The Desert and the Dow

Isaiah 35:1-10      The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus ²it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. ³Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. ⁴Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”

⁵Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; ⁶then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; ⁷the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. ⁸A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. ⁹No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. ¹⁰And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Matthew 11:2-11 ²When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples ³and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” ⁴Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. ⁶And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

⁷As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? ⁸What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. ⁹What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. ¹⁰This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ ¹¹Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

+++

This week we are looking ahead to the third Sunday in Advent.  Where does the time go?  John the Baptist follows us into this week, but he is much subdued and, even, contemplative.  And we continue with Isaiah, who gives us some stunning words of hope this week.

“Be strong, do not fear.  Here is your God.”  Yes, there are things to panic about.  There were then, there are now, things to panic about.  Such as the stock market. 

That was mentioned at the roundtable.  It surprised me, but the more I think about it, the more I saw how fitting it is.  Many of us depend on the market for our long-term security.  Anyone who has a retirement account can watch their funds wax and wane as the market fluctuates.  I know little about it, but I understand that the stock markets are very sensitive to uncertainty or instability in the larger society.  Late in the evening on November 8, when the widespread expectation that Hillary Clinton would be our next president was suddenly shattered, the market went into a freefall.  I am told that this is actually not uncommon on election night.  The markets hate uncertainty.  The stock markets are a tangible reaction to our fear of the unknown.

If we listen to Isaiah, we hear assurances that no matter how dire things appear, we may look with hope to our God, who will come with vengeance and recompense.  Our God will save us.  I am sure this does not mean that God will right the markets and bolster capitalism.  We are to look for this salvation in other places.

But here I am reminded of how we so often do things backwards.  We form opinions and search for rationalizations.  We identify our wants and reformulate them as our needs.  We embrace solutions and reach for problems to attach them to.  We are no more likely to fall trustingly into the unknown than the market is to hum along industriously in the face of chaos and panic. 

At the end of the year many churches are finalizing budgets and gathering pledges for the next year.  It is a curious thing that many church members will refuse to make a pledge without knowing what the budget is.  They must know what the church needs before they can decide what to give, they say.  Are we to assume that they will increase their pledge if it turns out the church needs more than they expected?  Quite frankly, I have only seen the opposite: when individuals decide that the church is spending profligately and respond by withholding their pledges.

It is equally curious that budget shortfalls will lead to panic (as though the stock market is crashing), and we hear the cry of alarm – “the church is failing!”  Are healthy bank accounts and endowments the sign of the true church?  Do we hear such an outcry when the church fails to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and grow in discipleship?

Which brings me to the gospel.  A more subdued John, from his prison cell asks, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  I give John credit for asking the question, while noting with disappointment that he needs to ask.  He doesn’t know, because John, like everyone else, was looking for something different.  They were looking for what they wanted, for the solution they had embraced.  This solution, perhaps, shared some qualities in common with our solutions.  There is certainty, we believe, in money in the bank.  There is certainty, they may have believed, in a messiah with an army.  It hardly seemed as though Jesus was able to bring the restoration they were hoping for.

But Jesus patiently points out that he is bringing the very things that the prophet Isaiah described.  God’s vengeance and recompense will give the blind eyes to see, the deaf ears to hear, the mute voices to sing for joy.  And the way will become clear.  This is a new age, Isaiah is showing us and Jesus is bringing us. 

This all leaves me wondering: in what is the church placing her hopes?  Are we hoping for the wrong things?

Do we dare to step into the desert trusting in the almighty God to bring life?

Embarrassed by Hope

Isaiah 11:1-10      A shoot shall come out from the stump 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.

Matthew 3:1-12   In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

+++

The roundtable cancelled today due to various scheduling conflicts and health concerns.  As a result, I sat and considered the texts for Advent 2 alone at my desk. 

It has gotten to the point where I can easily recognize the voice of Walter Brueggemann in my reading.  I am leading a four-week Advent study for the adult Sunday school class using Names for the Messiah, a study written by Walter Brueggemann.  And he has had a hand in the lectionary commentary I use, as well as the Isaiah commentary I pulled off the shelf today.  I have the feeling that Brueggemann calls Westminster John Knox publishing periodically to see what they need, or perhaps they call him and ask him what he’s got.  They’re tight.

But the thing I’m noticing is that Brueggeman has a particularly effective way of drawing out the themes of power – political power, economic power – and letting the light reflect on parallels we are living with in the present day.  We can see it in Isaiah and thereby we can see it in Matthew as well.

When we sit with the Isaiah passage alone for a few minutes, without making the immediate leap to Jesus, we are looking at a people in need of a king.  Their despair is evident, and we know the reasons for it – too many years of weak and corrupt leadership, too little protection from powerful enemies.  And their desire is also evident: they want a leader who has the wisdom to discern right from wrong, and the integrity to make decisions accordingly.  They want a leader who will lift up the downtrodden, even if it means reining in the powerful and wealthy.

And maybe it sounds outrageous to even ask for such a thing.  Because the poetry continues unfolding images of impossible things: the wolf with the lamb, the leopard with the kid.  “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse … and a little child shall lead them.”

In this season that is characterized by hope, we remain embarrassed by it.  We are sophisticated, intelligent people.  How can we even say our deepest desires out loud?  They are laughable.  Peace in the Middle East?  Ethical business and political leaders?  A tax system that works?

You want an economy in which everyone has what they need?  a society in which people collaborate for the common good, where every human life is valued?  We are too cynical to believe in these things, because we know they are impossible.  And our hopes are adjusted to fit reality. 

Then I am reminded of the words Jesus speaks to his followers, “For God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27), and I know that such shrunken hopes as ours betray a lack of faith.

“God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham,” says John the Baptist.  Again, the impossible.  But perhaps only impossible if we are in the habit of shutting the Lord out.  Or failing to hear him knock; failing to welcome him in.

Perhaps we see in the story of John the Baptist that hope is not in any way a passive thing.  It grows from repentance, as we prepare the way of the Lord, clearing paths for him, bearing fruit.  And at the same time, we must not fall prey to the belief that we are doing it all alone.  If we believe we are responsible for bringing peace and harmony to the world, cynicism will be hard to avoid. 

I wonder, then, how to find this balance today.  In a land where the very rich are poised to get richer, where the immigrant is pushed back into the shadows, where the racial and religious minorities are feeling the threat of a newly energized white supremacist movement, where is the road to hope?  

How does our Christian baptism equip us to bear hope into our world?  What does this look like in your own life?  How do you draw on the power of the Spirit to keep moving forward?