The Spirit of Christ
Isaiah 11:1-9
December 22, 2013
First Presbyterian Church, Sterling, IL
Christina Berry
It’s the fourth Sunday
of Advent, our fourth Sunday to stand side by side gazing at the prophetic
vision of Isaiah. While it is helpful to think about the context of these
writings, set back in the distant past – some eight or nine hundred years before
the advent of Christ, it can be distracting to get too bogged down in the
history, and it isn’t always helpful to dissect a text. Sometimes, taking a
scripture apart to try to get at “what it really means” is like taking a music
box apart. Have you ever done that – taken apart something lovely, like a music
box, in order to see how it is put together? When you have finished with it, you
may know more than you did when you started, but the music will be lost.
So as we approach this
reading, we know that the people of Israel have been in a place of despair, and
that the prophet Isaiah’s words are given as correction and they are given as
explanation, but most of all they are given as a word of hope and
encouragement. Let’s listen for what the Spirit is saying to us in this reading
from Isaiah 11: 1-9
Isaiah 11: 1-9
A shoot shall come out from the stump of
Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 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. 3 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; 4 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. 5 Righteousness shall be
the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. 6 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. 7 The cow and the bear
shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw
like the ox. 8 The nursing child
shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on
the adder's den. 9 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.
As with the other texts from Isaiah
we’ve looked at in previous weeks, this scripture is filled with poetic images.
It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and Isaiah has painted
word-pictures to help us see the future that he is seeing. He has shown us a
light shining, dispelling the darkness taken us to a desert that is blooming, marched
with us up the mountain to Zion, pointed out that long straight road that leads
home, led us near the foundry of peace, where we can hear the clang of swords
being beaten into plowshares.
Now, he shows us a forest laid waste, barren
of life, the trunks of old growth trees chopped off, branches lopped away, huge
stumps where once there was a verdant forest. The tallest trees were cut down,
and the lofty laid low. Then fire raged through what had been a lushly wooded
area. It annihilated the remnant. What was once a fertile and abundant place is
now a wasteland, the ground covered in soot and ashes. The faint smell of smoke
is everywhere as we scuff through the burned over land.
It is tragic to see, this place that
once held such life and promise, now leveled, destroyed utterly. Isaiah sits
down on a stump, a ruined old tree that once offered shelter and fruit. There,
growing out of the ruin and decay, is a tender shoot, a sprout, out of the
tree, with two small leaves… a branch, out of the still-living roots of that
tree… In a generation, maybe two, or three, or more the house of Jesse will be
restored.
This will happen through the coming of
a leader who has God’s spirit – in Hebrew, that’s “ruach,” a word I like
because it sounds like a rushing wind. Ruach -- God’s spirit-- a spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the spirit of discernment and power, the spirit of knowledge and
reverence of God.
This leader who has
this spirit does not simply know about
people and the world, he is in relationship to people and the world, his
knowledge and understanding are borne of experience as much as of instruction. He
embodies a spirit of justice, deciding in favor of the poor and the meek, and
against the greedy and the wicked. Righteousness and faithfulness are such
second nature to him that he wears them like clothing – on his sleeve, as it
were.
Now, just as we are
getting our eyes focused, with Isaiah, on this vision of this leader that is to
come, he shifts the focus, and pans out wide, to the cosmos. God’s redeeming
work is not just this one small green shoot, it is bigger, broader, higher,
more expansive than we’d ever imagined. Now we see all of creation being
renewed through the Spirit of God. Here is a wild timber wolf, a predator
living in community with a lamb that was once on the dinner menu.
A lion snuggling up
with a cow and her calf, a leopard napping with the goat herd, the
whole great yapping snuffling lowing bleating creation following a little
child. Bears and lions have become vegetarians. Babies and toddlers can play
with snakes, without fear, without danger. The poison of violent aggression is
no more, not even in the animal kingdom.
Can you see it? Can you see what the
Spirit of Christ will do?
Me neither.
All this week, the news feed and
blogosphere and Facebook feed have been full of posts about this guy on Duck
Dynasty, whose interview in GQ got him suspended from his job. The arguments
have flown fast, about whether this multi-millionaire, who holds a master’s
degree in education, should be praised or punished for what he said.
Meanwhile, in South Sudan, three
thousand armed men surrounded a UN peacekeeping base, and fired into the crowd,
killing eleven Dinka civilians who had sought refuge at the UN base. Aircraft
sent in to evacuate peace workers was fired upon, wounding US service personnel
who had come to help.[1]
North Korea sent a fax – yes, a fax, to
South Korea last week, informing them that they would “strike mercilessly
without notice” if South Korean demonstrators continued to burn effigies of the
late Kim Jong Il.[2]
On Friday, roadside bombs in Iraq killed
nine and wounded twenty-three.
A gunman opened fire at the Manila
airport in the Philippines, killing a small-town mayor and three others,
including a young child.[3]
We don’t even notice anymore, the
violence and bloodshed is so frequent.
Where is the Spirit of Christmas?
Where is the Spirit of Christ?
We don’t see the lofty being brought
low. The needy are still turned away, and the poor and the widow still suffer;
children are still preyed upon. We wonder, at times, if God is really at work
in the world. The answer, of course, comes to us over and over again, and is
highlighted for us especially in this season of preparation.
Our questions find their answers in this
green sprig, growing up from a stump. Our questions may find their answers in the
birth of an ordinary child, celebrated mostly by an ordinary family, people we
may not know or ever meet, but people who may be nurturing a child to speak out
for the lowly, to care for the hurting, to seek righteousness. Our questions
find their answers in our own lives, in the ways in which we are moved by the
Spirit of Christ to care for the needy, to protect the vulnerable, to work for
justice. Our questions find their ultimate answers in this child that is to be
born the child of the prophecy of Isaiah, perhaps, the one whose birth we
celebrate every year. It is he who comes with righteousness and faithfulness to
rule with the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and
might, the spirit of knowledge and reverence.
His Spirit comes to us in the small
sprigs of hope that spring up in unexpected places, tiny shoots in barren
deserts. That Spirit of Christ is something more than a warm and benevolent
feeling that fades away the day after we take down the Christmas decorations. It
is a spirit of hope that prompts us to works of love.
I urge you to join me, this season, and
in all the days to come, to walk and live in that Spirit of Christ, the Spirit
that calls us to provide mittens to warm the hands of children, and to offer
grace and mercy and food to those left out in the cold; the Spirit that
believes it is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.
You very likely have heard a poem by
Howard Thurman, about the true work of Christmas. He also wrote a poem called
“I Will Light Candles This Christmas.” When Christmas Eve comes, and we gather
for communion and candlelight, perhaps this poem will be ringing in our ears. Perhaps
the Spirit will speak to you as you read these words:
I will light Candles this Christmas,
Candles of joy despite all the sadness,
Candles of hope where despair keeps
watch,
Candles of courage for fears ever
present,
Candles of peace for tempest-tossed
days,
Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens,
Candles of love to inspire all my
living,
Candles that will burn all year long.
The prophet looked ahead to that day,
remembering the promise of hope given by God’s Spirit, made human in the Spirit
of Christ: “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.”
Amen.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25476920
accessed 12/21/13
[2] http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/?hpt=sitenav
accessed 12/21/13
Comments
Post a Comment