"The Promise of a New Beginning Long After the People Had Already Given Up"
Isaiah 11:1-10 (Eugene Peterson’s The Message):
A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stump,
from his roots a budding Branch.
The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over him,
the Spirit that brings wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit that gives direction and builds strength,
the Spirit that instills knowledge and Fear-of-God.
Fear-of-God
will be all his joy and delight.
He won’t judge by appearances,
won’t decide on the basis of hearsay.
He’ll judge the needy by what is right,
render decisions on earth’s poor with justice.
His words will bring everyone to awed attention.
A mere breath from his lips will topple the wicked.
Each morning he’ll pull on sturdy work clothes and boots,
and build righteousness and faithfulness in the land.
The wolf will romp with the lamb,
the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
on my holy mountain.
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.
On that day, Jesse’s Root will be raised high, posted as a rallying banner for the peoples. The nations will all come to him. His headquarters will be glorious.
This week I posted a video on my Facebook page. It’s something I found on a friend’s page. In this video a woman is seen approaching a lion cage. She taps the bars of the cage with both hands. And then the lion rears up on his hind legs. For a brief moment, it’s quite frightening because you don’t know if the lion is going to bite her or somehow grab her head and pull her head into the cage because the bars almost seem wide enough for that to happen. But what actually happens is that the lion gives the woman a kiss and a hug. He literally hugs her, wrapping his giant paws around her shoulders and allowing her to bury her face in his hairy mane. It’s a very touching scene.
I did a little bit of research on the back story, and it turns out that this lion, whose name is Jupiter, was part of a traveling circus in Colombia, South America, where he was maltreated and malnourished. The woman rescued him and took him to an animal sanctuary that she runs. When he got older, she sent him to a zoo. The video clip that’s been working its way around the internet shows what happened when Jupiter saw her again for the first time after going to the zoo. You’ve heard of bear hugs. Well, this was a great, big lion hug.
We’ve seen other scenes like this. I recently saw an internet video of a mother cat adopting a baby squirrel and allowing it to nurse alongside her own litter of kittens. Perhaps you saw the video of someone’s pet rat riding around on the back of the family cat. And I imagine that we’ve all seen many photos of cats snuggling up to very big dogs.
Those kinds of scenes don’t surprise us so much. We’ve seen images like that. But the imagery that Isaiah gives us in the 11th chapter is beyond that. It’s beyond the unusual. It’s downright impossible. Predators and prey simply cannot live alongside each other that long without reverting back to their usual roles.
One preacher tells the story of what happened when all the animals in the forest decided that now was the time to establish the peaceable kingdom once and for all. They issued a proclamation that all the animals in the forest would henceforth live in peace. Shortly after the proclamation was issued, a lamb saw a sleeping lion and nuzzled up to the lion, using the lion’s mane as a pillow. Then the lion woke up and ate the lamb. The moral of the story is that there’s always going to be someone who didn’t hear the announcement.[1]
Isaiah’s vision of all the animals living in peace doesn’t seem very realistic. It’s beautiful poetry, but it simply isn’t possible. Except by the Spirit of God.[2]
The people who first heard Isaiah’s message were devastated. What was happening a little more than 700 years before the birth of Christ was that the Assyrian armies were on the march, destroying everything in their path. Some people have referred to this as the first Jewish Holocaust. The holy city of Jerusalem itself was threatened with destruction. And just when the people’s hope for rescue seemed cut off--their fortunes looking no better than a dead stump--the prophet Isaiah comes along and says that there will be a green shoot.
The sprouting of the new shoot isn’t possible except by the Spirit of God . . . and the fact that from time to time we’ve seen glimpses of it ourselves, haven’t we? We’ve seen something like a green shoot coming out of a stump. We might think of a father who hasn’t spoken to his daughter in 20 years. No hope whatsoever for reconciliation. The relationship seems permanently cut off, like a stump. And then something happens and reconciliation is possible.
Or a couple tries and tries to have a child for many years with no luck. Then they try for many years to adopt with no luck. And then suddenly out of the blue a baby from overseas is available and then, a couple of years later, another baby is available.[3] A green shoot sprouting out of a dead stump.
Or someone grows up in church and someone says something and because of that the person leaves the church for a very long time. And then, many years later, the person suddenly comes back, determined to make a new start as a disciple of Christ and a member of Christ’s church. A green shoot sprouting out of a dead stump.
Where, in your lives, have you felt cut off? Has there been a time when a job you loved was taken away from you? And you had to figure out something else to do and learn a new skill. Are there relationships in your life that seem completely cut off and beyond hope of reconciliation?
I’m not trying to say that reconciliation is ever easy or automatic. If Isaiah’s vision were easy to achieve, we would have already done it. But isn’t Isaiah’s vision just enough to give us hope. Isn’t it just enough to help us realize that a new beginning is possible, even after we’ve already given up?
Cory Booker is the forty-one year-old mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He’s a Rhodes Scholar, a graduate of Yale Law School, and during most of his time as mayor he has lived in public housing projects because he wants to see first hand the challenges that many people in his city are facing. In an interview a few years ago with NPR, Cory told a story from his time as a young tenements rights lawyer, when he was walking around the neighborhood trying to offer his services. One day he knocked on the door of one Mrs. Virginia Jones. Virginia walked out of her tenement building and asked Cory to follow her. She said to him, “Tell me what you see?”
And Cory said, “I see crack houses and run-down buildings and gang graffiti.”
Virginia replied, “Then, you can’t help me.” And she walked off.
Cory went chasing after her and said, “Wait, you have to tell me more. Why are you walking away?”
She said, “Young man, you need to learn something. If all you see is hopelessness and despair, then it’s a reflection of what’s inside you and you can’t help me. But, if you see signs of hope, new life, even the face of God, then we can get started.”
What do you see? Do you see the stump—the evidence of heartache and tragedy? Or do you see the green shoot? The smile on a face that hasn’t smiled for years. The unmistakable walk of the prodigal making his way home.
All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.
The Rev. Jack Cabaness, Pastor
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Westminster, Colorado
[1] Story told by Presbyterian minister Rick Spaulding.
[2] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998), p. 104.
[3] Personal story told by Presbyterian minister Stephen Montgomery in a sermon preached on the Day One Radio Program, December 5, 2010.
