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| William Strutt (1825-1915), "Peace" (1896). |
Isaiah 11: 1-10 & Luke
1:46b-55
Second Sunday of
Advent/ 8th December 2013
Perhaps
you love poetry. Perhaps you don’t. Maybe it leaves you feeling empty, cold. Or, maybe it’s the life-blood that feeds your
soul. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Yet,
the work of the poet has always been indispensable to the life of faith. Why?
Because the poet, a master of metaphor, image, and symbol, urges us to
move from the surface into the depths that surround and undergird us.
Good
poets, good poetry illumine reality and allow us to see the world and
ourselves—even God—in new ways. They
open up the world for us. They open up our hearts. They open our eyes and invite us to see, to
pierce more deeply into the soul of all things.
They help us see what we can’t see on our own; they help us perceive
what our senses are dumb (have become numb) to: they envision the world in a
new way and then call us to join them in that vision, allowing us to
participate in the world in new, meaningful, transformative ways. The poet is an angel of light who helps us to
see (we who are often blind) with new eyes—the world, ourselves, the future, God. And once we capture a glimpse of their
vision—once we see with their eyes—we can’t un-see it. We've been changed.
This is really what the entire Bible
is all about: it’s trying to get us to see ourselves, our world, the future,
God, from a different perspective; to see what we cannot see, will not see, on
our own. The people who were most passionate about envisioning the world from
God’s perspective were called prophets—they’re still called prophets. They were
lone voices then, they’re still lone voices today.
“Prophet” is a loaded word; it comes
with a lot of baggage. First, no one
really wants to be a prophet or associated with prophets. You don’t wake up one morning and say to
yourself, “I think I want to be a prophet.”
It’s a reluctant calling. And
prophets are odd, eccentric. You have to
admit: John the Baptist is a little weird, living out in the wilderness
surviving on locusts and wild honey (Matthew 3:4). Who wants to be like him?
Many
equate a prophet with a seer, someone who predicts or foretells the future, maybe
someone like Nostradamus (1503-1566).
The prophets are more than fortunetellers, however. Walter Brueggemann, one of the leading Old
Testament scholars of our age, prefers to think of prophets as poets. This is very helpful.
Biblical
prophets are really poets who have a different set of eyes. They can see far off into God’s future and
they call us to imagine with them “that day” when the world will be as God
intends it to be. Their bold,
surprising, shocking, even ludicrous visions get our attention, they cause us
to wake up, to pay attention; they startle and disturb us in order to stir us
from our slumber in order to see what God is up to all around us. Their bold visions reframe the way we
understand our lives within God’s gracious providence.
This is also the work of the poet. Last Sunday, Dorothy Boulton shared novelist
Salman Rushdie’s understanding of what a poet does: “A poet’s work is to name
the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the
world and stop it from falling asleep.”
We can easily replace poet for
prophet here: a prophet’s work is to
name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments,
prophets shape the world and stop it from falling asleep. It’s no wonder that prophets are mistreated,
imprisoned and silenced—think of Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), for he was truly
one of the great prophets of our time. Sometimes
the prophets are even killed—think of Jesus.
The nineteenth century art critic and essayist John Ruskin (1819-1900)
makes the connection plain by tying all three together: “To see clearly is
poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.”
And there’s no prophet—no poet—quite
like Isaiah, whose vision of God’s future has left an indelible impression upon
Christianity. It’s not surprising that
the book of Isaiah, which was written and compiled over several hundred years,
is known as the Fifth Gospel, after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Isaiah
impressed his vision upon the early Church and gave them the “eyes” to
recognize what God was doing through Jesus of Nazareth.
Isaiah
sees things that no one else does. He
imagines things that no one could yet imagine.
He envisions a future that seems shocking and impossible. There will come a day when, “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” (Is. 11:6). You’re probably thinking when you hear this: Really, Isaiah? Come on. When pigs fly.
Is
this just wishful thinking? Groundless hope?
Or
does Isaiah know something we don’t?
Does he see something we can’t see?
And can we trust him—we who are skeptics and doubters, we who have been
burnt too many times, been disappointed too many times, we who prefer to be
cynics, who resist being hopeful because we don’t want to be disappointed—can we
trust him? Maybe we’ve been wounded too many times that we’ve lost our capacity
to imagine a different future, something other than the same-old, same-old.
Several years ago an older member of
my extended family, someone who was raised in the church but has no vital
connection to a faith community today, said to me, dismissively, that Christmas
is not a big deal for adults, “It’s really only for children.” I didn’t say anything. It was not the time or the place for a
conversation on this. I was stunned by
the comment, though, on a number levels, as a Christian, as a minister. She’s entitled to her beliefs and feelings,
of course. But more than anything else I felt deep sadness when I heard these
words, sad that she felt that way. Christmas was a thing of the past, of her
past. “It’s really only for children.”
Well, yes, to a degree. But it’s not only for children; it’s about children,
about a child—and about the life of
the child who still lives in each of us.
