Advent 2A: Dec. 4, 2022. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.
Isaiah 11:1-10. With the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. (That’s some powerful bad breath!)
Romans 15:4-13. On behalf of the truth of God.
Matthew 3:1-12. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
O God, hope of the prophets, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
For our Second Sunday of Advent this year, our scripture lessons begin with the second half of a beautiful oracle or poem in Isaiah. Maybe the first half is omitted from our lesson because it is not as charming as the second half. The first half describes how the mighty have fallen like tall trees in a forest that has been clear cut. It’s a wasteland. There are only stumps left where there had been a beautiful forest. The context is the collapse of the Assyrian occupying military, which was itself in control as the result of the total failure of the dynasty of King David, which had utterly miscarried its obligations to care for those who were most vulnerable and weak: aliens, widows, orphans, and other impoverished people. The government of the people of God had neglected its duties to be morally responsible for doing no wrong, no violence, to the neediest people.
In the place where our reading picks up, Isaiah predicts a tiny shoot of new growth, which will come out of what looked hopelessly dead. A sprig of new life will come out of the stump of the family tree of Jesse, King David’s father. This shoot will grow into a branch (a metaphor for a ruler), who will be filled with the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Holy One (fear, in this context, means awe and reverence, not anxiety or dread). The new growth, the new ruler, will ensure that those who are most vulnerable will be cared for and protected. Isaiah implores the leadership of the faithful remnant to remember that their power, strength, and very lives come from goodness, not from greediness. [1] It’s still true: we still need to be reminded that our power, strength, and very lives come from goodness and not from indulgent acquisitiveness. Our lessons testify that God will be faithful in reminding us of this again and again.
Sometimes our lectionary shoehorns readings together from the First and Second Testaments in a way that I think inappropriately “props up the Gospel.” But in today’s appointed lessons, Paul’s letter to the Romans and Matthew’s Gospel are referring directly to Isaiah. Many Christians don’t know that the Book of Isaiah was the good news, the gospel of the Jesus followers before the books we call Gospels were written. We know this because the prophet Isaiah is quoted or alluded to in the Second Testament hundreds of times. Isaiah’s writings shaped the lives of first-century Jews living under the oppressive Roman Empire and helped them make meaning of their experiences.
We know that Jesus’ followers leaned heavily on Isaiah for inspiration. Isaiah’s words and ideas are infused into Paul’s letters, our Gospels, Acts, and Revelation far more than any other book of the Bible except maybe the Psalms. [2] To be clear, it’s not because in 800-600 BCE (a span of 200 years!) Isaiah was predicting Jesus. First-century Jews were inspired by Isaiah’s calls for governmental and religious reform, repentance, and hope for God’s mysterious engagement with the world in new and surprising ways. This is true whether or not first-century Jews encountered or even heard of Jesus or his followers.
Walter Brueggemann describes the Book of Isaiah as: [3]
A mighty oratorio whereby Israel sings its story of faith. Like any oratorio, this one includes interaction among many voices, some of which are in dissent. Like any oratorio, this work requires a rendering…no one rendering may claim to be the ‘correct one,’ [but what is clear in Isaiah is] the predominant and constant character of [the inscrutable reality of the Holy One] who looms over the telling…[with] the faithful gentleness of a comforting nursemaid.
People of the Book: Jews, Christians, and Muslims, have all had the courage to imagine that the Holy One, who acted in disruptive and embracing ways in history, will continue to disrupt and embrace now and in the future. [4]
While it’s painful to hear prophetic calls for justice and acknowledge my own complicit share in unjust systems and economies that make and keep people poor, sick, or set apart, year after year I remind myself and you that Advent is not a time for personal salvation or private sacramental moments. The strong nouns and verbs of Advent lessons are plural. It is a season that calls us to see the gap between our present circumstance and the shalom of God. Advent trains our eyes on the vision of economic justice and systematic reparations, and calls us to participate in building a society in which those who are most vulnerable are not victims of rapacity, domination, and violence. Advent calls for organizational and structural repentance. Repentance means turning toward God (or Love) for the sake of the well-being (the shalom) of all of the citizens of the world: all the nations! Advent calls all of the exiles to come home. Repentance means turning toward God, toward Love, and getting ready to celebrate.
I have to tell you, I think we are included in the call as a (big-C) Church, even as a parish, to repent. And the first step of repenting, of turning toward the Holy One, is acknowledging that we have been wrong. The Episcopal Church has been wrong. As a Church we have benefited from white supremacy, from wealth that came from the slave trade, from ongoing racial bias, which is baked into our systems of governance, and from access to power. We have been wrong as a Church when it comes to protecting misogyny and homophobia (which I think is just another form of misogyny), using patriarchal language, and tolerating predatory behaviors and other misconduct. We have been wrong as a Church when it comes to tolerating anti-Jewish rhetoric in our scriptures and hymns (often we don’t even notice it). We have been wrong as a Church when it comes to measuring our well-being by numbers of people or amounts of money, rather than by the fruits of love and justice we bear. We have been wrong as a Church when it comes to using more than our share of natural resources, disregarding the environment, and being complacent about the damage our “first-world lifestyle” does to creation. John the Baptist was crying out about religious hypocrisy, and we should take heed.
Notice in our Gospel lesson for today that Matthew reports that both Pharisees and Sadducees were coming to be baptized. What’s most remarkable is that Pharisees and Sadducees had different opposing ideas and ways of being faithful. What that says to me is that high church or low church, progressive or conservative, orthodox or unorthodox, the Church must repent, start again by acknowledging the ways that we perpetuate systems of oppression, the sins that we have committed, and the sins committed on our behalf. We are called to begin again and respond as a group, as a Church.
It seems to me that Advent, the beginning of a new church year, is the perfect time to realize or remember this. The more we love our own Church, the more we must confront its self-satisfaction, arrogance, and indifference. [5] We might have difficulty seeing how the need to change applies to us, but I think it’s actually easier for us to see than it is to change. Changing requires heading into a wilderness of sorts and feeling vulnerable, unsure of what the change will demand from us, unsure of whether we will have what it will take. Writing about the culture of fear in which we are living, the late Washington Post op-ed columnist Michael Gerson said that Advent is the season when we are assured that conflict and even evil are: [6]
real but not ultimate. Grace and deliverance are unrealized but certain….No matter how desperate the moment…time is on the side of hope….Hope is not a cruel joke, because nothing is impossible with God.
The thing is, every age is challenged by a culture of fear. It is also true, however, that in every age the sprout is coming up out of a stump in the midst of a clear-cut forest. Where are tiny signs of growth, of new life? What dead wood might we collect to burn for heat, health, heart, and hope?
In the most desolate and spare wilderness, there is a river of life and a voice of hope that cries out that we are not alone. We are not alone. Our sacred narrative tells us that God wants us to know this so much that God with Us, Emmanuel, will be born; God will take on human form as a radical show of solidarity. God will not stop trying to get our attention! The voice crying in the wilderness tells us that Jesus, Emmanuel, will help us sort through what in us that is true and what is false, what are the nutritious kernels and what are the indigestible husks. Jesus will do this with inspiration and passion, which is another way of saying with the Holy Spirit and with fire. So let’s encourage one another as a Church, to repent, to turn again toward the Holy One, so that we may grow from the inside-out in this new year. Let’s bear fruit worthy of the welcome home that God is preparing for us, because the realm of heaven has truly come near.
- The Rev. Kathryn M. Matthews, “Choose a Better Way,” Sermon Seeds, Dec. 8, 2019: https://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_december_8_2019.
- John F. A. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 21ff.
- Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p. 1.
- Ibid., p. 7.