Beyond Sight and Sound

(Lectionary for Dec. 4, 2016)

That great American theologian, Mark Twain (he is now spinning in his grave to be so named!), once said, “Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.” He was of course quite right in both cases; however, familiarity also breeds indifference, and, on occasion, an inability to see anything genuinely new. How often have we faced this Advent text and sighed, “Ah! Such a pleasant dream! Would that it were true that wolves rested with lambs, while lions chowed down on straw, and small children played games with poisonous snakes! But when Jesus comes, so it shall be!” But everyone within the sound of your voice knows this to be a pipe dream, a pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by piece of foll-de-roll that remains nothing more than a grim reminder of how things really are: wolves devour lambs whenever they can catch them, lions turn up their noses at straw and eat all the meat they can snatch, and children who play with nasty snakes are not likely ever to play again. That is the world we know and live in. And it was Isaiah’s world, too. Can we hear anything more here than a desperate longing for a world we cannot have?

I think we can hear something that may help us live our lives now in this world more hopefully, more fully, more richly, more in tune with the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” that Isaiah predicts, that shoot that Christians believe became for them Jesus of Nazareth. The shoot is pictured with astonishing metaphors: “YHWH’s breath will rest within him, a breath of wisdom and perception (or “discerning wisdom”), a breath of counsel and might (or “powerful counsel”), a breath of knowledge and the fear of YHWH (or “a knowledgeable fear of YHWH”) (Is 11:2). The Hebrew ruach is more traditionally translated “spirit,” but its basic meaning is the more physical “breath” or “wind.” I like the reading “breath” here, since the work of the “shoot” has most to do with speaking, as vs. 4b makes plain. YHWH’s very breath will infuse this shoot, and his words will be uttered in and by the breath of YHWH.

We need to spend a bit of time on these descriptions of this promised one. I have employed a Hebrew grammatical possibility known as hendiadys, a structure where two nouns are joined by a simple connector, forming an adjectival/noun pair. Hence, the first pair of nouns may be read “discerning wisdom.” “Wisdom” (chokmah) is that complex word that surely means wisdom, but it also implies something more. Wisdom is that glue that holds the universe together, an archetype that is described in Proverbs 8 both as a woman calling human fools to her better ways of living (vss. 1-21) and as a divine figure who helped create the world with God (vss. 22-31). To possess and to speak with the breath of wisdom is nothing less than to speak out of the fullness of the creator God. And to express a “discerning wisdom” is to hold the fullest measure of the divine. This shoot is characterized first as the embodiment of the wisdom of YHWH.

He is then said to have a “powerful counsel,” that is an ability both to offer the soundest advice and the strength to effect that advice in the world. And lastly, he evidences a “knowledgeable fear of YHWH.” A “fear of YHWH” is of course not here terror in the presence of of God, though part of the word certainly contains something of that within its meaning. Perhaps “awe” is the better reading, since in that word we may find both terror and deep admiration. But it is important to note that this awe is not mindless, not a sheer stunned silence in the presence of God. This “fear” is “knowledgeable,” thoughtful, practiced with mind fully engaged. This promised one will act with wisdom, with the mind of YHWH, will offer advice and counsel with the power to effect that counsel, and will defer to the wonder of YHWH while completely aware of the clear knowledge that YHWH has provided. A fuller portrait of a messenger of God could hardly be conceived!

But now comes the crucial description of the way in which the messenger will work.

“Not by his eyes’ seeing will he judge;
nor by his ears’ hearing will he decide.

He will judge the poor with righteousness,
and decide straightforwardly for the earth’s forgotten ones.” (Is 11:3-4a)

You and I need desperately to have our own actions informed by those of this messenger of God. It is crucial that we learn to judge and decide the fate of others not by what we see in them or by what we hear from them, but rather by the lens of righteousness and faithfulness. I have translated the adverb of vs. 4a “straightforwardly,” rather than the traditional “faithfulness” in the attempt to hear the nuance of “uprightness” in the word. Job is described at the beginning of his saga as a man of “uprightness” using this word, and he is described later in his story as acting for the poor precisely out of that special characteristic (Job 29-31).

I do not want to be misunderstood about what I am asking us to learn about this sort of judging and deciding. I do not at all mean that we should not listen to what the poor and forgotten are saying, nor should we not see what it is the poor and the forgotten are doing. It merely means that we do not prejudge our relationships with them by some set of supposed “truths” about their lives: “they are poor because they are lazy;”” they are forgotten because they do not speak up for want they want;” “they are in the main criminals.” These, among other ridiculous statements and foolish, dangerous beliefs, must be avoided if we genuinely are to hear and see and to judge and decide in justice and faithfulness.

Then when we divest ourselves of such prejudices, employing the discerning wisdom we have been granted by YHWH, we can speak truth, or as Isaiah has it, “we can strike the earth with our mouth’s rod, and with the breath of our lips we can slay the wicked” (Is. 11:4b). Such a poetic metaphor is hardly to be taken literally. Our words of justice strike the earth with the force of a metal rod, the result of which is the symbolic death of the wicked, namely those who refuse to hear the truths of life that justice demands. What dies are their prejudices; what is struck with a mighty force is their unwillingness to use faithfulness in their treatment of the poor and forgotten. Our words of justice are our weapons in the struggle to follow the ways of the promised one, the righteous branch of YHWH.

Only after we have become followers of this just and faithful one can the world become that Edenic place that the more famous part of this oracle portrays, those bits about wolves and lambs, lions and straw, children and snakes. At the last, Isaiah’s infamous portrait, made real in countless pieces of art over the centuries, is not about some future time, some halcyon day beyond our earthly lives, a land to be wished but never really to be achieved. On the contrary! Followers of the promised branch can do their parts to help create and ensure the coming of such a land, a land of justice and wisdom, of mighty counsel, of a discerning fear of YHWH. This is what we wait for every Advent, we Christians, but waiting is hardly enough. Active engagement is always the sign of real Christian, and also real Jewish and Muslim, commitment to the hopes and plans of God, whether that God be called YHWH or Allah or God.

(Images from Wikimedia Commons)