The peaceable kingdom
Commentary
Object:
What difference does my life make for others around me? That question is addressed in three related ways in our texts for today. Isaiah raised the emblem of the Servant of Yahweh as representative for what life is supposed to be, even in the middle of a chaotic and cruel world. Paul mirrors that reflection as he announces the fulfillment of Isaiah's vision in the coming of Jesus and the expansion of its redemptive effects beyond the Jewish community to the Gentile world as well. And Matthew takes us back to John's announcements of the Messiah's arrival that brought the breeze of the Peaceable Kingdom into our nostrils for the first time.
What difference does anyone's life make? It's always a question related to parenting. Parents make choices that affect the manner in which their children form their identities. Harry Chapin put it well in his song, "Cat's in the Cradle." When he was a young father he was too busy making a living to be bothered by his son. But when he was finally old enough to enjoy time with the family, his son had learned to be too busy for him!
Of course, the other side of the story is just as true. Maurice Boyd remembers the impact one incident that sealed the impact of his father on his life forever. His father worked in a shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the Depression work dried up. Times were tough, and for three years his father was out of a job.
Then one of his old bosses at the shipyard approached him. The important man would find work for Mr. Boyd. He would guarantee it, no matter how much worse things got. All Mr. Boyd would have to do would be to buy a life-insurance policy from the man. It would work to their mutual benefit: the boss's income would increase, and Mr. Boyd's work income would be guaranteed!
It was a great deal except for one thing: it was illegal. Maurice Boyd remembers his father sitting at the kitchen table with the whole family surrounding him. There at the table his father counted the cost. He reviewed their desperate financial situation. He ticked off the outstanding bills and the money he ought to be making -- could be making -- if only he'd say yes to his boss.
His father wrote it all down on a sheet of paper: the gains and the losses; what he could make and what he could lose. Then he wrote down a category that Maurice Boyd will never forget: integrity! What did it matter if he gained the cash to pay the rent, but lost his ability to teach his children right from wrong?! What did it matter if he gained the dignity of a job, but lost it each morning when he looked at himself in the mirror and knew that the only one reason he could go off to work instead of someone else is because he cheated?! Says Maurice Boyd: "He discovered that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, and that one way you can keep your soul is by refusing to sell it. He realized that whatever else he lost, and God knows he lost enough, he didn't have to lose himself."
John the Baptist shouted that message to the crowds who came to see his odd ministry at the Jordan River from Jerusalem. Isaiah cast that vision as he peered into God's future in his prophecies. And Paul said we were living in these new days, when souls could be found once again because Messiah had come.
Isaiah 11:1-10
The hardest thing to do in life is to maintain our integrity. Sin has entered the human soul precisely at this point. We are not, most of us, evil people. We're rather nice, aren't we? There's much that we do that's good, fine, noble, kind, and wise, and no one can deny that.
Here's the problem: Whatever else sin might do in our lives, it first and foremost perforates the lines of our hearts, and lets us tear off a piece here and a piece there, till we find ourselves segmented, fragmented, torn apart in separate snippets of self. It isn't that we become blackened by sin in large strokes. It isn't that we turn into some hideous monsters of greed and cruelty. It isn't that we dissolve the Dr. Jekyll's of our personalities into dastardly Mr. Hyde's. Instead, we keep most of our goodness intact, but we make small allowances in certain little areas. We cheat on our taxes a little, maybe… Or we turn our eyes from the needs of someone we could help… Or we compromise our communication till we speak from only our mouths instead of our souls.
The fragmentation of our lives makes us less than we should be, less than we could be. It makes us less than the people God made us to be. In the end, the world turns out to look like that which Isaiah describes behind the glow of God's servant. It is precisely because we and our world have lost our integrity that the great prophet of God must come and set things right.
There is a powerful scene in Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons. The story is that of Sir Thomas More, loyal subject of the English crown. King Henry VIII wants to change things to suit his own devious plans, so he requires all his nobles to swear an oath of allegiance, which violates the conscience of Sir Thomas More before his God. Since he will not swear the oath, More is put in jail. His daughter Margaret comes to visit him. "Meg," he calls her, with affection. She's his pride and joy, the one who thinks his thoughts after him.
