December 8, 2013
Advent 2
Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12
(prayer)
Both of the scripture passages for today talk about making changes.
In Isaiah, the changes are big: a reordering of world powers - a new peace for the people of Judah. This will happen as a result of a focus on righteouness and faithfulness by a future leader with a legitimate claim to the throne of King David.
In Matthew, John the Baptist invites people to look inward and make the personal changes necessary to increase one's own faithfulness and to become right with God.
Both passages promote "peace" as the goal. Isaiah: peace among nations; John: inner peace.
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The pre-Christmas time can be a busy time. Sometimes we just long for a moment of peace. I'm sure that most of you caught a news story or two about the shopping frenzies of Black Friday - the days-long tent cities outside box stores; the checkout line ups and (of course) the fights. One of the Twitter hashtags that was popular last weekend was #brawlmart: we have created all this hustle and bustle in the context of a Christian declaration that Jesus is the fulfilment of Isaiah's vision of the sovereign of a peaceable kingdom. Just the way God intended right. I found it interesting to notice that for those within the politically-conservative Christian movement in the States that the commercialism of Christmas is now embraced. Not only does it serve as easy promotion for a Christian festival, it is all about frenzied free markets. In an interview last month on the Today Show promoting her new Christmas book “Good Tidings and Great Joy”, Sarah Palin said, “I love the commercialization of Christmas, because it spreads the Christmas cheer.” That’s quite a change in attitude from seeing the seeing the commercialization of Christmas as a distraction from the true meaning of the season.
[Sorry Sarah, I’ve chosen to read Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan’s new book on Christmas over yours.]
Jon Stewart (of The Daily Show) had a good sarcastic quote this week after he showed a news clip that lamented the lack of faith-based Christmas Carols in public school concerts: “How can I enjoy MY Christmas when I know that, somewhere, a little Jewish boy isn’t being forced to sing O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
The truth is that it is not the job of our governments or shopping malls or public schools or other non-Christian faith groups or any secular institution to promote OUR (i.e. Christian) religious festival.
That role belongs to the Church and its people.
Unlike the former governor of Alaska, I am not convinced that this is best done riding on the coattails of businesses that are happy to have anyone, for any reason, buy their products.
I am deeply hopeful that Christmas has more to do with Peace on Earth than an upward trend in seasonal profit margins.
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How much do we want to believe that, even amidst the bustle and hustle, an Advent-Christmas calm can emerge?
Certainly, each of us has a certain amount of control over the time and space we have to carve out some inner peace. But, how much hope can we muster for "Peace" in the bigger picture?
I am hopeful that, at the very least, we hold in common... that we all want to make some sense of the quiet and loud calls of the season, including the call to know and experience an honest, authentic peace.
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To get there, let's look a little closer at each of the Bible readings for today.
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All four of the New Testament Gospels mention John The Baptist right near the beginning: Matthew mentions John in chapter 3 (as we read today); Mark, chapter 1; Luke in chapter 3 (chapter 1 if you count the story of his birth); and John, also in chapter 1.
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According to Luke’s gospel, John grew up the son of a Temple priest in the Judean hill country east of Jerusalem, so we can assume that he had a pious, religious upbringing, but that he was comfortable out in the wild. Also according to Luke, his parents were relatively elderly when John was born, so we can also assume that they have passed away before John began his own career as a wilderness prophet. I wonder what Zachariah and Elizabeth would have thought about their son, dressed in a camel’s chair smock and subsisting on locusts and wild honey.
John must have been the very definition of ‘eccentric’ to anyone who came upon him and heard him proclaim that “the Kingdom of God has come near.” John’s invitation was for people to appreciate that they are to live FOR God - that their lives should reflect God. All four gospel accounts of John the Baptist quote Isaiah 40:3 “prepare a way for the Lord”. John’s basic message was that God’s realm is near and people should prepare by turning their focus toward God: the English word repent comes from a Latin root that means “almost” or “nearby”.
