First Friends Meeting
Isaiah 11:1-5
‘Living with the Promises’
Doug Gwyn

I think all of us have had the experience of meeting someone who didn’t turn out like the person you expected. You had a certain image of what that person would look like, what they would act like. And they turned out to be very different. Often we’re disappointed. Often we develop idealized images of people we’ve never met. It’s also interesting to be on the receiving end of those failed expectations. I have some personal experience with that. People that have read my books are sometimes visibly disappointed when they the author. Some others have actually seemed relieved. I’m not sure which is worse! Of course, this happens in love as well. The love of your life usually isn’t usually the person you had in mind. You think, no, surely not him, not her. It took me five long years of wooing to convince Caroline to marry me. And then, of course, she really had her doubts!

So here were are in Advent again. We sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” to that old Latin plainsong tune, with those ancient words of hope. It conjures up many, many generations of countless souls who have dared to hope this outrageous hope. The hope of Emmanuel – God with us. And we read these beautiful prophecies of Isaiah – the promises of God’s Messiah, like the one Duane has just read. Promises given centuries before the time of Jesus. With Advent, we remember the long centuries that Israel waited for the Messiah. But as we remember Israel’s long wait, it reminds us that these promises are still largely unfulfilled today. We too are a waiting people.

Waiting has gotten a bad reputation in more recent times. Christian faith has been criticized for indefinitely deferring the fulfillment of all those beautiful promises. We hope in a heaven where everything will be perfect – “pie in the sky, by and by.” Shouldn’t we be working for a better world here and now? True enough, Christian hope has too often been used to placate the victims of injustice and inequality. Be patient, don’t complain. Jesus didn’t complain. Someday it will all be different. Maybe not in your lifetime, but someday. And there’s always heaven, if you’re good, if you don’t complain. And yet, as society has become more secularized, I’m not sure I see much improvement in the human condition. Wanting it all here and now doesn’t necessarily make it so. Some recent writers, like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, have suggested that society will be better once we banish this God delusion. Well, if Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China are any indication, I’m not too sure about that.

All these issues arise when we come to Advent, this season when we celebrate waiting. Advent is a great festival of delayed gratification. Henri Nouwen writes that waiting in faith is not really passive at all. It’s a very active way of being in the world. Looking at waiting in the Bible, he writes, “Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing.” [Repeat sentence] That’s the key. And we can see that in the book of Isaiah. Scholars suggest that the prophecies contained in the 66 chapters of Isaiah are the work of more than one prophet. There’s a so-called Second Isaiah, whose prophecies seem to start around chapter 40, and even a Third Isaiah, toward the end of the book. The original Isaiah, recorded in the early chapters, prophesied well before the kingdom of Judah was conquered by Babylon. The second Isaiah prophesied among the Jewish community in exile in Babylon, and foretold their return to Palestine. Finally, the third Isaiah prophesied after they had returned. Among other things, this third Isaiah insisted, we don’t need to build another temple. We’ve been there, we’ve done that. Let’s move on in our faith. Let’s not live toward the receding horizon of the past, but toward the opening horizon of the future. That is the theology of hope, of active waiting.

So, “Isaiah” is not just one prophet, and probably not just three. There was probably a whole Isaiah community, a certain stream within Judaism over the course of centuries, steeped in the original prophecies of Isaiah and gradually adding to them. When we read the gospels, we see time and again that the early Christians saw various prophecies fulfilled in the life and the teachings of Jesus. In particular, Matthew points out time and again where he sees prophecies fulfilled. And the prophecies they most often find fulfilled are the prophecies of Isaiah. The early Christian community was probably some descendent of that Isaiah community. They were living with those ancient promises, standing on the ground of those promises, nurturing them to life. In

Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus, we find these various characters, like Simeon and Anna, and Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph. They were not just unsuspecting souls that this Messiah thing just happened to, like falling on them out of the sky. They were actively looking. The Messiah was a hope that grew from the ground where they were standing, generation after generation – until the Messiah was growing, well, right inside Mary.

The story of the Christ-child coming into the world, is a story of great beauty and joy. We see something of that beauty and joy with every child born into this world. Every child is a child of great promise, a tiding of great joy, the most beautiful thing in the world. But the greatness of the Isaiah tradition lies in that it also shows us the ugly side. Isaiah also foretold the grown-up Messiah, the common-as-dirt carpenter’s son from Galilee, who wasn’t exactly what people were looking for. Isaiah 53 puts it so poignantly: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering, well acquainted with grief [or infirmity]; and as one from whom others hide their faces, he was despised – we held him [to be] of no account.” Yes, that ugly side of the Messiah is part of the promise too. It’s our ugliness, and the ugly things we do to those who disappoint us, those who don’t meet our desires, those we hold to be of no importance.

In the passage Duane read, Isaiah says that the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon this coming redeemer. It will give him the spirit of wisdom and understanding. “His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” We naturally draw back from this “fear of the Lord.” It sounds so cringing and, well, fearful. But Isaiah says the fear of the Lord is the Messiah’s delight. It’s a sense beyond the senses of sight and sound. It enables him to discern clearly, to do what is right on behalf of the poor and lowly. That’s what we need! The fear of the Lord is really the wisdom to trust in a sense beyond our own senses. To wait for God’s guidance in our lives, instead of simply acting on our own impulses, impressions, or desires. Again, it’s a waiting that already partakes of the reality we’re waiting for.

Waiting for the Messiah is living by a sense beyond the senses. It is the ability to find our heart’s desire in people whose looks or whose status aren’t what the world teaches us to desire. It’s also our willingness to help others. If we’re looking for the Messiah, look at Jesus – he needed lots of help. He was a helpless infant there at the beginning. Even as a grown-up, he was homeless. He needed a place to stay, someone to feed him. It got easier after he became a famous prophet and faith healer. But it must have been pretty rough in the early days of his ministry. He also needed disciples, men and women who would listen to him, learn from him, and carry on his work after he was gone.

Just as the prophecies of Isaiah gave Israel clues how to look for the Messiah, so the stories of Jesus offer us clues how to find Christ in us and around us, here and now. Remember, what we hope for is growing right now, out of the ground where we are standing. As we look for the Christ today, we will find him as much among those we can help, as those who can help us. The best way to find the Messiah is to be the disciples.