Meg comes to plead with her father in prison. "Take the oath, Father!" she urges him. "Take it with your mouth, if you can't take it with your heart! Take it and return to us! You can't do us any good in here! And you can't be there for us if the king should execute you!"
She's right in so many ways! Yet her father answers her this way: "Meg, when a man swears an oath, he holds himself in his hands like water, and if he opens his fingers, how can he hope to find himself again?"
You know what he means, don't you? When our lives begin to fragment, it's like holding our lives like water in our hands, and then letting our fingers come apart, just a little bit. The water of our very selves dribbles away. We may look like the same people, but who we are inside has begun to change.
But the One on whom God's Spirit rests is not so. He is all of a piece, says Isaiah. There's no separation in him between the impulse of the heart, and the thought of the mind, and the word of the mouth, and the action of the hands. Somehow, everything about him is integrated. That's the meaning of the word "integrity," isn't it? Pure in heart!
When the One of integrity arrives, this world must change. This is why we celebrate Advent over and over, until the coming again of God's anointed One. When Bill Moyers interviewed Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, she told him how it was for her. Dr. Remen has founded several institutes for the care of cancer patients. She said that sometimes she has a much greater sense of integrity during those times when she isn't feeling all that well physically. Bill asked her what she meant by "integrity," and she replied, "That I am what I am…" She said that even with her wounds and her weaknesses, "There's an essence and a uniqueness and a beauty" about her life that is whole and complete. Integrity. Pure in heart. The Peaceable Kingdom.
Romans 15:4-13
It is important to note that this brief collection of quotes from Hebrew Bible sources is the culmination of a specific teaching by Paul, which parallels what he wrote earlier to the Corinthian congregation (1 Corinthians 8-10; it may be that Paul brings this to mind because he is spending the winter of 53/54 in Corinth, and folks might have recently reminded him of these teachings, penned a year or two before). The scriptural quotations celebrate God's work among the Gentiles, a matter that connects with the very heart of the Roman congregation. It is a church made up of Jews and Gentiles, who sometimes lived in tension with one another partly because of perceived Jewish primacy in the salvation history of Jesus' coming as Messiah, and partly because of the more expressive freedom displayed by the Gentile Christians with regard to social minglings and culinary practices. Some of this Paul addressed earlier (the "divisions" among the people in chs. 1-3, and the Jewish/Gentile tensions in matters of election in chs. 9-11); here, in chapters 14-15 he focuses on table practices.
The matter of meat offered to idols in Romans 14-15 is very interesting because it arises from confusion about the instructions issued by the Jerusalem council several years before (Acts 15). Gentiles were told that they did not have to first become practicing Jews in order to become believing Christians. But some social and dietary suggestions were offered so that Gentiles and Jews might be able to share table fellowship, particularly when commemorating the Last Supper together. The brief instruction at that time was to "abstain from food sacrificed to idols" (Acts 15:29).
Already these few years later that command was being interpreted in a variety of ways. When animal sacrifices were made at cultic shrines, particularly on well-attended public occasions, there was often too much flesh either for burning or for eating at the time. Without refrigeration, the meat was destined to spoil quickly. So much of the excess was dumped into the markets at bargain-basement prices. Since some of the Christians in Corinth were from lower classes, this inexpensive meat offered a lot of meal for the money. And that is where the controversy began.
Some, who had taken strong hold on the freedoms offered by Christ, knew that idols were not rival gods, and therefore any meat purchased in this way was simply a wise use of funds. Others, who had emerged from working at the shrines and formerly participating in the cultic practices of these non-Christian religions, found it scandalous for Christians to buy and eat such meat. Another group remembered the instructions of the Jerusalem council, and thought it a matter of principle not to engage in this act that had specifically been itemized by the church leaders as inappropriate.