It’s telling that the prophet-poet
Isaiah places right at the center of his vision of the new day God will bring
for Israel, a child. The symbolism of the child is running all through Isaiah
here. The child will invite the wolf to
live with the lamb. Earlier in Isaiah 9,
we find the divine-child motif emerging:
“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests
upon his shoulders and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting
Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6). His reign will yield peace and justice and
righteousness from his time onward and forevermore (Is. 9:7). It’s important to note here that the early
Church saw Jesus as this child, but Isaiah didn’t; he didn’t give this child a
name. As Christians we have to be careful about reading too much back into
Isaiah’s vision. What Isaiah sensed was
that a child would pave the way.
The appearance of a child is a deep
pattern or archetype found in many religions.
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) wrote extensively about
the emergence of the child archetype at critical moments in the history of
humanity or the emergence of the image of a child in dreams at critical moments
of development, personal growth, even transformation.[1] Personally, I put a lot of stock in this and
can vouch that infants and children have emerged in my own dreams just prior to
significant, positive changes that occurred in my life. That’s because the image of a child, as Jung
said, “…is potential future.” The image
of a child “signifies as a rule an anticipation of future developments.”[2]
Something new is being born. A child represents the future, right? Promise.
Potential. What is to come.
Development. Growth. A child paves the way for the future.
Isaiah wants Judah to know that
eventually the future, embodied in the child, will witness God’s original
intent for the world: justice, righteousness, wholeness, compassion, a making
right. There is no doubt about
this. That’s why another prophet, Martin
Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), could say with confidence that while the moral
arc of the universe might be long “it bends toward justice”—and by justice he
didn’t mean “getting even,” that’s not justice.
That’s not the biblical view of justice. He meant justice as making right, restoring, making whole. That’s what Nelson Mandela knew. He modeled a
biblical vision of justice. After 27
years in jail, he said, “As I walked out the door toward my freedom I knew that
if I did not leave all the anger, hatred and bitterness behind that I would
still be in prison.” He imagined a new
future for himself and his people, which must have seemed ludicrous at the
time. But as Mandela said later, “It
always seems impossible until it’s done.”[3] Sounds like Isaiah too.
“A shoot, a living branch will
emerge out of a stump,” Isaiah said—a stump
of a tree, a stump of a dead tree, a tree cut down to its stump?—and a new
living branch will emerge out of decaying roots. It always seems impossible until it’s done.
It will emerge from the tree of Jesse, a new seed, a child. And “the spirit of Yahweh shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the
spirit of knowledge and the fear of Yahweh” (Is. 11:2). “The ‘spirit of Yahweh’ is a force that
enlivens, gives power, energy, and courage, so that its bearer is recognized as
one designated, who has the capacity to do what the world believes is
impossible.”[4]
This child’s delight will be in the holy fear, the awe of Yahweh. And because he comes in the name of Yahweh
this child brings Yahweh’s future, he will bring a fresh set of eyes and ears
to what he sees and hears in the world, with righteousness he shall care for
the poor, he will pursue equity and fairness.
He will reverse the ways of the world. That’s what this child will
do. He will offer a new, never-before-seen
future, an unimaginable future. That’s
what the announcement of the divine-child will do.
And when Mary heard from the angel
that she would have a child, a divine-child, she broke forth into song, poetry,
really. It caused her soul to sing because
the birth of this child meant a new vision of the future had been cast, a
never-before-seen future, an unimaginable tomorrow that will usher in the great
reversal of every abusive power in the world.
The rich and haughty and selfishly powerful will be brought down; those
on the bottom, those who have been at the bottom of society for a very long
time, kept at the bottom, forced to stay at the bottom will be elevated, will
be exalted, will be lifted up and given their rightful place in God’s
world. This is the future this child
will pave, will lead us toward. His way
will mean good news for the poor, for the lowly. His way will fill the hungry with good things;
they will be fed and satisfied, content.
That’s what the birth of this divine-child will mean, that’s what it
means. That’s what it always means. This
is what the birth of this child signals for us and for our children and
children’s children. This is what
happens when this child is born in us and lives through us.
No wonder Mary cried out,
“Magnificat!” “My soul magnifies the
Lord.” Μεγαλύνει ἡ ψυχή μου…. The child she bears magnifies—what? The child
enlarges her image of God, enhances her understanding of who God really is. The child allows her to see what she didn’t
clearly see before: so, this is who
God is! The child she carries will bear forth a vision of God, of God’s intent,
God’s dreams, God’s plan for the world.
Not just for some, but for all—“to Abraham and to his descendants
forever” (Luke 1:55b). That’s what this baby, this child means.
The English
psychiatrist D. W. Winnicott (1896-1971) once said, “There is no such thing as
a baby—meaning that if you set out to describe a baby, you will find that you
are describing a baby and someone.
A baby cannot exist alone but is essentially part of a relationship.” The same was true for Jesus. The promise of
his birth, his birth is for all of us. His
birth is humanity’s birth. His birth is
our birth. His future is our future. The
promise is there, not for some but for all of us. The impossible is possible. The child paves the way. The child announces and discloses God’s future. And a child will lead us there all the way.
[1] C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of
the Child Archetype,” The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,
The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 9i (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pars. 259-305.
[2] Jung, par. 278.
[4] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 99.
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