Pilgrim Preaching

Jesus and the Peaceable Kingdom

Advent 2A | December 5, 2004

Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12

I'm pretty sure that if I were preaching, I would begin with Isaiah's peaceable kingdom. Just painting that picture for people might be enough. "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" (Isaiah 11:6). Everybody lives, and no one needs to devour anyone else in order to do it. That is the dream.

I think that was the dream Jesus lived. He did not come breathing fire, even though both the OT and Gospel readings this week might lead us to expect that. Isaiah says about the one raised up from the stump of Jesse, "He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked" (11:4b), and John the Baptist concurs: "The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:11). But never in his ministry does Jesus burn anything. He does get angry: he calls the Pharisees "whitewashed tombs" (Matthew 23:27), looking good on the outside but full of death, and he accuses those entrusted with the temple of turning it into a den of thieves. Yet he does not send anyone up in smoke. Everybody lives, even people like that fox, Herod (Luke 13:32), and especially people like the little girl who had died while he was listening to a tiresome sick woman talk about her female problems (Mark 5:22-43) and Lazarus (John 11). Everybody lives, and no one has to devour anyone else in order to do it.

The one who actually comes as the clearest fulfillment of Isaiah's word decides that the only way to get to the peaceable kingdom is to live out its meekness here and now, no matter what. He does not breathe fire on anyone. He does not lay waste. He seeks out sinners; he touches and heals sick people; he eats with both Pharisees and tax collectors. He is himself a lamb lying down in the midst of wolves.

Should he have been more careful? Would the fire have been better than the towel and the basin, better than the bread and the cup? With his life and death, Jesus gave us a window on the peaceable kingdom. As he lived it, that kingdom was not a place without conflict or even a place without large animals having sharp teeth and evil intent. Even so, he lived the peace Isaiah dreamed of, and after those large animals had done their best to devour him, God said, "No. Everybody lives, and no one has to devour anyone else in order to do it."

Sabbath Freedom

Proper 16
12 Sunday after Pentecost (C)

Isaiah 58:9b-14
Luke 13:10-17

In a sermon a few weeks ago, one of my pastors said that maybe the reason so many of us are too tired to get anything done is that we are so bad at sabbath-keeping. Keeping the sabbath—living as if six days were enough each week for work (cf. Exodus 20:8-11)—would ironically free us from that deep weariness that sets in after too many days or weeks of trying to fit just a little more into the time allotted. "Rest," my pastor seemed to be saying, "Rest, or face the dual realities of exhaustion and diminished returns for all your work anyway."

It was one of those offhand comments in a sermon that sticks with hearers. I thought of it again when reading Is. 58:13-14. "If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Things are not going so well for the returned exiles, and in Is. 58, they want to know why. They are fasting (vv. 58:3) but the Lord seems not to be noticing. God points out to the people that they fast and pursue their own interests (quarreling, fighting, oppressing others) at the same time which gives the lie to their penitential fast. Instead, a fast is for loosing the bonds of injustice (58:6). It is for satisfying the needs of the afflicted (58:10). In response, the Lord will satisfy the people's needs in the parched places (58:11).

When we use every day as just one more day for all the work that we have promised to do, with no sabbath in sight, we are implying that we do not quite trust God to satisfy our needs or anyone else's in the parched places. We need to satisfy our needs—and if we are "helping professionals," everyone else's needs too—without God. "Look, if I stop pushing the world will stop spinning. My class won't be as good as it would be with more prep, or my dishes will pile up in the sink, or the bills won't get paid, or …."

People in the ministry are particularly vulnerable to the temptation to trample the sabbath while telling ourselves that because so much of what we are doing is the Lord's work, it's ok—maybe it's even necessary—to treat every day like every other day. We use texts like the Gospel reading for this week to argue our point. In Luke 13, the leader of the synagogue tells the crowd that the six days for work are the days when they should look for healing. "Boy, was he wrong," we say. Jesus healed on the sabbath, thereby opening the door for religious leaders and rank-and-file Christians alike to work 'til we drop. Right?