Paul's response sorts through these differing reflections on Christian freedoms and interpersonal responsibilities and leaves the final decisions up to maturing believers who are wise enough to understand how their behaviors can impact others. Once again, as with his instructions in his letter to the Galatians, Paul places the goal of a loving response to Jesus as primary in the making of all moral and ethical choices and follows that closely with a sense of obligation to serve and help others. In effect, Paul's ethical code is essentially that which Jesus espoused: love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus raises the banner of heaven's royal claims over both Gentile and Jewish territory, and thus is the source of political allegiances that supersede temporal boundaries. This is very good news during Advent when the nations of the earth conspire against one another and only the Christian church can effect a trans-national celebration of the politics of grace. The Peaceable Kingdom.
Matthew 3:1-12
While built upon Mark's earlier gospel manuscript, Matthew's expansion includes the birth narratives of chapters 1-2, extensive inserts of Jesus' teaching material (the "Sermon on the Mount" in chs. 5-7, missionary teachings in 10, kingdom parables in 13, teachings about the church community in 18, and the eschatological discourses of chs. 24-25), and a more fully developed conclusion (ch. 28). The first glimpse of Jesus proffered by the gospel clearly connects Jesus with the Jewish community (Matthew 1:1-17). He is identified as a son of David and a son of Abraham. The link with Abraham ties Jesus to the unique covenantal community of Old Testament Israel and all of the religious and missional implications that it carries. The filial relationship with David projects the assertion that Jesus is of royal stock and must be considered a king (see 2 Samuel 7). Both of these themes are more fully developed throughout the gospel as a whole, as today's gospel reading reminds us. John is the last of the Old Testament prophets, speaking a word of warning to those who live too deeply in the compromised world of sin and injustice and pointing to the new day dawning when Isaiah's Spirit-filled messenger of God will stand and call into being the New Age of the Kingdom.
As Matthew continues his birth narratives, he builds hints of all of this into his narrative: Jesus is like Isaac, Samson, and Samuel, because this child is a miraculously born deliverer (Matthew 1:18-25). An angelic messenger explains the matter and provides a name for the child. Furthermore, this little one will be recognized as a global ruler from birth (note that the Magi follow an internationally available heavenly sign, in Matthew 2, seeking a king who is of the Jews but serves as a beacon to the nations), and he is destined to replay the life of Israel in a host of dimensions:
* Jesus copies Israel's miraculous existence and purpose (1:18-25).
* He is saved from the murderous intents of a scheming king (v. 2) who goes on to slaughter the innocents, just as Moses was delivered in Exodus 2 while many Israelite boys were slaughtered.
* Like the nation as a whole, Jesus is gathered out of Egypt (v. 2).
* From his earliest days, he is dedicated to a divine mission (so the play on the words "Nazirite" and "Nazarene").
* His ministry is set in motion by passing through waters (v. 3), right at the same spot where Israel crossed the Jordan River in order to begin its witness to the nations from the Promised Land.
* Jesus also wanders in wilderness for "forty" days (v. 3) before he can fully assume his adult responsibilities, mirroring Israel's traumatic years described in the book of Numbers.
As Matthew brings these quick comparisons to a close, he relates that Jesus goes up on a mountain (Matthew 5:1), and from there restates and reinterprets the Law or Covenant mediated through Moses. What has come to be known as the "Sermon on the Mount" is deliberately cast by Matthew in a manner that identifies Jesus as the new Moses for a new age. The Peaceable Kingdom.
Application
Robert Coles is a child psychiatrist and professor at Harvard University who likes to try to figure out why we do the things we do. In his book The Call of Service he wonders about people who try to make a difference in life. People who seek to reform themselves, even with the tenacity of sin that clings down deep. People who attempt to better society, in spite of the fact that it stubbornly refuses the challenge.
Why do they do it, Coles asks? The stories are all so different that it is hard to figure out a way to summarize them neatly. In fact, the people themselves often have a hard time defining what it is that makes them tick. One young teacher in an urban school gets challenged all the time. Street-smart students, weary of self-righteous "do-gooders," put the question to him. "What's in it for you?" they demand. And he really can't say.
