Straw Lion
Isaiah 11:1-10

December 5, 2004

What Advent really needs is a good narrative, a story that explains what the waiting is all about. It is true that Amanda read the account of John the Baptist appearing out of the wilderness and beginning his ministry, but we are fooling around with the chronology since this event is 30 years later than the day we await.

A plain old story fails us in describing how this inexplicable intersection of human and divine really happened. No narrative can help us see how this baby and young man Jesus transformed this decadent and violent world into something redeeming for all.

On Christmas Eve we read the Nativity stories from the Gospels, but the real Advent lessons are from Isaiah the prophet. Finally comes the poet.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, a Swiss Jesuit theologian, pointed out that “God needs prophets in order to make [God] known, and all prophets are necessarily artistic. What a prophet has to say can never be said in prose.”

And so we speak of trees. Every Christmas gathering of my extended family knew it was coming. When Uncle Paul had had enough champagne, he would get up and command attention as he recited Joyce Kilmer’s famous poem “Trees.” I cannot say no Kitchen family party was complete without it; we just knew it wouldn’t end until it had happened.

So we really begin with a stump, a cut down tree that hasn’t abandoned life yet. A shoot, a branch pushes out and brings a new form of life. The stump of Jesse, Isaiah insists, will be the root of something impossible, yet all too possible. Jesse was the otherwise little known patriarch whom Samuel approached to anoint a new king of Israel. The youngest son David was the one Jesse tried to ignore, but he was the one. And what a one! Israel has forever since seen its saviours as direct descendants of the House of David.

Isaiah was living in one of the really times of Israel. The nation was doomed, yet Isaiah could see hope where others could see none. It would be not a dream, but a person, a God-possessed person, who will change the way the world and nature works.

And Isaiah is still right. Our messed up and cruel world will not change by some miraculous snap of the fingers creating new rules and more harmonious situations. The world will change as the result of a human being who thinks and lives differently -- and by a lot of other people who are willing to commit their minds and souls and lives to such an adventure.

“The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him... the spirit of wisdom and knowledge. His delight is in the fear of the Lord.” Such a person is not alone. God has possessed him. She is full of the wise knowledge deeper than we can perceive. This is a person who lives for the sake of God. Beware of the power and abilities of any person who delights in what they do.

This fragile shoot from Jesse’s tree is not one to judge by eye and ear, that is, solely by rational thought that admits no spirit or emotion. He will judge with righteousness, and righteousness and faithfulness shall be the belt around his waist. This is a person who intuitively, instinctively, makes decisions and judgments by the life of God radiating from within his soul. Isaiah describes the shoot of Jesse in parallel fashion to Elijah, the most spirited and charismatic of Old Testament holy men, who spoke not about God, but for God.

Finally comes the poet. When the world is shaken by such a person, and there have been many since Jesus who have not settled for the way things are supposed to be, it’s more than politics and religion that have to withstand the radical change. Everything is suspect, everything becomes different.

The poet who cannot speak in prose describes a new world in which nature is no longer operating by its usual rules, so different the universe has become. The wolf and the lamb live together. The leopard and the kid, the calf and the lion do the same, and later the lion eats straw with the ox. The old way of nature has died, the new way has begun as a resurrection of peace.

“And a little child shall lead them.” No powerful king, no president of the most powerful nation on earth shall lead us to the Promised Land of peace, but a person whose lack of power contrasts so greatly with those recognized as powerful. All the powerful do is reshuffle the cards, the game is never altered. Isaiah began it, poetically speaking for God, remember. The power that changes the world into a paradise of peace, justice and reconciliation is a power that no longer exerts power, but gives away power.

That’s why the movements of non-violence have had such a dramatic effect upon our world because they changed minds. Others saw that they were not interested in the politics of brute power. They gave away power to the many, their tactics were based on the power to love. And as in any relationship between two people, authentic love gives away far more than it ever takes, and then receives far more respect and love than it has ever earned.

That famous and familiar painting by Edward Hicks called “The Peaceable Kingdom” describes this new creation in oil and colour. Hicks was a Quaker minister in the mid-1800’s and this painting became his vision of the world in more ways than one.

Quaker ministers were not permitted to be paid for their ministry, so they all had to be tent-makers, to earn their living through some secular means. Hicks had a large family, and his passion was painting. There is, in fact, no one version of The Peaceable Kingdom -- Hicks painted over 100 versions. He was always painting it, adjusting it, giving different emphases. The animals and the children are moving around the painting, now this one, now that one commanding the centre stage.

After all, how could any human being come to a single definitive picture of a world beyond human imagination? Nevertheless, he was possessed by what he saw in the painting and what kept seeming to crowd into it and demand a place.

Hicks was involved in the debate among Quakers about what was the primary emphasis of their way of faith. Hicks believed in the Inner Light that true Christians came to possess by the power of the Holy Spirit. Isaiah’s description of the shoot of Jesse as one in whom the spirit of knowledge and wisdom of God inhabited not by the physical senses, but by righteousness and faithfulness, is one illuminated by the Inner Light.

In most of the paintings there is a non-Biblical element that is nonetheless part of his Biblical vision. Off to the upper left hand corner, across the river, is William Penn, the Quaker founder of Hicks’ home state of Pennsylvania, making a treaty with the Native Americans, the First Nations people - a human sign of the Peaceable Kingdom. The question has always been: is Penn doing this as a result of the lion eating straw with the ox; or is there a straw lion as a consequence of human beings reconciling their love and power with each other? Or does it happen simultaneously, in the twinkling of an eye, as one unified creation of God?

The vision is there in front of us with still a lot to do. Hicks’ painting is not yet realized in its human or animal elements. It is Advent, however, and the world is ready to be recreated.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan