Peter Wiley

Isaiah 11:1-10

Matthew 3:1-12

Brookfield

12-5-04

Of all the hundreds of characters found in scripture – from Aaron & Ahab to Xerxes & Zaccheus – one of my all time favorites is John the Baptist.  Strange you might think. 

You might ask, “Why that early day version of a granola eating, tree hugging, puritanical nonconformist?”  Well . . . I like John, because he was nobody’s fool.  I like John, because his beliefs guided his life instead of his life dictating his beliefs.  I like John, because he reminds me of a faded black and white poster I had years ago, depicting a long unshaven raggedy man in sea-worn clothes sitting on an old beaten crate.  He had a ruddy face and wiry hair, but it was his eyes that fascinated me most because they told his story.  His life was his own, not bound to the confines, or expectations of the world . . . he lived each moment as his spirit moved him.  Not so much blowing in the wind, as being captivated and captured by the spirit of the day.  At least that’s what I saw in the poster. 

When it comes to the Baptist, most people depict him as the polar opposite: a stiff moral purist with no patience for the laxity of the Pharisees and Sadducees (who by most other accounts were strict adherents to the law).  But I’m not so sure that it was their lack of discipline that upset John about the religious establishment.  I wonder if the real reason he separated himself off from the rest ... living out in the caves, existing on the crumbs of life, was because he knew the leaders of the temple were stifling the presence of God.  Don’t just say “we’ve got the inside track ‘cause we’re descendents of Abraham” . . . a good bloodline may get you into Yale, but it won’t get you in good with God.  Even though he’s not often portrayed that way, I do get the sense that old John was actually a bit of a dreamer, a man who knew God shouldn’t and couldn’t be tamed.  Repent, he said, because you’ve shut out God. 

Repent he said, because you’re no longer open to God in your midst.  Repent, he said, because you’re as lost as the rest of us and you don’t even know it. 

I think I would have liked John the Baptist.  Scripture tells us Jesus did. 

John was a dreamer . . . and so was Isaiah, the prophet upon whom John relied so heavily. 

John proclaimed the coming of the Lord . . . so had Isaiah.  Isaiah said a shoot will come out from the stump of Jesse . . . he said there will be a new king, a new messiah from the line of David.  And Isaiah said . . . with the messiah’s arrival, the wolf will lie down with the lamb . . . and not as part two of a four course meal.  He said the calf and the lion and fatling shall live together . . . in peace.  And . . . he said:  a little child shall lead them.  

All a bunch of hooey . . . right?  We know better.  A wolf and a lamb can nap together about as easily as a Palestinian and an Israeli can live peaceably in a shared Jerusalem.  Thousands of years of evidence to the contrary tell us it can’t be . . . it’s not realistic – (about as likely as the Christian Coalition and the ACLU befriending each other) – it’s just not reasonable.  And as much as we like things that sound hopeful, we also want the clean hard facts.   I’d no sooner let my child try to lead a lion than I’d let her play in the middle of Federal Road.  

It’s good and fine to talk about peace, to seek stronger relationships between sworn enemies, but the facts say you better have a big military to back it up . . . or as Roosevelt liked to say, “Walk softly but carry a big stick.”  It’s good to dream, to be idealistic when your young, but you better be ready to face the facts when you grow up and do away with childish things. 

Not so, says Isaiah.  Like Jesus, he says, it’s the child who will lead them.  It takes a child to dream big dreams and believe they can be made real.  It takes a child to know all reality is actually relative, a matter of point of view, time particular and culturally informed. 

I love listening to my son dream.  He tells us his visions for his new room.  One day it’s a seascape, the next it’s a reflection of the solar system.   There are no limits to what is possible – swinging vines and ponds, lofts and walkways, secret compartments and hideaways.   It takes great restraint not to tell him his ideas aren’t reasonable, to not squash his creativity . . . because, in fact, all his ideas are possible.  They’re just difficult.  

Now I know what some of you fear here . . . that it’s all a bunch of camp songs, singing Kum Ba Ya, naïve idealism.  But who’s to say that reality is wrong?  Who’s to say which reality we ought claim?  Who’s to say children’s dreams are childish?  Maybe they’re the only one’s (at least according to Isaiah, John and Jesus) that actually get it.  They’re the only ones who understand hope and possibility.  They’re the only ones who can lead us to that new reality . . . not off in the distant future . . . but now.  

Can peace be made between long warring nations?  Can peace be made in a nation divided?  Can peace be made in a broken family?  Systems theorists would tell us NO . . . it’s just not going to happen.  When one feud stops, another will rise up to fill the void.  So it is, we say in the ecosystem . . . if the wolf and the lamb were to adapt and become friends . . . another predator would step in to fill the gap. 

Jesus, John and Isaiah say otherwise.  And this season calls us to look to that time, to anticipate it, and in fact to even live into that new reality.  They call us to listen to the child-like belief that it is possible . . . that it all depends upon whose reality we choose to believe.

Is it possible for this bread and drink before us to mean the body and blood of Jesus?  About as likely as it is for the lion, the lamb and the fatling to live together in peace.  But is it possible?  Only if you dream it and believe it and live it.