Vision of Peace (Nov. 29 – Dec. 5)

Sunday, December 5, 2010
Second Sunday of Advent

Weekly Theme
Vision of Peace

Prayer
Laboring God, with axe and winnowing fork you clear a holy space where hurt and destruction have no place, and a little child holds sway. Clear our lives of hatred and despair, sow seeds of joy and peace, that shoots of hope may spring forth and we may live in harmony with one another. Amen.

Focus Scripture
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.

All Readings for This Week
Isaiah 11:1-10 and
Psalm 72:1-7,18-19 and
Romans 15:4-13 and
Matthew 3:1-12

Reflection questions

1. What is your greatest hope? What are you moving toward?

2. What would a “detoxified” world look and feel like?

3. What powers-that-be exercise control over your life?

4. What is the “stump” that seems to sit squarely in the middle of your life?

5. How is God drawing up from that stump a hopeful shoot, new life, new promise, new hope?

Reflection
by Kate Huey

A passage from the Bible is even more powerful if we read what comes before it: at the end of chapter ten, the prophet Isaiah says that God is going to cut down all the trees, and that’s why there’s “a stump” when this passage begins. It’s not an accident, but the result of God’s sweeping movement across the land. It’s also not a pretty picture–the stump appears beyond life and hope. Mary Hinkle Shore says that it’s “the result of the Almighty’s plan for clear-cutting”; we know that clear-cutting is ugly, but it’s a good way, after all, for the prophet to get the people’s attention. Then, just when things appear to be at their worst, Isaiah holds out hope.

We aren’t sure whether the text dates from the threat of the Assyrians (8th c. BCE) or from the Babylonians two hundred years later, but in any case, the political situation of the people of Israel is in disarray. At this moment, just when things appear hopeless and the future looks bleak, the prophet promises that God will send a leader who will rule with justice toward all, and mercy toward the most vulnerable in society. The little ones, the defenseless ones, the innocent ones will be protected and cared for. Isaiah urges the people to remember who they are as the people of God, reminding them that their power, their life, comes from goodness, not greed.

The promises are astounding and perhaps unbelievable: “the order of nature” that we all learned about in school, the violence of predators that we came to accept as natural, will be overturned. The rules of life will be changed, bent in the direction of gentleness and peace, not just any peace, but “shalom.” “Shalom,” Walter Brueggemann says, “is creation time, when all God’s creation eases up on hostility and destruction and finds another way of relating.” Things are going to go back to the way they were originally created, the way things were meant to be. “This poem,” Brueggemann writes, “is about the impossible possibility of the new creation!” and we learn that “the old practice of the big ones eating the little ones is not the wave of the future….The rightly governed world will indeed be detoxified, no more a threat to the poor, the meek, the children, the lamb, the kid.” A “detoxified” world: powerfully striking words when held up next to the nightly news reports. Can we even imagine such a world, or believe that it’s “the wave of the future”? Clearly, the prophet can.

How does this happen? Shore says that the prophet is making a point about just how great this promised ruler will be: “The charismatic ruler creates an environment so void of wickedness that the animal kingdom is transformed….With knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the ruler will have what is perhaps the most important characteristic a civil servant can possess: the recognition that he is not God, and that the One to whom he must give account never ceases to defend the widow and the orphan.” (Another striking thought when held up next to nightly news reports of our recent political campaign season!) So, ironically, this one who is so great and good that he up-ends the “natural” order of the strong eating the weak is himself full of humility. And humility will prove stronger than the military might of any empire. One thinks of Jesus, who wasted no energy on Roman legions, but kept his attention on the sick, the marginalized, the broken, and exerted his power on their behalf.

Disturbing the order of things

In fact, we read this beautiful text in the season of Advent and hear it with our minds on Jesus as One promised and longed for, One who was full of power and yet brought peace, One who was humble even so. We read it in Advent to connect the promises of God with the reality of Jesus. Perhaps, however, this image of Jesus as One who disturbs the order of things doesn’t sit so well with the domesticated Jesus who consoles us individually but has little to say with the way we’ve ordered things in society, where the strong prey on the weak and are richly rewarded for doing so. The little sweet baby Jesus is going to ask hard questions as he inaugurates the Reign of God and the unfolding of the promises of God.

