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…

Isaiah had a vision. A vision of justice. A vision of a king who would rule righteously, wisely, and with a preferential eye toward the poor and downtrodden. He would strike down the wicked oppressor.

Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

When would this vision be fulfilled? Israel watched, and waited. 

And waited.

Isaiah had another vision. An eschatological vision of God’s Dream. A vision of peace:

…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…They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain….

This was Isaiah’s vision of a new Creation. And about 2400 years later, Edward Hicks caught that vision.

Hicks was an 18th century American Quaker preacher and painter, who depicted what he called “The Peaceable Kingdom” at least 62 times. He never sold these paintings; he gave them away to family and friends. He painted the same image over and over–each a little different from the other, but still the same. His eyes were riveted on the Dream of God–on the ultimate reconciliation of God, Humankind, and Creation–exemplifying the Quaker values of peace and the inner light of Christ within everything.

Sixty-two times. Lions and lambs, leopards and goats, and at least one little child–a Messiah figure, perhaps — sometimes standing and smiling, sometimes gesturing, and interestingly, more than once, gripping the lion’s mane tightly in one hand. What was Hicks trying to say here? Was he himself trying to hold on to something? To the vision? 

In the background of most of his paintings Hicks depicted groups of men–sometimes white men and Indians talking together–in others, Quaker luminaries bearing banners with messages of peace and inner light. These side vignettes represented Hicks’ deep hope for the realization of Isaiah’s vision of peace and harmony among all people; hope that was regularly challenged by the all too human quarrels, conflicts, and brokenness that left him frustrated and disillusioned. But he kept painting the vision. Perhaps this is why the child grips the lion’s mane–holding on to the vision for dear life, lest the lion forget that it was supposed to be eating the grass, and not his neighbor.

Hicks must have innately understood that Isaiah’s visions of justice and peace were not only elusive, but also necessarily intertwined; that the Peaceable Reign of God and the righteous reign of the prophesied king both invite and challenge humankind to participate in the unfolding of the vision–to be part of the healing of the world. “No justice, no peace”, as the bumper stickers used to say.

Sixty-two times. Now that is an Advent frame of mind. Edward Hicks watched, waited, created, and persisted, even when doing so felt more like a wilderness to him than a peaceable pastoral scene.

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

John the Baptizer also knew Isaiah’s vision. The picture that John painted was an already-and-not-yet pair of visions, of imminent Messiah, and final Judge. These visions called for repentance. They called people into the wilderness.

For some people, wilderness is literal; a rugged place of wonder and challenge, often encountered alone. Others carry wilderness inside. It may be an arid desert of self-doubt or a tangled jungle of anger and resentment; it may sound cacophonous, or like icy silence. It may be a spiritual daylight slog, or a lonely 3:30 a.m. haunting of fear and uncertainty. 

The Biblical Wilderness is an icon for all of this. The wilderness of John the Baptist alludes to the wilderness in which the Jews wandered for years, painstakingly forming their identity as an imperfect community, ready to enter the Promised Land and establish themselves as the People of Israel.  

Also characteristic of John’s wilderness is that it was a marginalized and isolated place, set over and against the Jerusalem establishment and occupying empire. John came to the Wilderness to find and be found by people from all around the surrounding country who yearned for a word of hope; for a sign that God was leading them into a new promised land—the Kingdom of Heaven. John’s words to them, while perhaps jarring to us, were exciting and uplifting even as they were challenging. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. One is coming who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire, and he is about to turn the world on its head. This news was balm for the wounded soul and sustenance for the starving heart.

The Pharisees and Sadducees move rather quickly from the edge to the center of this picture. Due to translation ambiguity, we don’t know whether they were there to be baptized or to criticize John for performing a ritual that belonged in the Temple. Regardless, their silent presence provokes an outburst from John that takes us to the heart of the matter:

Even now the ax is at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Judgment.

Just as Isaiah’s vision linked justice and peace; just as Edward Hicks struggled with the tension between the broken reality of his present day and his yearning for the Peaceable Kingdom, John painted a vivid picture of an imminent Messiah inextricably entwined with an eschatological Judge.

What are we to make of this today? Advent is not just about preparing for a celebration of Christ’s Incarnation; it is about acknowledging the wonder of Incarnation and (not ‘or’) yearning for the second coming of Christ, and by extension the ultimate facing of judgment before God. 

Matthew’s and John’s apocalyptic language of winnowing, chaff, and fire, like all apocalyptic language, is born of conflict between principalities and powers and those who were oppressed by them. The oppressed waited and yearned for divine deliverance, and violent fiery imagery bolstered their hope that the defeat of evil was imminent and would be decisive. So, the people who heard the words of John were hopeful, not dreading what was to come. They couldn’t wait for the time of world-turning and Kingdom-arrival that John so forcefully proclaimed.

Advent calls us to tap into this yearning. But getting there is a potentially uncomfortable journey. It requires that we come face to face with a very broken world, and with our very broken selves.

I asked a friend once what she thought about the Final Judgment. She said she kind of liked the image of the sheep and the goats–the sheep go to Heaven and the goats to Hell. She liked knowing that the people she judged to be bad would eventually get their just desserts. This is not an uncommon notion, especially when we’re having a bad day. And isn’t it interesting that whenever we think in terms of sheep and goats, we nearly always rank ourselves with the sheep? I can’t help but think of the cautionary quote from Anne Lamott: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

But what if God’s Judgment is different? What if it’s actually harder than a binary of good sheep and bad goats? What if the measure of Judgment reflects, not what we wish about vengeance, but what we believe about God? The God, above all, of wholeness, compassion, healing, reconciliation? 

The God of Love? 

What if the Judgment of God is restorative, not retributive? What if Judgment requires us to face everything within us that separates us from the love of God, Neighbor, Creation, and ourselves? What if the Judgment we will face is a purifying fire that makes room for the Dream of God; a fire that burns away the fear, anxiety, anger, guilt, rejection, self-loathing and greed which, when projected onto others, just become layer upon layer of pain and anguish in the world around us, as we find more and more ways to hurt and reject each other: war, poverty, discrimination, cruelty, and the complicity that comes from willing blindness to it all? What if the Final Judgment, in the end, isn’t as simple as we thought?

Perhaps that’s why Edward Hicks had to paint Isaiah’s vision sixty-two times. 

Advent calls us to yearn for Isaiah’s visions of justice and righteousness; of peace and wholeness. It calls us to wait and awaken to John’s vision of repentance and of freedom from the burden of sin and separation from the restorative love of God.

Advent calls us to wait, to watch. 

To hold on.  

.