December 8, 2019 “Peaceful Kingdom” – Isaiah 11:1-10

Isaiah 11:1-10
“Peaceful Kingdom”
December 8, 2019 – Second Sunday in Advent

You cut it down years ago, that old apple or pear tree in your back yard. You left the stump to rot and hopefully disappear. But every spring it sprouts, like some stumps out in our church yard, sending up fresh shoots, ready to become trees again if you only let them.

Here in verse 1, Isaiah promises a shoot like that, springing “out from the stump of Jesse.” Jesse was the father of David, the king of Judah and Israel to whom God promised an unending lineage, a dynasty that would last forever. When Isaiah wrote in the late 8^th century B.C., that dynasty was crumbling. The branch that was Israel was already gone and the kings of Judah were weak and many were evil. But here the prophet latched onto God’s promise to David and predicted a comeback, a new shoot, even a branch, growing from the old, dead stump and roots of David’s descendants.

We are remembering today that Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, descended from David, is the fulfillment of this prophecy. In Matthew 3:10, we heard John the Baptist declare that an axe would be laid to the root of every tree which does not bear fruit. But John was getting ready for Jesus, clearing the ground for the Tree which would bear fruit, the “righteous Branch” as Jeremiah also called Him.

If you want one of those shoots coming up from an old stump to actually grow again, become a tree, grow fruit, you need to cut away all its competitors, those that will not bear fruit. You would need to make sure it gets watered, gets some fertilizer, perhaps some insecticide to keep away bugs. In our neighborhood, you’d have to fence it to keep away the dear. You would pour out care on that shoot, giving it what needs to grow, blossom and bear fruit. God did that for Jesse’s branch. He poured out His Spirit on Him.

Verse 2 and the first part of 3, have a special place in Catholic theology. While modern Protestants have fixated on what are termed “spiritual gifts” in the New Testament, the church fathers early on saw in this text seven “gifts of the Holy Spirit” poured out on Jesus.

There is a little confusion because in Hebrew there are only six distinct “spirit of”s here, with “fear of the Lord” mentioned again at the beginning of verse 3. But the early church fathers read this passage in a Greek translation known as the Septuagint. That was their Old Testament. In the Septuagint “fear of the Lord” at the end of verse 2 is replaced with “piety” or “godliness.” So that lets one count seven gifts of the Spirit here, the last one being “fear of the Lord.”

Those church fathers read their Bibles well. They remembered how often we find in Psalms and Proverbs that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” So they saw a backward progression here of how the Holy Spirit works in one’s heart and mind. Fear of the Lord will make one godly; being godly will give you knowledge; knowledge will bring courage; courage will enable good counsel; good counsel leads to understanding; and finally understanding produces wisdom. That whole process works out perfectly in the human life of Jesus, beginning from His birth. The Spirit of the Lord rested on Him.

Take a look at those seven (or six if you must) spiritual gifts in verses 2 and 3. They are gifts of the mind and heart: holy fear, godly piety, true knowledge, brave courage, good counsel, deep understanding, wise wisdom. They describe what it is about Jesus which makes Him able to do what is prophesied in the middle of this text, that makes Him able to judge. We talked about judgment and justice a few weeks ago and here it is again. It’s a constant theme in God’s Word. We need to pay attention.

The second part of verse 3 says, “He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear.” That may seem strange to us. In court, in hearings like the impeachment proceedings playing out on our national stage, it’s all about evidence and testimony. Judgment is made on the basis of what people have seen and heard. How is it that the great Judge of all the earth does not pay attention to those things? It’s because He knows more than what human eyes and ears perceive.

Human beings are only able to look and listen at the surface. It’s often all we see. A Republican listening to a Democrat testify may hear only a Democrat, and concludes that testimony must be false. A Democrat reading a Facebook post written by a Republican may see only the Republican, and concludes the words are untrue. But it is not all just relative to perspective or bias. The facts are there. The truth is there. We need hearts and minds that go beneath the surface. That sort of heart and mind, the Spirit of God, is what Jesus has.