But this he and all the rest of them can say: sometime earlier in their lives, each of them ran into a crisis situation, a situation that tested their identity and their willingness to do something about it, and in that crisis situation, each of them encountered someone who put his life on the line. Someone who taught them the meaning of service. Someone who gave of her/himself in a way that bucks the trend of selfishness and of self-preservation. The influence of that someone else made it possible to be greater than each of them had previously considered. Enter the Peaceable Kingdom, where things change because we have brushed against the holiness of God, and Jesus becomes our Savior and mentor.
Alternative Application
Isaiah 11:1-10. Years ago, when radio station WXYZ in Detroit was the big news in broadcasting, people spent hours each night listening to the latest episodes of "The Green Hornet," and "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon." Nearly every year the station brought out a new dramatic hero.
Station manager George Trendle often suggested the main ideas for these characters. In fact, he was the inspiration behind one of the most famous figures they ever created: The Lone Ranger. Trendle said this about the man he had in mind: "He's a sober-minded man with a righteous purpose. Make kids look up to him."
But that's easily lost on us. When Thomas Naylor was teaching business management at Duke University, he asked his students to draft a personal strategic plan. He reports that "with few exceptions, what they wanted fell into three categories: money, power, and things -- very big things."
In fact, said Naylor, this was their request of the business faculty at Duke University: "Teach me to be a money-making machine!" A money-making machine! A machine with no heart! That's the fragmentation of our lives taken to the extreme.
So here we are, in a sense, on the brink of another year, the liturgical year, the year of expectation of God's doing something good once again, the year of the Servant of Yahweh, anointed with the Spirit of heaven. As they say, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life!" Let's imagine that there are 365 new days thrown back onto the credits side of the ledger. What do we do with them? Each day in the year ahead 9,077 babies will be born. 2,740 young people will run away from home. 63,288 traffic accidents will occur, in which 129 people will die. 5,962 couples will get married, and 1,986 will divorce. Five hundred million cups of coffee will be drunk. And the snack bar at O'Hare Airport in Chicago will sell 5,479 hot dogs.
And each of us will be challenged in one of the three great crises of life:
The Identity Crisis: Who am I?
The Influence Crisis: What does my life mean to those around me?
The Integrity Crisis: How deep is my soul?
Do we know the Servant of God in Isaiah 11 who has the capacity to restore our own integrity?
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
God's judgment, for most of us, feels great when we're the ones who have been wronged. Rising up in righteous anger and indignation, it almost feels good to call forth God's judgment. There's nothing quite as heady as one's ability to stand as the one who has been wronged. Justice belongs to us. We demand reparations, recognition of the damages done. All this feels strangely good. The good feeling, of course, emanates from the reality that we're pretty sure that God's judgment won't land on us. This is pretty much the feeling that the people of Israel articulate through this psalm.
The funny thing about circumstances like these is that it's possible for those of us who fall to finger wagging get a little confused. We begin to think that rather than being on the side of justice and righteousness, God is actually on our side. We start to believe that God has chosen us as the anointed people and arrogance starts to creep into our rhetoric and our actions.
The radical concept here is that God doesn't choose the side of one people or another. God doesn't choose the good people over the bad people. God doesn't choose one culture or race over another. And God really isn't engaged in favoring one political or economic system over another. What God chooses is justice. What God champions is equity and compassion. What God stands for is fairness.
For most of us, the language of faith is about God's favor. North Americans who enjoyed unprecedented prosperity through more than two centuries made the mistake of confusing their bounty with God's approval. The operative cultural motif went something like this. "If we're rich and our empire is growing, God must love us! God must intend for us to have all this wealth!" The American experience is just one more tragic example of the intertwining of faith with national pride and agenda. Now that the American Empire seems to be sliding into history and our economy has tanked, does this mean that God doesn't love us anymore? Hardly. Nations rise and nations fall. It's that simple.