The Hebrew understanding of repentance (and John the Baptist was, of course, Hebrew) is that of a ‘return’. ‘Repent, the kingdom of heaven has come near’ is a call to return to a basic faithfulness in God.
The inner call to Peace with God is the invitation to allow a faith focus to dominate and re-orient our entire being.
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The Old Testament prophet from our other reading speaks from a time when the Assyrian Empire is on the move threatening to envelop both Hebrew kingdoms (Israel in the north and Judah in the south). Isaiah was a southern prophet concerned about the impact on Judah and Jerusalem. He is nostalgic for the era of a united Israel under King David (some 250 years earlier), who were able to enjoy a period of peace where their neighbours were not mounting successful campaigns against them.
When the prophet Isaiah refers to a shoot from the stump/stock of Jesse, he is referring to the house and linage of King David (Jesse was the name of David’s father).
In today’s passage, we heard that this promised new leader would not only be a talented leader, but also possess a divine moral compass. This branch from Jesse’s family tree would be so infused with God’s Wisdom and Spirit, that true peace among nations and peoples could be attained.
The last half of today’s reading describes how wonderful that experience would be: it would be as if children could have poisonous snakes as pets and as if natural predators and their prey would snuggle together - peaceably, miraculously - Isaiah presents a complete turnaround of what people think can be possible.
The prophet proclaims that this is God’s dream and promise - that the people will not know hurt and destruction anymore.
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February 11th, 1990: Mike Tyson (the undisputed, undefeated heavyweight boxing champion at the time), lost his first ever professional fight, when Buster Doulas knocked him out in the 10th round. The skeptical joke the next day was “The day Mike Tyson gets knocked out will be… the day that Nelson Mandela is released from prison”.
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I remember well February 11th, 1990, when Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster prison (the last of four prisons that he lived in after his arrest in 1962). For twenty years, it was illegal (in South Africa) to publish any new picture of Nelson Mandela, so all I had ever known were the ones of the young revolutionary Mandela who fought to improve the plight of non-white South Africans: the bearded, dark haired man with a full face and a scowl look who had been convicted of four counts of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the government.
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I know that others had the same experience I did when we saw this gentle, old man walk in the light of freedom that day in 1990.
Just four years later, Nelson Mandela was elected as the first President of a South Africa where all of its citizens were entitled to vote. The African National Congress Party fell just 5% short in the vote to be able to unilaterally change the country’s constitution - so they had to rule through conversation and compromise and consensus.
Over the years of his presidency Mandela did ‘over throw’ the old government of South Africa, as he had been accused of conspiring toward 30 years earlier, though it was not done with a violent revolution, but a democratic and moral one. They would not only acknowledge the Truth of their hard history, but seek to Reconcile, as well. I mean, how powerful was it for Mandela to publically forgive his tormentors and to invite his jailer to his inauguration. A different style of leadership could have lead to violent civil war.
One of Nelson Mandela’s famous quotations (and there have been dozens floating around social media in recent days) is “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
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The desire to know an honest, authentic peace must begin in the human heart - my heart, your heart.
All peace begins small and personal. We hear the Baptist’s cry to re-orient our focus towards God - the sources of love and peace.
The kind of peace Isaiah points to - that outer contagious peace that brings people together in ways that are sometimes written off as impossible or at least unlikely or impractical - can be born of the contagiousness of our inner peace.
John expects the faith-focused change to be noticeable - he tells the people in the crowds to ‘bear fruit worthy of repentance’ and not to live as if there is no room to improve their faithfulness.
Big Peace is only possible if we can find peace in the small places: in the relations we have with other and with a sense of peace we can have within ourselves.
As the song says, “let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me”.
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Let us pray…
God of Peace,
We can struggle to allow ourselves be guided by you. Soften our hearts, embolden our spirits that we might see how the Christ story guides us to new and deep peace. Amen.
#169MV “When Hands Reach Out Beyond Divides”
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