Isaiah 11:1-9
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Over the course of the next four weeks, we are going to be very loosely drawing on an Advent resource called A Weary World Rejoices, written by Kate Bowler. I first came across Kate as the writer of extraordinary blessings for mundane moments, and in fact you will find her book “The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days” on the church bookshelf. At the age of 35, she was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, and she quickly found herself disillusioned with the way people used scripture in response. “Everything happens for a reason” was not much comfort when there was no good reason in sight. Since her recovery, she has been on a mission to work out how to live with the knowledge that life is beautiful and terrible and absurd, and everything simply happens.
The four themes she offers for this Advent centre on the idea of promise, and we begin today with the promise of truth. Kate says that Advent gives us permission to see the world as it really is while still hoping for a future we can only glimpse. It seems a good follow on to our series on Revelation, which was all about unveiling the truth of the world as it is and is yet to be. We saw that empire commodifies and brutalises human life, and there will be consequences for that. But we also saw that we are only a breath away from another reality, and one day it will break through to renew all things. We saw that no harm or deceit will be allowed in the holy city. But we also saw that the gates of that city will never close so there will always be hope entering into it.
This morning our reading took us back into the Hebrew scriptures and Isaiah, one of the major prophets, who also spoke of the word as it really is, while hoping for a future he could only glimpse. In many ways, the role of the prophets was to see the world through tears, to practice lament as an act of truth telling. The chapter before the one we heard begins “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless”. We still need those who can see the world through tears, who can name all that is wrong and lead us in lament, and we should be listening for those who see and speak with a particular clarity, but I believe this is something we can all do to some extent. So let us take a moment to name before God the things that we see are wrong in the world, and to grieve them.
For the prophets, hope too was an act of truth telling. When Isaiah said “They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea”, he wasn’t engaging in some idle wishful thinking. He was looking forward with absolute certainty to a different kind of future. We need both sides of prophetic truth, for lament without hope will lead us into despair, but hope without lament will leave us with delusion. We also need those who can reinvent and reenvision, who can see the world that is possible and lead us to it, and again we should be listening to those who see and speak with a sanctified imagination, but again I believe this is something we can all be part of. And so let us take a moment to ask God to open our eyes to what might be, and to believe it is possible.
Interpreting prophecy is always tricky, as we saw from the many theories that have come out of Revelation, and we need to be particularly sensitive to the fact that Jewish readings of the Hebrew prophets will be quite different, but in Christian thought it is commonly accepted that the reading we heard from Isaiah is a messianic prophecy that was fulfilled in Jesus. It was Christ who came from the stump of Jesse to strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and it is because of Christ that one day the wolf will live with the lamb and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God. Jesus is the one who came with the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, which brings us back again to the promise of truth.
Like the prophets, Jesus was a truth teller, but he did not only bring the truth of God’s word, he also brought the truth of God’s presence. To say that God lived with us and for us as one of us remains for me the most distinctive and compelling aspect of Christianity. Every year I try and fail to express what the incarnation does to me, intellectually and spiritually and emotionally. The day I get close will probably be the day I retire to write my book in a shepherd’s hut in the Yorkshire Dales. Malcolm Guite’s poem ‘O Emmanuel’ captures something of it, and while I’m sure I must have shared it before, it definitely bears repeating.
The incarnation was only for a span, although it echoes throughout eternity, but Jesus promised his disciples that the Spirit would lead them into all truth, and I believe that promise is for us too. We’ve already reflected on that a little, in thinking about prophetic truth, but there are other truths too. There is the truth of who God is, as we come to understand the height and length and breadth and depth of God’s love for us. And there is the truth of who we are, as we come to understand that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. There is also the truth of all that we are capable of, as we come to understand that in all things God works for good with those who love him. It is in these truths that we discover the promise of Christ, and the promise of Christmas.
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