God loves us, up or down. But God always takes the side of justice. God's judgment doesn't just fall on our enemies. It falls upon those who do not stand where God would have us stand. So the question, as Abraham Lincoln is thought to have put it, isn't whether God is on our side, it has to do with whether we are on God's side. And so we ask. Are we on the side of God as we work our way through this life? Are we standing up for the poor and the oppressed? Do we place the interests of others before our own? Are we really comfortable with the idea of God's judgment?
What difference does anyone's life make? It's always a question related to parenting. Parents make choices that affect the manner in which their children form their identities. Harry Chapin put it well in his song, "Cat's in the Cradle." When he was a young father he was too busy making a living to be bothered by his son. But when he was finally old enough to enjoy time with the family, his son had learned to be too busy for him!
Of course, the other side of the story is just as true. Maurice Boyd remembers the impact one incident that sealed the impact of his father on his life forever. His father worked in a shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the Depression work dried up. Times were tough, and for three years his father was out of a job.
Then one of his old bosses at the shipyard approached him. The important man would find work for Mr. Boyd. He would guarantee it, no matter how much worse things got. All Mr. Boyd would have to do would be to buy a life-insurance policy from the man. It would work to their mutual benefit: the boss's income would increase, and Mr. Boyd's work income would be guaranteed!
It was a great deal except for one thing: it was illegal. Maurice Boyd remembers his father sitting at the kitchen table with the whole family surrounding him. There at the table his father counted the cost. He reviewed their desperate financial situation. He ticked off the outstanding bills and the money he ought to be making -- could be making -- if only he'd say yes to his boss.
His father wrote it all down on a sheet of paper: the gains and the losses; what he could make and what he could lose. Then he wrote down a category that Maurice Boyd will never forget: integrity! What did it matter if he gained the cash to pay the rent, but lost his ability to teach his children right from wrong?! What did it matter if he gained the dignity of a job, but lost it each morning when he looked at himself in the mirror and knew that the only one reason he could go off to work instead of someone else is because he cheated?! Says Maurice Boyd: "He discovered that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, and that one way you can keep your soul is by refusing to sell it. He realized that whatever else he lost, and God knows he lost enough, he didn't have to lose himself."
John the Baptist shouted that message to the crowds who came to see his odd ministry at the Jordan River from Jerusalem. Isaiah cast that vision as he peered into God's future in his prophecies. And Paul said we were living in these new days, when souls could be found once again because Messiah had come.
Isaiah 11:1-10
The hardest thing to do in life is to maintain our integrity. Sin has entered the human soul precisely at this point. We are not, most of us, evil people. We're rather nice, aren't we? There's much that we do that's good, fine, noble, kind, and wise, and no one can deny that.
Here's the problem: Whatever else sin might do in our lives, it first and foremost perforates the lines of our hearts, and lets us tear off a piece here and a piece there, till we find ourselves segmented, fragmented, torn apart in separate snippets of self. It isn't that we become blackened by sin in large strokes. It isn't that we turn into some hideous monsters of greed and cruelty. It isn't that we dissolve the Dr. Jekyll's of our personalities into dastardly Mr. Hyde's. Instead, we keep most of our goodness intact, but we make small allowances in certain little areas. We cheat on our taxes a little, maybe… Or we turn our eyes from the needs of someone we could help… Or we compromise our communication till we speak from only our mouths instead of our souls.
The fragmentation of our lives makes us less than we should be, less than we could be. It makes us less than the people God made us to be. In the end, the world turns out to look like that which Isaiah describes behind the glow of God's servant. It is precisely because we and our world have lost our integrity that the great prophet of God must come and set things right.
There is a powerful scene in Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons. The story is that of Sir Thomas More, loyal subject of the English crown. King Henry VIII wants to change things to suit his own devious plans, so he requires all his nobles to swear an oath of allegiance, which violates the conscience of Sir Thomas More before his God. Since he will not swear the oath, More is put in jail. His daughter Margaret comes to visit him. "Meg," he calls her, with affection. She's his pride and joy, the one who thinks his thoughts after him.
Meg comes to plead with her father in prison. "Take the oath, Father!" she urges him. "Take it with your mouth, if you can't take it with your heart! Take it and return to us! You can't do us any good in here! And you can't be there for us if the king should execute you!"