Walter Brueggemann, the great scholar of the Old Testament who has written extensively on this text in an academic way, also encounters the promises very personally: “Unheard of and unimaginable! All these images of unity sound to me so abnormal that they are not worth reflecting on. But then I look again and notice something else. The poet means to say that in the new age, these are the normal things. And the effect of the poem is to expose the real abnormalities of life, which we have taken for granted. We have lived with things abnormal so long that we have gotten used to them and we think they are normal.”

These are powerful words for this Advent season! Do we even dare hope that “normal” could come to mean something very different from the order of things as they are now, that a very different world is possible? It’s become normal to hear about the death toll in Afghanistan, to run a gauntlet of security measures just to board a plane, to listen carefully for the description of the latest toxic toy (a “detoxified” world would definitely protect “the little ones” from our poisons)…so normal that we forget who we are, too, as children of God who have been promised better. Brueggemann helps us draw this together, this vision that sustained the people of ancient Israel, our ancestors in faith, the same vision that sustains us, too, in this Advent season: “something powerful and incredible is going on here, namely, the announcement of a world not yet known or possessed, but a world promised that will surely come. It is the doxology of a community fully freed and reconciled, in which every form of hurt and fear has been overcome. That is what is promised and what is to come. And that is the song of the promises and the image of the poets, the voices of Moses and of Jesus, that a new world is about to be given, and we can trust ourselves to it and live as though in it.” While the strong are still preying on the weak, how do we “live as though in it”?

Getting up in the morning to face another day

What makes you get up in the morning, and move through your day, and, at times, struggle against discouragement, injustice, and despair? If you could describe your greatest longing for your community, for this nation, and for the world, what would it be? What sort of leadership do the church and society and families long for? How does the image of a child in the Isaiah reading suggest vulnerability, peace, and gentleness? Instead of sentimentally romanticizing this child, how might we recognize with hope the upside-down, unexpected ways of the Reign of God, when the mighty, the violent, and the “worldly wise” are, surprisingly, eclipsed by the emergence of peace and justice and healing, of gentleness?

There’s so much to worry about in the world. And yet, God promises that the very last word will indeed be God’s (God is not finished speaking yet!). How are you responding to God’s call today, in this moment in history, to shape a community of justice and healing? Isaiah speaks of natural enemies living peacefully in a place where there is no more hurt. What would this holy mountain look like, for you, where you live?

Natural enemies unite!

You may find it helpful to read the Gospel account from Matthew (3:12) for this Sunday, too: According to Douglas Long, the Pharisees and Sadducees were “natural enemies”–at opposite ends of the political and religious spectrum–and yet they united in common cause against the threat that Jesus presented to all that they wanted to protect. (Brueggemann says that we would be better off if we “spend a little time reflecting on the great promises. Perchance we shall find in them reason to loosen our knuckle-whitening hold on what we possess.”) Isn’t it ironic that there are two different images of natural enemies in the Isaiah and Matthew readings? In the first, those who were enemies are reconciled and live peaceably in the Reign of God. In the second, those who are enemies temporarily ally themselves to resist the Reign of God as it draws near in Jesus Christ. What are we protecting? What would cause us to join with those with whom we strongly disagree? How does the Good News preached and embodied by Jesus–and the repentance preached by John–threaten “our little world” and its values and systems, and the greater one as well?

A preaching version of this commentary (with references and sample sermon) can be found on http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel

For further reflection

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, 20th century
Faith walks simply, childlike, between the darkness of human life and the hope of what is to come.

Nelson Mandela, 20th century
If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

Edward Hays, 20th century
Advent is a winter training camp for those who desire peace.

Paul Gauguin, 19th century
I shut my eyes in order to see.

Ashleigh Brilliant, 20th century
All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.

About Weekly Seeds

Weekly Seeds is a source for Bible study based on the readings of the “Lectionary,” a plan for weekly Bible readings in public worship used in Protestant, Anglican and Roman Catholic churches throughout the world. When we pray with and study the Bible using the Lectionary, we are praying and studying with millions of others.

You’re welcome to reprint this resource and use in your congregation’s Bible-study groups.

Weekly Seeds is a service of the Congregational Vitality Ministry Team, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is © 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission.