December 8, 2013
Isaiah 11:1-10
Most of you have probably heard of The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games Trilogy is a series of young adult books, now movies, set in the future in what is left of the United States after a series of wars and uprisings. The country now goes by the name of Panem, and consists of 12 districts and the Capitol. The government controls the districts through a mix of military might and deprivation. But their greatest weapon is the Hunger Games. Every year, each district is required to send two children—one male and one female age 12-18—to compete in the Games, which is a fight to the death. So every parent lives with constant awareness that their child’s name could be drawn, and their child would most likely die, just to prove the power of the State.
The Hunger Games fits into the genre called dystopian fiction. (Dystopian is, of course, the opposite of utopian; so dystopian novels have to do with a “cataclysmic decline in society.” Since the huge success of The Hunger Games, many dystopian novels have hit the bookshelves. It’s easy to understand why. Just as the children’s publishing world saw a glut of magic-themed books after Harry Potter, now other authors and publishers have tried to jump onto the “dystopian fiction” bandwagon. They want to cash in on the trend.
But I do think it’s more than that, at this time in our society. Right now there is something very appealing about imagining a world worse than ours. Sure, unemployment is high, but we aren’t forced to work in dangerous jobs for poverty wages, like the people of District 12. Sure, people lost their homes because of predatory lending practices, but unlike the people of Panem, we’re still free. Yes, people in our town and on our streets are hungry, but they have a chance for a better life, if they just work hard. It could be worse. Dystopian fiction reminds us of how good we have it, comparatively speaking.
Given this backdrop, it’s difficult to approach Isaiah’s prophecy today. He envisions a world we have come to call “the peaceable kingdom”: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid…. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together…. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.”
It is a beautiful passage of scripture, and for many of us it draws to mind the paintings of Edward Hicks, a 19th century artist and Quaker minister, who painted this scene, in different ways, more than sixty times. In the most famous version of this painting the animals are gathered together in the foreground, a young child with one hand over what is presumably a snake’s hole, and in the background is the treaty between William Penn and Native tribes.
We see this hopeful scene, and we hear these hopeful words from Isaiah, and we think: “Yeah, right!” The wolf is not going to lie down with the lamb; the wolf is going to eat the lamb. The bear is not going to graze alongside his dinner. And children will never be safe from serpents.
We know what our world is like. This Saturday is the one-year anniversary of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary. Twenty first-graders lost their lives. They were not safe from the predator.
We know what our world is like. Just in time for the holidays, “an automatic cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) decreased food aid to 47 million Americans who struggle to afford food on a daily basis.”
We know what our world is like. Each day the gap between the haves and have-nots grows exponentially. Each day our personal freedoms are whittled away in the name of security. Each day our ability to close our eyes to suffering around the world gets easier, and more tempting. We know what our world is like.
And so we dismiss this passage and its vision of peace. We dismiss it as pie-in-the-sky delusion, and Isaiah as a prophet who clearly was not in touch with reality.
But here’s the thing: Isaiah knew a thing or two about hardship. Here is how one preacher describes the time of Isaiah:
“These words from Isaiah were not spoken in a moment of reverie when the beauty of the mountain brooks and the serenity of the quiet pasturelands made the prophet aware of where it was all leading. He was not watching a dazzling sunset. He was watching the dazzling swords of the great and overpowering Assyrian army as they sliced their way through his native land of Palestine, leaving nothing but a trail of blood and agony. He was living through what has been called the first holocaust of the Jews.” In a period of forty years, the Assyrian army stampeded through Israel five times, wreaking terror and destruction every time. “Who could plant a field and have any hope that it would survive to the harvest? Who could bear a child with a confidence that it would reach maturity? It was a horrible forty years, those years in which Isaiah lived. But the prophet spoke. ‘Even though the world has become a living nightmare,’ he was saying, ‘even though there is no sign anywhere that peace will ever come, even though human greed and destructiveness are running rampant across our world, hear this: the promise of God is more powerful than the destructiveness of humanity!”
Isaiah knew death. Isaiah knew destruction. Isaiah knew dystopia. But Isaiah also knew the Divine. Isaiah also knew that God was greater. And so he gave a prophecy—he cast a vision—to tell his people the day would come. The day would come when armies would stop pillaging their villages. The day would come when their hard work would count for something. The day would come when their children would be safe.
Can you imagine such a world? Can you imagine such a place and time? Can you imagine what it would be like if everyone had enough to eat? if all people could pursue their gifts and passions because they didn’t have to worry about their next meal? Can you imagine what it would be like if every person was treated with respect? Can you imagine what it would be like if you didn’t have to worry about your children every time they left your sight? Can you imagine a world with no violence? Can you imagine a world without hate?
If you can’t, it’s not because such a world doesn’t or couldn’t exist. If we can’t imagine such a world it’s because we have a poverty of imagination.
I read an article this week called “Things I Learned from My Foster Children.” The author talks about how her foster kids are told in school to work hard and get an education, so they can get a job and become someone. But that’s not what they have seen in their world. In their world, jobs are low-paying and intermittent. Their parents get laid off, easily and often, or their hours cut or their pay unpredictable. When their parents don’t have jobs, there is not enough money; and when their parents do have jobs, there is not enough money. The only thing that a job does is take their parents away, often leaving them alone at night or when they are sick. They simply cannot imagine that a job could make a difference in their lives. Their life experience in poverty has given them a poverty of the imagination.
Perhaps the same has happened to us, regardless of our socioeconomic status. Perhaps all we see is the suffering; all we see is the injustice; all we see is the lamb getting eaten and the child getting bit. And so we cannot imagine what Isaiah promises. We have a poverty of imagination.
But the promise is real. The promise is true. Oh, the cynics will tell us we are foolish to believe. And “Cynics are always right. But they seldom speak truth. Because truth is in the vision of God’s hope.” We have such a hope within us.
And we are waiting. And waiting.
We are waiting for the day when those who seem, today, to be natural enemies will, tomorrow, lie down together.
We are waiting for the time when those who seek to devour and destroy other humans will eat the grain of mercy and find it satisfying.
We are waiting for the moment when every child will be safe from snakes and starvation, from abuse and alienation.
We are waiting for the kingdom of God among us.
But waiting does not mean we sit passively and watch the clock. We wait with a sense of promise. We wait with the promise that God has already begun the miracle. What empowers us to wait is the knowledge that for which we wait has already begun in us.
We want a world where enemies can lie down together in safety? Then we must be willing at least to sit on the same sofa.
We want a world where those who seek to devour will eat the grain of mercy? Then we must turn away from our own unhealthy appetites and devouring ways.
We want a world where every child is safe? Then we must provide for their safety. We must be sure they have enough to eat and good medical care. We must be sure that they are heard and believed and protected.
We want to live in this peaceable kingdom? Then we must be a place of welcome for every human soul.
This Advent season we are not waiting for the birth of a baby. We are waiting for the coming of Christ . . . the coming of Christ in all Christ’s many forms and all Christ’s many ways. We are waiting for the manifestation of God . . . Not waiting passively, but actively. Not sitting on our hands, but reaching our hands for one another. Not procrastinating, but preparing . . . preparing a way, making room, for the lion to lie down . . . and the lamb to rise up.
Thanks be to God. Amen.