She's right in so many ways! Yet her father answers her this way: "Meg, when a man swears an oath, he holds himself in his hands like water, and if he opens his fingers, how can he hope to find himself again?"
You know what he means, don't you? When our lives begin to fragment, it's like holding our lives like water in our hands, and then letting our fingers come apart, just a little bit. The water of our very selves dribbles away. We may look like the same people, but who we are inside has begun to change.
But the One on whom God's Spirit rests is not so. He is all of a piece, says Isaiah. There's no separation in him between the impulse of the heart, and the thought of the mind, and the word of the mouth, and the action of the hands. Somehow, everything about him is integrated. That's the meaning of the word "integrity," isn't it? Pure in heart!
When the One of integrity arrives, this world must change. This is why we celebrate Advent over and over, until the coming again of God's anointed One. When Bill Moyers interviewed Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, she told him how it was for her. Dr. Remen has founded several institutes for the care of cancer patients. She said that sometimes she has a much greater sense of integrity during those times when she isn't feeling all that well physically. Bill asked her what she meant by "integrity," and she replied, "That I am what I am…" She said that even with her wounds and her weaknesses, "There's an essence and a uniqueness and a beauty" about her life that is whole and complete. Integrity. Pure in heart. The Peaceable Kingdom.
Romans 15:4-13
It is important to note that this brief collection of quotes from Hebrew Bible sources is the culmination of a specific teaching by Paul, which parallels what he wrote earlier to the Corinthian congregation (1 Corinthians 8-10; it may be that Paul brings this to mind because he is spending the winter of 53/54 in Corinth, and folks might have recently reminded him of these teachings, penned a year or two before). The scriptural quotations celebrate God's work among the Gentiles, a matter that connects with the very heart of the Roman congregation. It is a church made up of Jews and Gentiles, who sometimes lived in tension with one another partly because of perceived Jewish primacy in the salvation history of Jesus' coming as Messiah, and partly because of the more expressive freedom displayed by the Gentile Christians with regard to social minglings and culinary practices. Some of this Paul addressed earlier (the "divisions" among the people in chs. 1-3, and the Jewish/Gentile tensions in matters of election in chs. 9-11); here, in chapters 14-15 he focuses on table practices.
The matter of meat offered to idols in Romans 14-15 is very interesting because it arises from confusion about the instructions issued by the Jerusalem council several years before (Acts 15). Gentiles were told that they did not have to first become practicing Jews in order to become believing Christians. But some social and dietary suggestions were offered so that Gentiles and Jews might be able to share table fellowship, particularly when commemorating the Last Supper together. The brief instruction at that time was to "abstain from food sacrificed to idols" (Acts 15:29).
Already these few years later that command was being interpreted in a variety of ways. When animal sacrifices were made at cultic shrines, particularly on well-attended public occasions, there was often too much flesh either for burning or for eating at the time. Without refrigeration, the meat was destined to spoil quickly. So much of the excess was dumped into the markets at bargain-basement prices. Since some of the Christians in Corinth were from lower classes, this inexpensive meat offered a lot of meal for the money. And that is where the controversy began.
Some, who had taken strong hold on the freedoms offered by Christ, knew that idols were not rival gods, and therefore any meat purchased in this way was simply a wise use of funds. Others, who had emerged from working at the shrines and formerly participating in the cultic practices of these non-Christian religions, found it scandalous for Christians to buy and eat such meat. Another group remembered the instructions of the Jerusalem council, and thought it a matter of principle not to engage in this act that had specifically been itemized by the church leaders as inappropriate.
Paul's response sorts through these differing reflections on Christian freedoms and interpersonal responsibilities and leaves the final decisions up to maturing believers who are wise enough to understand how their behaviors can impact others. Once again, as with his instructions in his letter to the Galatians, Paul places the goal of a loving response to Jesus as primary in the making of all moral and ethical choices and follows that closely with a sense of obligation to serve and help others. In effect, Paul's ethical code is essentially that which Jesus espoused: love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus raises the banner of heaven's royal claims over both Gentile and Jewish territory, and thus is the source of political allegiances that supersede temporal boundaries. This is very good news during Advent when the nations of the earth conspire against one another and only the Christian church can effect a trans-national celebration of the politics of grace. The Peaceable Kingdom.