To Jesus, the surface does not matter. Appearance and mere words do not count with Him. That’s both good and bad. Jesus does not racially profile anyone. He has no gender bias. He doesn’t care if you are young or old. It does not matter to Him if you are thin as a rail or overweight. Jesus is not listening to your accent or to whether you split your infinitives. He’s not worried about sentences you leave prepositions at the end of. He judges by what is truly you and I and everyone else. That makes Him more just and fair than anyone on earth. It’s good news, especially for those who are getting a raw deal from people and judges and justice systems biased by appearance or education or social status.

As verse 4 says, Jesus is good news for the poor and the meek, those beaten down and betrayed by the justice systems of this world. Jesus is good news for the black man unfairly stopped by police. Jesus is good news for Amazon employees forced to work so hard to meet quotas that they injure themselves. Jesus is good news for women in India viewed as objects of sexual violence by men around them and then persecuted when they report what is done to them. Jesus is good news for any of us when we are treated poorly for unfair reasons. The Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, knowledge, godliness, and fear of the Lord which Jesus has are good news for them all.

The bad news is in the second part of verse 4, for those who like things the way they are, who are comfortable benefitting from a surface assessment of those around them. The bad news is for Israelis who think they can steal Palestinian land and homes without penalty or for white supremacists and fascists who imagine God approves when they frighten a Jewish neighborhood or paint swastikas on a synagogue. The bad news is for any of us when we treat someone poorly because of how they look or where they are from or how they talk.

That’s what John the Baptist proclaimed in our Gospel text from Matthew 3 this morning. John looked out at the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to be baptized, peered beneath their respectable, wise and learned appearances, and called them a bunch of snakes. He warned them that the judgment of the Lord was that they needed more than appearance, that they needed transformation of character and spirit, that they needed the good fruit of a real repentance which shows itself in changed life. That’s the kind of judgment we still need, and often need about our own selves.

Verse 5 tells us Jesus will come with righteousness and faithfulness belted around Him. Like the tool belt of a heavenly carpenter, our Lord carries what is needed to repair our broken world, to fix our faulty justice. Jesus is truly and perfectly what we so often are not. He is righteous and He is faithfus. His righteousness and faithfulness will straighten things out. His righteousness and faithfulness brings peace.

The rest of Isaiah’s text for today is a splendid description of what life will be like when the righteousness and faithfulness of Jesus have done their work in our lives. Verses 6-8 display an image of the “peaceful kingdom” of our Lord. Wolf lives with lamb, leopard with kid goat, calf with lion and cow with bear. You’ve probably seen at least one of the famous series of paintings of the “Peaceable Kingdom” done by Edward Hicks. One of his best known shows a lion and an ox side by side, and a child riding on a tiger while another child pets a leopard. But in the background you can also see settlers signing a treaty with Native Americans. It’s a beautiful vision for what we want our world to be.

Traditionally we conflate all that into the saying, “the lion will lie down with the lamb.” On one level I believe the prophet’s promise is literal. Whatever is wrong with creation, including all the pain, cruelty and suffering of the animal world, will be healed and made right when Jesus comes again. On another level, though, the relationship of lion and lamb is a metaphor for the human realm, for our own dealings with each other right now.

What most cries out for the Spirit empowered justice of Jesus is that we are lion and lamb to each other. Some of us are fierce and others are fearful. Some live as victims while others do them violence. Those of us who are lambs get eaten by lions. And we lions find we have a taste for blood.

Terrible male human “lions” rape women in India and get away with it far too often. But then recently a terrible lion-like justice gets done when four such men are shot dead by police. Thousands of little lambs across our country are being slaughtered by lions who believe there is a right to kill an unborn baby. At the same time, other lambs, children are losing food stamps and school lunches as lions in power supposedly make things better. Even worse, the lambs, the children, are dying of violence and starvation in Yemen while the United States and United Kingdom just keep sending guns to the lions there. It all cries out for justice. But often the only justice we come up with means more killing, a death penalty, a war. That may be the best we can do, but we need better, a better justice, a peaceful justice. We need a system, a kingdom that really does bring lions and lambs together.

Remember, those lions and lambs in the news are not all of them. You and I are also lions and lambs. Some of us are lambs, rent and torn by the lions around us. Some of those lions were even people we trusted, people we loved. Some of the hurt we’ve never even told, suffering it silently, like true lambs. We’ve been yelled at, insulted, abused and hit. And the lamb in us aches with the injustice of it. We feel helpless and hopeless.