Wrong. This way of working has us bent double with care, worry and fear. "If I stop pushing, the world will stop spinning." What torture that is! And what idolatry! Unable to focus on anything but the patch of dirt at our feet, we have lost sight both of our limitations and of God's power for satisfying needs. This is wrong, and it is killing us.

Jesus calls the bent woman over to him, speaks to her and then touches her so she is able to (1) stand upright and (2) praise God. "Jesus is challenging the dominion of Satan," David Tiede writes (Luke [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988] 251), and for that the crowd rejoices.

Am I turning this text on its head? I am using a sabbath controversy story to preach against treating the sabbath as just another day. Jesus heals on the sabbath, yes. However, when Jesus heals the woman, he is not offering a model for seven-day-a-week ministry. In her commentary on Luke, Sharon Ringe says of this text, "The core question is not whether to keep the sabbath, but rather how to keep it" (187). There is no "Go and do likewise," at the end of the story, no "You have heard it said… but I say to you" here or elsewhere with respect to sabbath law. Instead, this story ends with the woman praising God and the entire crowd rejoicing at the wonderful things Jesus is doing. What great sabbath activity: prayer, praise and thanksgiving!

When he heals the bent-over woman, Jesus is challenging the dominion of Satan. In his ministry, death and resurrection, Jesus challenges the dominion of Satan over everyone who is buckling under the power of sin in any form, even the form that tempts us to break the Third (and by implication the First) Commandment, the form of sin that says we must work seven days a week, that we cannot trust God to keep the world spinning and to keep the evil one at bay but must manage such things ourselves.

We and the people to whom we preach have much more in common with the bent-over woman than with the one who heals her. Read alongside that woman this week. Figure out what power holds you with her "captive to restricted movement, to the inability to meet another person face-to-face, and to a world defined by the piece of ground around [your] own toes or looked at always on a slant" (Ringe, 187). It is that power which Jesus defeats when he unbinds the woman and all those likewise bound.

Water, Rivers, Fire & Flames

Isaiah 43:1-7

"Do not fear." We usually hear this exhortation from angels, but in Isaiah 43:1-7, it's in the mouth of God. "Thus says the Lord," and then, "Do not fear." Twice in seven verses it appears.

Bible study activity: figure out what is going on in this text by looking first at the fear that Yahweh tells the people not to have:

1. What is/has been the threat to them?
2. What reasons does God give for why the people should not fear?
3. Which reasons have to do with God's past actions, and which with promises for the future?

There are all sorts of things to be afraid of, if you're in a post-exile Isaiah's audience. How are people so thoroughly disenfranchised going to get home, even if Babylon's tyranny over them has been foiled by the likes of Cyrus? What literal and metaphorical water, rivers, fire and flames will the people have to pass through as God gathers them from north, south, east and west? What will they do in the ruined Jerusalem after they get back there?

Above all these fears is the fear that God has simply abandoned his people. It's over. The covenant is null and void. You're on your own, kid. A couple of months ago, a Christian said to me something like, "Everyone in this life will leave you." It seemed to me she was taking the death of others a little too personally ("He didn't die just in order to leave you."), but her passion and clarity on this point were stunning. I imagine a similar sentiment among Isaiah's listeners. Everyone in this life —including God—will leave you.

God says no to that conclusion. No, no, no, a thousand times no. I created you. I have redeemed you. You are precious. I will gather you.

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For a little creative writing on what Isaiah 40-55 is about, see Fred Gaiser's "A Preacher's Conversation with Second Isaiah," Word & World 14/1 (1994) 87-94. It's free as a .pdf file on the Word & World web site.  Fred begins by saying, "That favorite device of fantasy writers, the 'warp in the space-time continuum,' has brought the author of Isaiah 40-55 into conversation with a late twentieth-century preacher. We listen in."