Matthew 3:1-12
While built upon Mark's earlier gospel manuscript, Matthew's expansion includes the birth narratives of chapters 1-2, extensive inserts of Jesus' teaching material (the "Sermon on the Mount" in chs. 5-7, missionary teachings in 10, kingdom parables in 13, teachings about the church community in 18, and the eschatological discourses of chs. 24-25), and a more fully developed conclusion (ch. 28). The first glimpse of Jesus proffered by the gospel clearly connects Jesus with the Jewish community (Matthew 1:1-17). He is identified as a son of David and a son of Abraham. The link with Abraham ties Jesus to the unique covenantal community of Old Testament Israel and all of the religious and missional implications that it carries. The filial relationship with David projects the assertion that Jesus is of royal stock and must be considered a king (see 2 Samuel 7). Both of these themes are more fully developed throughout the gospel as a whole, as today's gospel reading reminds us. John is the last of the Old Testament prophets, speaking a word of warning to those who live too deeply in the compromised world of sin and injustice and pointing to the new day dawning when Isaiah's Spirit-filled messenger of God will stand and call into being the New Age of the Kingdom.
As Matthew continues his birth narratives, he builds hints of all of this into his narrative: Jesus is like Isaac, Samson, and Samuel, because this child is a miraculously born deliverer (Matthew 1:18-25). An angelic messenger explains the matter and provides a name for the child. Furthermore, this little one will be recognized as a global ruler from birth (note that the Magi follow an internationally available heavenly sign, in Matthew 2, seeking a king who is of the Jews but serves as a beacon to the nations), and he is destined to replay the life of Israel in a host of dimensions:
* Jesus copies Israel's miraculous existence and purpose (1:18-25).
* He is saved from the murderous intents of a scheming king (v. 2) who goes on to slaughter the innocents, just as Moses was delivered in Exodus 2 while many Israelite boys were slaughtered.
* Like the nation as a whole, Jesus is gathered out of Egypt (v. 2).
* From his earliest days, he is dedicated to a divine mission (so the play on the words "Nazirite" and "Nazarene").
* His ministry is set in motion by passing through waters (v. 3), right at the same spot where Israel crossed the Jordan River in order to begin its witness to the nations from the Promised Land.
* Jesus also wanders in wilderness for "forty" days (v. 3) before he can fully assume his adult responsibilities, mirroring Israel's traumatic years described in the book of Numbers.
As Matthew brings these quick comparisons to a close, he relates that Jesus goes up on a mountain (Matthew 5:1), and from there restates and reinterprets the Law or Covenant mediated through Moses. What has come to be known as the "Sermon on the Mount" is deliberately cast by Matthew in a manner that identifies Jesus as the new Moses for a new age. The Peaceable Kingdom.
Application
Robert Coles is a child psychiatrist and professor at Harvard University who likes to try to figure out why we do the things we do. In his book The Call of Service he wonders about people who try to make a difference in life. People who seek to reform themselves, even with the tenacity of sin that clings down deep. People who attempt to better society, in spite of the fact that it stubbornly refuses the challenge.
Why do they do it, Coles asks? The stories are all so different that it is hard to figure out a way to summarize them neatly. In fact, the people themselves often have a hard time defining what it is that makes them tick. One young teacher in an urban school gets challenged all the time. Street-smart students, weary of self-righteous "do-gooders," put the question to him. "What's in it for you?" they demand. And he really can't say.
But this he and all the rest of them can say: sometime earlier in their lives, each of them ran into a crisis situation, a situation that tested their identity and their willingness to do something about it, and in that crisis situation, each of them encountered someone who put his life on the line. Someone who taught them the meaning of service. Someone who gave of her/himself in a way that bucks the trend of selfishness and of self-preservation. The influence of that someone else made it possible to be greater than each of them had previously considered. Enter the Peaceable Kingdom, where things change because we have brushed against the holiness of God, and Jesus becomes our Savior and mentor.
