normal wolf things. The lions are just going about doing their normal lion things. But the way that wolves and lions normally behave results in the deaths of other animals. The wolf doesn’t have to be especially cruel in order to kill a lamb. The lion doesn’t have to be bigoted in order to kill a calf. They only have to behave normally.

In fact, we would say that it is a part of the very nature of the wolf to hunt. It is a part of the very nature of the lion to kill. Not to do so is unnatural. A lion eating straw is unnatural. Any lion who was asked to eat straw would not doubt feel very put upon. That lion would no doubt feel that its rights were being limited. That lion might even feel oppressed. For as long as anyone can remember, it was the absolute right of lions to hunt whatever other creature they pleased. That is simply the natural order of things. And can a lion even survive by only eating straw? Doesn’t it need meat in order to live?

In our society, the people who have advantages and privileges rarely feel like they do. We don’t have to be mean or bigoted in order to benefit from the privileges of race, gender, and class. And we don’t have to go about trying to exploit others in order to benefit from systems that also oppress others. We can just be going about living our normal lives and not even notice that the abundance of our lifestyles are dependent upon the relative harm of others. Most of the products that buy and give to each other as gifts are made by people earning a tiny fraction of our minimum wage often in very poor working conditions. The fossil fuels that are disproportionately burned in the developed world result in climate changes that are disproportionately experienced by the world’s poor. Many of the advantage of race, gender, class, religion, and nationality are almost completely invisible to those who enjoy them. One doesn’t have to be mean, hateful, or bigoted in order to benefit from systems that disadvantage others.

We want Jesus’s peaceable kingdom. We want the rule of justice and harmony. But in order to get there, it may require a change in us. May Jesus bring about the peaceable kingdom. May we be instruments of the coming of that kingdom. And may we have the grace to make the changes that are required to let it be.

Sunday 17 November 2019
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 33C

Isaiah 65:17-25

New heavens and a new earth. It sounds quite a lot like another bible text we know. Revelation 21: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne say, ‘Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’”

Hundreds of years before John the Revelator had that vision while in prison on the Aegean island of Patmos, a prophet in Israel received a word from the Lord with a very similar theme. “Look! I am creating new heavens and a new earth: past events won’t be remembered; they won’t come to mind.” It’s a promise of a new start. A promise of a world that is different than the old world. A promise that the things to come will be better than the things that are now.

And it is a beautiful vision of a world to come. Every child lives into adulthood. Every adult lives long enough to see their labor bear fruit. There is no war. Even the carnivorous animals refrain from hunting and eat straw instead. No one hurts anyone else, ever. No one steals. No one oppresses. No one kills.

The Irish rock band, U2, has a song called “Peace on Earth.”  It responds to words like the one’s we find here in Isaiah 65, and it is a sort of prayer. “Heaven on Earth, We need it now. I’m sick of all of this hanging around. I’m sick of sorrow. Sick of pain. Sick of hearing again and again that there’s gonna be Peace on Earth.”

Heaven on earth; we need it now. And I have to admit that sometimes I feel a bit more in sync with U2 than I do with Isaiah 65. We read words like these over and over again. Especially as we approach Advent and Christmas, we hear these prophecies about new heavens and a new earth, about a new order where there isn’t any more mourning, where there aren’t any early deaths, where there is no more sadness.

And every time we hear those beautiful words, we continue to live in a world where tragedy is still alive and well, as strong as ever it has been. We live in a world that keeps producing storms bigger and more deadly than any we have ever seen before. We live in a world in which wars continue to take lives and displace entire peoples. We live in a world in which disease and death continue to stalk us, continue to take people long before their time.

The promise from Isaiah is a little too specific, isn’t it? “No more will babies live only a few days, or the old fail to live out their days. The one who dies at a hundred will be like a young person, and the one falling short of a hundred will seem cursed.” The Book of Revelation has the decency to tell us that there will be no more death. But here in this passage, Isaiah puts a number on it. No more will a child live only a few days. What does that do except remind of the children who have died within only a few days. The one who dies at less than a hundred years will be considered cursed. Why put that number on it for us? What does that do except remind us of all of those who have died at less than 100?

Just in this last week we have had two of siblings in Christ die. Barbara Beardsley died on Monday morning at the hospital in Portland from septic shock, complications after a surgery. She was 81 years old, but it was still a shock. In fact, her mother, Helen, is over a hundred years old and still living in The Dalles. And Mickey Stubbs, who moved to Nampa, Idaho a few years ago, died yesterday. We’ll be holding services for both in the coming weeks, Barbara’s on November 29th and Mickie’s on December 8th. And we continue to pray for Frank Moore, as he is in and out of the hospital as he waits to die from terminal cancer.

In the face of all of that, what are we supposed to do with these words from Isaiah? The one who dies at a hundred will be considered a youth, and the one who falls short of a hundred will seem cursed. What are we supposed to think? How are we supposed to deal with the distance between what has been promised and what we continue to experience each and every day? How can we maintain hope in a world to come when our world right now is so full of pain? How long are we supposed to keep on waiting?

And that is precisely the struggle for people of faith. We live in anticipation. We live in the realm of right now, but not yet. We look forward to a greater future, but we live now in the world as it is, with all of its suffering and pain and death. And what are we supposed to do about it? Should we just give up on our world and look forward to a better time, a better place in the sky by and by? Is that what we are supposed to learn from this vision of a perfect world?

Or does it stand as a call to us? Does it stand as goal and target toward which we can work, in our own small ways? Aren’t we called to cooperate with God in making our world more and more like the anticipated Kingdom of God? Aren’t we called, as disciples of Jesus Christ, to transform this world that Christ has come to save? To make a world where everyone has food. To make a world where everyone has health. To make a world where everyone has freedom. To make a world where everyone has love. To make a world where everyone has peace. To make a world where everyone has life. That is our calling. That is our mission. That is our task. As we look forward to the more perfect that God has in store for us, we are called to transform this world.

There are some parts of this passage that frustrate me. We don’t yet live beneath a new heaven on a new earth. We don’t live in a world where wolf and lamb lie down together, and the lion eats straw like the ox, and no one hurts or destroys on God’s holy mountain. And that is frustrating.

But there is a part of this passage that sings out to me as eternally true every time I come across it. God says, “Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will hear.” Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will hear.

Because we do have a God who listens. We do have a God who hears. God knows our needs before we even know them ourselves. No matter what we face, no matter where we go, no matter what we have to endure, God is there with us. Whether we are celebrating or grieving, whether we are happy or depressed, whether we are calm or anxious, whether we are confident or afraid, whether we are hopeful or hopeless, God is there with us. God walks right alongside. God answers us before we call. God hears us while we are still speaking.

And we know we have a God who understands our struggles and our triumphs, because God has shared our experience in Jesus Christ. Jesus has known our joy, and he has known our pain. God meets us in every part of our human experience. As Paul writes in the Letter to the Romans, “Who will separate us from Christ’s love? Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? No, in all these things we win a sweeping victory through the one who loved us. I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.”

Yes, this world is sometimes full of pain for us. There is disappointment and illness and heartache and anxiety and grief and disorientation and uncertainty. But we don’t face any of it alone. We always have God with us, just as close to us as our own breath. “Before they call, I will answer,”God says. “While they are still speaking, I will hear.” Thank be to our Emanuel, the God who is with us.