Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Let us pray.
Dear Jesus, help us as we continue to reflect on the meaning of your coming.
Give us hope as we look backward and forward in time to consider what you have promised through your prophet. Isaiah.
Amen.
Hear the word of the Lord in Isaiah, chapter 11, verses 1 through 9.
A shoot shall come out from the stalk of jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom 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. And as the waters cover the sea, this is the word of the Lord.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Thank you, Carlene.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Hope you all had a beautiful Christmas day.
There's nothing like the Christmas season, in my opinion. I love the way the world just lights up in anticipation of Christmas. Just driving around in the evenings, doing my normal everyday routine suddenly feels magical. It gets a little brighter, a little more joyful and awe inspiring, especially when you've got young kids. The Christmas wonder is at an all time high at our house with Addie, who's 8, and Luke, who just turned 2 and is just kind of grasping how this whole Christmas thing works.
For the first time, right after Thanksgiving, we went and picked up our Christmas tree from one of the little Christmas tree lots. We strapped it on top of our car and took that thing home and soon we were wrapping it in lights and putting up ornaments together.
And you can see in this picture, my son is just kind of a blur because he could not hold still long enough for a picture.
Luke and Addie were just full of delight with every candy cane they got to hang on the branches. Every little Santa figurine.
The smell of that tree filled our house.
The glow of that tree with all the other lights off just illuminated our living room with Christmas magic.
I love the weeks leading up to Christmas and then Christmas comes and goes.
We're not quite there yet. I know it's just a few days after Christmas. I am a firm believer in the twelve days of Christmas. I hope you all keep your lights up and your tree until epiphany at least.
But soon enough you're going to start seeing it.
What I think is one of the most depressing sights in the world.
These dry, barren Christmas trees thrown out on the curb to be collected and discarded. Oh, how the mighty have fallen now. I know it's inevitable, but it hurts me to see it. It's like a tree graveyard. Does anyone else suffer from the post Christmas blues?
I feel like it hits me in this upcoming window after Christmas when all the lights start to fade and the Christmas decorations start coming down and family goes home and we just go on our way back to regular life.
But see, for me it's more than just I'm sad I don't get to see pretty lights anymore. I get in my own head. I get theological about it. For me, it's this heavy weight of Christmas coming and going and the world still feeling like it's not how it's meant to be.
Does that make sense?
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, we read all these amazing scriptures with these Advent promises written hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus. These prophetic, prophetic words, look ahead to this coming king who's going to change the world. You probably recognize some of these from Isaiah. Isaiah 9, 6 says, 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.
His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless Peace.
Or Isaiah 43 that says, a voice cries out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Man.
We read these texts during Advent that we believe rightfully point to Jesus. And there's this anticipation that builds, this excitement, this longing. I can't wait for endless peace.
I can't wait for the glory of the Lord to be revealed to all people. For this reordering of power and authority, this leveling of the power structures that we've built.
God, our world needs this desperately.
And every year we read these texts, and we look forward to this future time.
And then Christmas passes on by, and we're still waiting.
The world still isn't right.
And it's like, man, did Jesus change things or not?
Are these fulfilled prophecies, or are they empty promises?
Does anyone else wrestle with this, or am I just depressing you on this first Sunday after Christmas? Let me invite the band back up. Sing Joy to the World real quick. Okay, no, no, no. Just give me a minute. We'll get back to that.
But actually, let's dive into our text for this morning, because Isaiah 11 is one of these classic Advent texts that gets read before Christmas. And then I feel like we just stop looking at it after Christmas. And I don't want to stop looking at it.
The Book of Isaiah, where a number of these Advent prophecies comes from, is a fascinating book that prophesies both judgment and hope side by side for Israel. It looks ahead to Babylon and Assyria, conquering them. But then it looks ahead even further to redemption for Israel through a future king.
One way this plays out is in Isaiah, chapter six, when it describes how God is going to cut down Israel like a tree until only a stump remains.
But in chapter 11, which Carlene just read for us, it talks about this shoot that will come up out of the stump of Jesse.
Jesse was the father of King David. So it's almost like right when it seems hopeless, right when it seems like the line of David is dead and chopped down and those Davidic promises are gone, this branch of hope bursts forth, this new king.
And this king ushers in this new reality of radical peace. There's this transformation of all these dangerous predators whose natural instinct is to hunt and to harm and to kill wolves and lions and bears and even humans, believe it or not, the bloodshed ends.
All of creation is brought to the state of harmony. Shalom.
That would have reminded Isaiah's readers of the Garden of Eden, but it's even better. This is God's final vision for creation.
And when it doesn't look this way, when there's violence and famine and disease and poverty, we might feel it in our spirits that something is wrong and we're right, because this is how the world is supposed to look.
So what do we do when it doesn't look that way?
Because, listen, I believe in peacemaking, but often when someone suggests nonviolence, it's dismissed as idealistic but naive.
When the world is as violent as it is, so often we fall into this trap of believing we have two fight back or lay down and do nothing.
Blind ourselves to the cycle of death and violence around us, or give in to it and lose all hope when this is what the world looks like. How do we get from here to this vision Isaiah has for peace?
Well, let's start by taking a closer look at this figure. Isaiah 11 describes who brings peace in the first place.
Isaiah 11:2 says, the Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him.
In Hebrew, spirit and breath are the same word. The breath of the Lord rests on him.
Now, this isn't the first time the Spirit of the Lord has been attributed to someone in the Bible. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon Samson and Saul and David. The word it uses in those instances is like the spirit rushes onto them. It's almost forceful, advancing.
But here, with this king and Isaiah's prophecy, the Spirit of the Lord rests on him. The spirit settles in this more permanent way, like the spirit is just who he is, the spirit of wisdom and understanding and counsel and might and knowledge. And it says his delight will be in the fear of the Lord. Quite literally, he will breathe in the fear of the Lord. That's what that word means.
He smells it, breathes it in, inhaling the fear of the Lord. Like you might take a deep breath from a rose.
His breath is the Lord's breath.
Rather than striking with weapons of war like so many kings before and after, this king, it says, strikes with the rod of his mouth. His words are his weapon. Now, make no mistake, he doesn't roll over and allow evil to run rampant. But it's with the breath of his lips, the spirit, once again, that he slays the wicked. Where most kings would carry a sword in his belt, this king carries righteousness and faithfulness.
Now pay attention, because I think this part's important.
With the spirit resting on him as he breathes, the spirit in this king, it says, does 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.
This king knows there is a deeper reality than the surface one that we can see and hear all around us.
This king knows our eyes and ears are only trustworthy to a point, but that they can deceive us into thinking the world is a certain way, or the future is a certain way, or we only have these limited options before us.
And let's be real, if we trust our eyes and ears. It sure feels like the oppressed are just going to keep on being oppressed.
It sure looks like might makes right.
It sounds like violence is inevitable, like the ends justify the means, because that's just the world we live in. That's the messaging we get from our world all the time.
But this king sees beyond that. He's looking at the same picture we are, but seeing it completely differently.
The ability to look at the world and see it differently, to see opportunities for hope and peace where it seems like there are none, has sometimes been called a moral imagination.
Justin Giboney, an author and ordained minister, describes moral imagination as the ability to see not just what has been in the past, not just what's going on in the present or what's likely to be in the future.
It's the ability to see what ought to be, and really for a Christian, the ability to see what will be based on God's promises.
It's an imagination, not in the sense of making things up that aren't there, but in the sense of creatively envisioning things that are there.
For a Christian, if we know how the story ends, it has to change the way we see the chapter we're in today.
Without an imagination for the future, we are stuck believing that what we see is all there is.
We may think that the way of the world is the only way.