Some of us must admit that we are lions. We’ve misused the strength God has given us, roared with loud voices and brought fear and hurt to the lambs around us, even to people we love. We may be very sorry but we are also very guilty.

Probably there is a bit of lion and lamb in each of us. We, after all, are complicated people, not simple animals. The lion in me can masquerade as a lamb, devouring others through passive aggression. The lamb in you may roar like a lion, but it’s really a cry of pain. We hurt each other and we are hurt by each other. We need justice and we need a peaceful kingdom in which we may come together.

Jesus Christ brings that kingdom. He brings His kingdom by giving that Holy Spirit of wisdom which does not judge by what is seen or heard on the outside. The Spirit of Jesus looks at what He finds inside of us and changes it. He forgives and removes the anger and violence of the lion and heals the hurt and pain of the lamb. He accepts us all, lion or lamb, and transforms us into something new, into people who can live with each other in peace.

The peaceful kingdom we find described here is not meant to be a fantasy or just the subject of paintings and memes on Facebook, with cute lambs snuggling up to cuddly lions. It’s meant to be the new reality which Jesus brings to us now. And it happens because of what it says at the end of verse 9, “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” There is one of the gifts of the Spirit again, the knowledge of the Lord. It’s a change of mind that Christ works in us which brings peace.

That’s what verse 4 means when it says, “he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.” It’s not talking about some divine deadly oral superpower Jesus has. It’s talking about His teaching, the fact that Jesus teaches the lion to lie down with the lamb, teaches us to forgive each other and to quit wounding each other. The peaceful kingdom is already on the way when we hear, accept, and actually start doing what Jesus says.

Jesus not only teaches us how to be at peace. He shows us. As I said, most of us are at least in part both lion and lamb. Jesus demonstrates how that works. One of the most beautiful scenes in Scripture is found in Revelation chapter 5. The apostle John is in heaven, weeping over a scroll that cannot be opened, a scroll that will usher in God’s final, peaceful kingdom. Then in verse 5 an angel tells him not to weep because “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” is able to open the scroll. But when John looks, what he sees is not a lion, but a Lamb. Jesus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Lion and Lamb. Man and God. Priest and Sacrifice. Victim and Redeemer. Christ who died and Christ who rose again. All that we are and all God means for us to be comes together in Jesus. He reconciles us to God, to each other, and even to our own selves. He brings the peaceful kingdom to earth and it’s meant to start now.

Paul made clear that it starts now in our reading from Romans 15 today. In verse 7 he wrote, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ has accepted to you.” He was writing to Jews and Gentiles, calling them to live at peace with each other in Christ. All those differences on the surface do not matter, Jew, Gentile, lion, lamb, whatever it is. What matters is that we come to Christ and listen to Him.

So near the end of that Romans text Paul quoted the last verse of our text from Isaiah, which goes back to that picture of the root of Jesse, “The root of Jesse will come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles [that is, the nations]; in him the Gentiles [the nations] will hope.” Paul left out one bit of Isaiah that is important. Verse 10 of Isaiah 11 says that “the nations shall inquire of him.” In other words, they will come to be taught by Jesus.

We accept and help bring our Lord’s peaceful kingdom to earth as you and I let ourselves be taught by Jesus, taught what it means to be both lion and lamb, taught how to accept each other and live in peace with each other as He accepts us. That is one of the big reasons we get together every week.

The Lord does not judge by what is on the outside. He sees both white skin and dark, thick hair and bald spots, trim waists and rounded exteriors. He does not judge by any of that. He also sees the more complicated facades we put up, the lion and lamb faces, the animal masks we wear for self-protection. Jesus Christ sees and then sees through all of that to know who you really are. And as He knows you, He loves you. In return He asks that you learn and know Him. To know Him is to know peace. Jesus is the root of it all.

Then Jesus asks that we bear fruit, that we put our knowledge of Him into practice by giving that same sort of fair and accepting judgment to each other, not judging by the outside, but seeking to know and love the child of God, whether lion or lamb, on the inside. Let us live in that knowledge, in that love.

Jesus reconciles lion and lamb. Seek forgiveness from those you’ve hurt and forgive those who’ve hurt you. Let the peaceful knowledge and love of Jesus, His peaceful Spirit, fill you as we wait for the time when His peaceful kingdom fills the world.

Amen.