Sermon 

Sermon Recording:

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 other night, just at dusk, I looked out at the front yard, and saw what I thought was a large dog, sitting very calmly on the grass, generally ignoring me. I looked closer, and realized it was a coyote. It bent its head to something at its feet, limp and furry; a dead squirrel, or as the coyote would call it, “dinner.” 

Another story: Several years ago Malcolm and I walked along a snowy path one morning, and saw rabbit tracks progressing in a straight line until they suddenly stopped, it seemed, mid-hop. At that spot, about eighteen inches or so on either side, was the light imprint of the tip of an owl’s wing. Breakfast. 

Alfred Lord Tennyson referred to the grim reality of such moments as “nature red in tooth and claw.”

Isaiah knew that their audience was fully aware of the hierarchy of the food chain; the immutable reality of the violence of life and death in the natural world. They saw it around them all the time, in a way that those of us in an urban/suburban environment do not. They even participated in it if they wanted meat for dinner (or for religious sacrifice). This passage, though, was not just about the food chain. The world of First Isaiah, as we call the early chapters of the book, was “red in tooth and claw” as the Assyrians destroyed the northern tribes of Israel, and then marched south through the southern kingdom of Judah, laying siege to Jerusalem. It was a violent, blood-soaked, terrifying time.

Have you noticed that prophets don’t seem to speak in times of abundance and tranquility? They speak (occasionally) about abundance and tranquility, but from within a time of chaos. We see the same in the appearance of John the Baptist during the era of Roman domination that would ultimately claim him as one of its victims. Prophets arise when they are needed, whether to warn or to cajole, or to comfort. What the people needed from Isaiah was hope, which Isaiah depicted in vivid beautiful images of what a violent world transformed by God could look like. Last week we heard of beating swords into ploughshares, of peace and prosperity. And this week we hear more detail of the vision:

“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…”

Israel had been cut off by Assyria, her tribes destroyed like a felled tree, leaving nothing but a remnant; a forlorn stump. But the stump harbors life still—just a tiny shoot, but tiny shoots grow, and in Isaiah’s vision this one will flourish; a leader of the people who will nurture and protect them; who will rule with wisdom, justice and mercy.

This is not just Isaiah’s dream made up by himself from whole cloth. It is God’s promise through Isaiah. Because that’s what prophets do. Isaiah proclaims God’s promise of reconciliation, protection, and loving relationship. The leader who will arise will be truly extraordinary; one whose rule will change the entire natural order, reconciling all of Creation with God and with one another. “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb”—how ridiculous is that—how against everything we know and experience in a world red in tooth and claw from top to bottom? But that is the vision: A world transformed by the gracious rule of God. 

Really? 

It does strain credulity to the limit. It must have seemed that way then, to people besieged and slaughtered. And it does now, to people threatened and exhausted. Isaiah’s vision seems awfully rosy to anyone who is paying attention.

And yet.

It’s Advent. We hear the words of another prophet, declaring that the One they had awaited was coming to set everything aright at last. People flock to John the Baptist, many in anticipation, some with skepticism. And he does not mince words, calling people to transformed life. To repentance. To bearing good fruit. Because change is coming, and we need to be ready.

It’s Advent. As Mark said last week, it is a time when “God’s future leans towards us with urgency.” What is the lens through which we view this liminal season? An exercise: What are the words we associate with these days of waning light and nature’s hibernation? Our Advent candles proclaim peace, hope, joy, and love. There’s also prepare, expect, awaken, watch, wait.

I realized the other day that one word is missing from the usual Advent list. 

Trust.

It’s not usually there, but think about it: None of the things that Advent calls, challenges, and invites us into means anything without trust.

But trust is hard. It’s hard because it is so often abused. Our first reaction when someone introduces a statement with the words, “Trust me…”, is to do anything but. We have become conditioned, especially in recent years, not to trust anything, or anyone. One reason is that there are many, like scammers and spammers, who are not worthy of being trusted, and the other lies with those who are systematically dismantling trustworthy institutions by intentionally sowing seeds of distrust and mistrust. So is it any wonder that when we are called to trust God, we don’t feel up to the challenge? We may actually need to confess, when we look around at our fractured world, that we feel deep down that God cannot be trusted. That we ourselves feel about as trusting as a bunny striking out across a mown field on a moonlit night.

Advent calls us to remember why we can trust in God’s promise, God’s Dream of Creation-spanning reconciliation. It is because God has entrusted God’s Self to us.

In her posthumously published book, Wholehearted Faith, Rachel Held Evans wrote: 

“I am more aware than ever of the startling and profound reality that I am a Christian … because a teenage girl living in occupied Palestine at one of the most dangerous moments in history said yes—yes to God…yes to a life that came with no guarantee of her safety or her son’s.  …It is nearly impossible to believe: God shrinking down to the size of a zygote ….  God crying out in hunger. …God resting in his mother’s lap…   God trusted God’s very self, totally and completely and in full bodily form, to the care of a woman… Jesus himself needed to be fed, by a woman. He needed a woman to say: “This is my body, given for you.” …  

To understand Mary’s humanity and her central role in Jesus’s story is to remind ourselves of the true miracle of the Incarnation…  that God is with us, plain old ordinary us. God is with us in our fears and in our pain, in our morning sickness and in our ear infections, in our refugee crises and in our endurance of Empire, …In all these things, God is with us—and God is for us.” 

Mary trusted God enough to say yes. And the Dream of God unfolded.

Now of course the challenge of trusting is that it requires vulnerability, which can be scary. Nobody really likes to be vulnerable. But the hidden gift of vulnerability, if we will accept it—trust in it—is that it opens us to something new. Both Isaiah and John the Baptist proclaimed that change was coming—the Dream of God unfolding. Trust in that, be open to the inbreaking Kingdom and how you are called to be part of it.

God is with us—and God is for us. The Christ of eternity has entered historical time and space to be present on this beautiful, troubled Earth; to walk with us, to suffer and to rejoice with us. And because we know this, we can trust, through our watching, preparing, awakening, hoping, and waiting in this Advent, that God will never stop doing a new thing; for us, within us, and between us.