We may be tempted to believe that the cycles of violence and pain and suffering on earth will never end, that those in power with wealth and influence and strength will stay in power until someone comes along with more wealth and influence and strength to take their place.
That's the temptation.
But this king that Isaiah 11 describes sees the world differently.
This king, Jesus Christ, is the very embodiment of this kind of moral imagination that subverts the wisdom and understanding of humankind.
See, God looked at the grand palaces of his day, the great cities of Rome, or even Jerusalem, and and instead saw a perfect place for the Messiah to be born. A little stable in the small, seemingly insignificant town of Bethlehem.
God looked at the web of savvy cunning politics. The first century game of Thrones with Caesar and Herod and Pilate and even the religious leaders and scribes. And he decided, I'll invite some shepherds to come make the royal birth announcement.
Jesus looked at the mighty Roman Empire oppressing his people, occupying the land.
And rather than rising up in violent resistance, he entered right into the thick of it and he laid down his life. He defeats death by dying.
When the world sees death as the end of the story. Jesus knows the end of the story. He knows the resurrected life that uncontrollably bursts forth out of death.
God, there are times when it feels like these prophecies and the promises about the future are so far away.
There are times when it feels like, did Jesus change anything?
The church believed this.
The whole world is different now if we have the eyes to see it.
When Jesus entered the world, God showed us that our story is intimately tied up with God's story.
Through his death and resurrection, Jesus rewrote the end of our story. We now have the capacity to live into the world that God is making new if we have the moral imagination to see the shoots of life and hope springing up in what looks to the rest of the world like hopeless situations.
In modern day Bethlehem, Palestinian pastor Reverend Munter Isaac has been preaching peace and justice and doing ministry with his church. There. You might be familiar with the poignant images of Christ in the rubble, the nativity scene buried under the aftermath of bombings in Palestine that came out over the last couple years.
It has been and continues to be a striking picture of God standing alongside the most vulnerable, joining us in our pain and lament.
But this year, Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem made a deliberate and meaningful decision to keep Christ in the rubble, but place it under a Christmas tree.
Now, I know this font's gonna be hard to see, but I will read it for you. Reverend Isaac says this.
The rubble remains. The broken stones are still there. The Christ child still lies among the rubble, reminding us that God chose not safety, not power, not palaces, but vulnerability and solidarity with the crust of the earth.
And yet now, rising from that rubble stands a tree, a living tree.
The tree appears almost as if it grows out of the rubble itself.
This is our story.
This is the story of Palestinians and of the Palestinian church. Reverend Isaac says we live amid ruins, yet we insist on life.
We bury our dead, yet we plant trees.
We endure siege, displacement and erasure. Yet we keep saying we want to live. And we will continue to proclaim life, to hope, to preach peace.
Rising from the rubble stands a tree, a living tree. It is defiance in the face of death. It is hope planted where despair is expected to rule church.
I believe the future reality that Isaiah promises will one day come to full fruition. I believe that Christ will make the world right. He will make all things new and lift up the oppressed and tear down systems of injustice and usher in a permanent and complete peace, the kind of peace we are all longing for in the depths of our hearts.
Jesus has not returned yet, but he will. I believe that.
But I also believe it's a mistake to dismiss this future reality as something that doesn't really concern us yet, something that will happen then in the future, in another time and place that doesn't really have any bearing on our present situation today.
Church if Jesus was truly born and truly lived and truly died and truly rose again, I think it's a mistake to assume we can just go about living our daily lives and see reality the same way the rest of the world sees reality.
If we can really envision how this story ends, then it should spark our imagination for all the opportunities for life and hope and love in our current moment in the story as well.
In so many ways, I think the perfect image for Christmas is Christ in the rubble at the foot of a beautiful, magnificent Christmas tree. That's the intersection where we find ourselves. Not in ignoring the rubble, but also refusing to lose sight of the tree. The shoot that has come up out of Jesse that will save and is today saving us all.
Hallelujah.
Amen.