Alternative Application
Isaiah 11:1-10. Years ago, when radio station WXYZ in Detroit was the big news in broadcasting, people spent hours each night listening to the latest episodes of "The Green Hornet," and "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon." Nearly every year the station brought out a new dramatic hero.
Station manager George Trendle often suggested the main ideas for these characters. In fact, he was the inspiration behind one of the most famous figures they ever created: The Lone Ranger. Trendle said this about the man he had in mind: "He's a sober-minded man with a righteous purpose. Make kids look up to him."
But that's easily lost on us. When Thomas Naylor was teaching business management at Duke University, he asked his students to draft a personal strategic plan. He reports that "with few exceptions, what they wanted fell into three categories: money, power, and things -- very big things."
In fact, said Naylor, this was their request of the business faculty at Duke University: "Teach me to be a money-making machine!" A money-making machine! A machine with no heart! That's the fragmentation of our lives taken to the extreme.
So here we are, in a sense, on the brink of another year, the liturgical year, the year of expectation of God's doing something good once again, the year of the Servant of Yahweh, anointed with the Spirit of heaven. As they say, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life!" Let's imagine that there are 365 new days thrown back onto the credits side of the ledger. What do we do with them? Each day in the year ahead 9,077 babies will be born. 2,740 young people will run away from home. 63,288 traffic accidents will occur, in which 129 people will die. 5,962 couples will get married, and 1,986 will divorce. Five hundred million cups of coffee will be drunk. And the snack bar at O'Hare Airport in Chicago will sell 5,479 hot dogs.
And each of us will be challenged in one of the three great crises of life:
The Identity Crisis: Who am I?
The Influence Crisis: What does my life mean to those around me?
The Integrity Crisis: How deep is my soul?
Do we know the Servant of God in Isaiah 11 who has the capacity to restore our own integrity?
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
God's judgment, for most of us, feels great when we're the ones who have been wronged. Rising up in righteous anger and indignation, it almost feels good to call forth God's judgment. There's nothing quite as heady as one's ability to stand as the one who has been wronged. Justice belongs to us. We demand reparations, recognition of the damages done. All this feels strangely good. The good feeling, of course, emanates from the reality that we're pretty sure that God's judgment won't land on us. This is pretty much the feeling that the people of Israel articulate through this psalm.
The funny thing about circumstances like these is that it's possible for those of us who fall to finger wagging get a little confused. We begin to think that rather than being on the side of justice and righteousness, God is actually on our side. We start to believe that God has chosen us as the anointed people and arrogance starts to creep into our rhetoric and our actions.
The radical concept here is that God doesn't choose the side of one people or another. God doesn't choose the good people over the bad people. God doesn't choose one culture or race over another. And God really isn't engaged in favoring one political or economic system over another. What God chooses is justice. What God champions is equity and compassion. What God stands for is fairness.
For most of us, the language of faith is about God's favor. North Americans who enjoyed unprecedented prosperity through more than two centuries made the mistake of confusing their bounty with God's approval. The operative cultural motif went something like this. "If we're rich and our empire is growing, God must love us! God must intend for us to have all this wealth!" The American experience is just one more tragic example of the intertwining of faith with national pride and agenda. Now that the American Empire seems to be sliding into history and our economy has tanked, does this mean that God doesn't love us anymore? Hardly. Nations rise and nations fall. It's that simple.
God loves us, up or down. But God always takes the side of justice. God's judgment doesn't just fall on our enemies. It falls upon those who do not stand where God would have us stand. So the question, as Abraham Lincoln is thought to have put it, isn't whether God is on our side, it has to do with whether we are on God's side. And so we ask. Are we on the side of God as we work our way through this life? Are we standing up for the poor and the oppressed? Do we place the interests of others before our own? Are we really comfortable with the idea of God's judgment?
